Creativity can be bad for you.

In the preface to the revised edition of The Journey from the Center to the Page, I point out that booze as muse has been a long-time tradition among some of my 20th-century literary heroes.  NYT science editor William Broad’s new book The Science of Yoga – which has raised a bit of a kurfuffle among some yogis – alludes to my book and work and picks up where I left off.  He speculate why, neurologically, so many writers have relied upon alcohol to meet their muse. Alcohol triggers a calm-inducing neurotransmitter called GABA. It’s the sort of nerve-napping experience many of us need to feel the textures of words or caress the images that inhabit our literary worlds.

No judgments here, by the way, about imbibing. But a creative life doesn’t have to be toxic. Does it?

Tonight, radio show Angela Levesque will interview and talk with me about this matter and more. Her show, “On Health and Healing,” focuses on a wide spectrum of health-related issues, but she admits she’s only recently made the creativity-health connection.

On the show, we’ll discuss

• how to avoid creative burn-out and how to mitigate all-or-nothing creative obsession
• the role of emotions in creativity
• what creative mindfulness is and how it helps us be engaged, emotional, but not crazed creatives
• what wonder is and why it’s the emotional soil for adult creativity to bloom in healthy ways 
• how much neuroscience of creativity and neuroscience of health complement each other
• how yoga is muse for more and more professional creatives 
• much more

ON HEALTH & HEALING
A2Zen.FM Radio

February 23, Thursday 11pm E/10C/9M/8P
Details here.

Don’t worry, early birds on the East Coast. A recording will be made available soon.

DROP IN THE HUT

What is your relationship between being creative and being healthy? How does one feed the other?

See you in the woods,
Jeffrey