I recommend doing alpha brainstorming before you go to sleep at night. It is probably best to start by watching the video as the notes below just summarize what I say in the video.
Start with a meditation for 10-15 minutes following your own technique or the meditation process I share in the video involving anchoring yourself in your body and paying attention to your breathing (for more detailed instructions listen to my short video on how to meditate).
You will know you’ve reached the alpha brainwave state when you start to feel relaxed and your thoughts begin to quiet. Keep in mind that if you haven’t meditated before you may have to practice meditation a number of times before reaching the alpha state.
When you reach the relaxed alpha state, start thinking about the problem you’re looking for an answer to. Try to think about it and examine it from different angles. Think of the why, what, where and how of the problem. Spend about 3-5 minutes doing this.
Next, try holding the problem in your mind’s eye for a couple of minutes by simply relaxing and visualizing it from all the different angles you just examined. After this, ask your creative intelligence to solve this problem. Then you can relax, let go and rely on your subconscious processing to do the rest.
Sometimes, the creative insight will pop right into my head. However, this is rare. Usually, it will trigger in the early morning when I’m waking up, taking a shower or even a few days later. The key is that you don’t try to force it. Just let go after doing the meditation and visualization practice and trust your creative intelligence to figure it out.
This sounds like an interesting technique. I need to get into meditating more first though! Tough to keep it up.
I find any problem that I really frustrates me and that I struggle to solve will get lodged in my brain in a similar way. My mind can then comes up with an unprompted solution (or at least a new angle on it) several days later through a random association moment.
That’s just what I’ve found over the years, but it isn’t a regular occurrence, and I think a more conscious(?) approach through mediation could be very effective!