The Next Wave of Yoga Research: Creativity?

When Popular Science cover writer Michael Belfiore landed his first big book deal the same year he and his wife had their first child, he thought he'd never find the time, spirit, or peace of mind to complete the book. But he did. His secret? Each pre-dawn morning, before his wife or child awoke, Belfiore crept to his office and, before he sat at his desk, practiced thirty minutes of yoga. His book, The Rocketeers, came out this year to critical acclaim.

Belfiore, like thousands of American writers, artists, and musicians, has discovered in the ancient practice of yoga a great ally and a potential muse.

With over 19 million Americans practicing some form of yoga, it's no wonder that psychologists, neuro-scientists, and medical doctors have started to take the ancient practice seriously in their research studies. In the past ten years, yoga has been correlated with helping to alleviate depression, anxiety, and stress.

But the next focus for yoga research may be creativity. That's the tenet of Jeff Davis.

Jeff Davis, writer and faculty mentor at Western Connecticut State University, has been among the most ardent proponents of creativity and yoga. Since Davis published the non-fiction book The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Practices and Principles as Muse for Authentic Writing (Penguin hardcover 2004; Penguin paperback 2005), he has shown thousands of writers how yoga's simple methods can move them into creative immersion and help them change mental patterns that sabotage creativity. Michael Belfiore is among the writers with whom Davis has worked.

"Yoga won't make writing easy," Davis contends, "because, well, writing is difficult. But Yoga is helping thousands of writers to facilitate and design their own creative process - rather than to be at the whim of random flashes of 'inspiration,' moods, or energy peaks."

During the next year, Davis is testing more systematically his theories and the mounds of anecdotal accounts he receives each year. As of October 2007, Davis has been working with a small group of MFA in Professional Writing students at WCSU to monitor and measure their experiences as writing students with a simple yoga practice that he teaches to writers around the country.

"I'm not expecting every student to report creative euphoria," Davis admits. "But the study will help me pinpoint what works and what does not work with writers under extreme duress - and what better study group than a group of MFA students, many of whom are also trying to keep full-time jobs and raise children."

Davis's work with yoga and writing has caught the attention of other university writing programs as well. In January, 2007, Annie Finch, Director of The University of Southern Maine-Stonecoast MFA-Creative Writing Program, asked Davis to speak to and work with her MFA students. "They loved it," Finch said. In the future, Davis may conduct a similar study with USM students. Davis also has become a regular faculty member at The University of New Mexico's Writer's Conference.

"It's reassuring that professors of creative writing recognize the value of this work, that it's not simply a 'New Age trend,'" Davis said.

Davis understands the potential skepticism that Yoga might be little more than a gimmick or a placeba. In his twenties, Davis says he was a "writing and teaching head" whose intellectual focus on life exacted a toll on his body, heart, and writing. He says he would have rolled his eyes had anyone suggested he practice yoga. But in his early thirties, stressed and prematurely graying, Davis tried it.

"Yoga screwed up my life in lots of beautiful ways," Davis says. Intrigued by the changes in his writing and imagination, he completed two Yogateacher training programs, immersed himself in Yoga philosophy and neuroscience, and studied in South India with the renowned yogi T.K.V. Desikachar. He has dedicated much of the past several years to testing out the myriad ways yoga complements a creative life.

Davis notes that Stephen Cope, psychotherapist and senior Kripalu Yoga teacher at Kripalu in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, also has been studying yoga's effects on artists and musicians.

In 1999, Davis founded Center to Page (which became an LLC in 2006) to further these studies and to further help writers and artists by offering coaching and editing services as well as unique retreats and workshops.

In March 2008, Davis will convene with 20 writers and artists from around the country to test more of Davis's discoveries. Titled "To See the Unknown: From Vision to Re-vision," the retreat and workshop will explore how yoga effects creative perception, immersion, visualization, and intuitive discernment - all qualities Davis says are useful for writers and artists from "vision to re-vision."

The number of opportunities for writers and artists to take classes and workshops that integrate yoga with writing and art has exploded in the past few years, Davis says. And Shambhala Sun has followed Davis's The Journey from the Center to the Page in the past two years with two other titles that also explore yoga's yoking with writing.

"It's an exciting moment for we creative folk," Davis said, "when we don't have trade off the rest of our life for our creativity and when perhaps we're permitted to replace booze with breath as our muse."

Readers interested in learning more about Jeff Davis's work can visit www.centertopage.com.