A new study found that a 20-minute Hatha yoga intervention significantly increased divergent thinking — a component of creativity — among people with no regular yoga practice. The findings were published in Acta Psychologica.
In today’s rapidly evolving world, innovation is crucial, and creativity has become a highly valued skill. As study authors, Ashish Bollimbala and associates say, organizations are on the hunt for employees who can think outside the box and come up with novel solutions to problems. Recent psychology research has brought to light the possibility that yoga practice can instill this type of creative thinking.
Bollimbala and team describe a gap in the current research. “Not many studies have explored the effects of an acute combinatory intervention involving both mind and physical movements, such as yoga on the creative ability of the individuals . . . The benefits of yoga have been studied widely in different contexts, but there is scarcity of studies on its relationship with creativity.”
The researchers devised a controlled experiment to investigate whether Hatha yoga, a branch of yoga that combines postures with breathing exercises, could elicit improved creative thinking in a sample of subjects. A total of 92 non-yoga practitioners recruited from a management school in Mangalore, India were split into two groups.
All subjects completed a task measuring divergent thinking — the process of generating many possible solutions to a problem, and a task measuring convergent thinking — the process of narrowing down the best possible solution to a given problem. After the two tasks, one group partook in a 20-minute Hatha yoga class and the other group spent 20 minutes working on a creative solution to a case study. Finally, all subjects re-took the assessments of divergent and convergent thinking.
The researchers found that following the intervention period, the two groups differed in their performances on the divergent thinking task. Specifically, those who followed the Hatha yoga class showed improved flexibility and originality in their responses, while those who worked on the case study showed decreases in the fluency and flexibility of their responses. Neither intervention was found to affect convergent thinking.
Bollimbala and colleagues discuss the possibility that this boost in creativity might be explained by the ego-depletion theory. “The increase in divergent thinking of the experimental group and decrease in divergent thinking of the control group could be because those who did the ‘job as usual’; or the case study could not replenish the executive control-resources, whereas those who did the yoga intervention were able to do so,” the authors say.
The researchers add that attempting to stimulate creativity could actually have a negative effect in some circumstances. For example, the control group showed declines in the fluency and flexibility components of creative thinking following the case study exercise.
“A decline was not expected,” the authors share, “since the case study group was encouraged to find creative solutions, in accordance with how most conventional classrooms operate. This result suggests that prodding individuals to be creative while doing a routine job or job as usual, such as a case study in the class, does not enhance creative ability; in fact, the converse appears to be true.”
One limitation of the study is that it was not possible to tell whether the physical exercise component or the mental aspect of the Hatha yoga intervention was responsible for the bolstering effect on creativity. The researchers suggest that the physical component was likely important since previous studies have suggested that meditation-based yoga does not improve creative thinking.
The study, “The effect of Hatha yoga intervention on students’ creative ability”, was authored by Ashish Bollimbala, P.S. James, and Shirshendu Ganguli.
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