Creativity, Consciousness, and Tapping into Our Potential | Rackham Graduate School: University of Michigan

October 29, 2025 | GradWell Season 2

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Guest

Ed Sarath is a composer, performer (flugelhornist), author/scholar, and change visionary whose work traverses wide-ranging areas within and beyond music. His compositions for large and small ensembles have been performed worldwide and interweave diverse genres and approaches to the improvisation/composition interface. His books include Music Theory Through Improvisation (Routledge, 2010), Black Music Matters (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), Music Studies and Its Moment of Truth: Leading Change Through America’s Black Music Roots (Routledge, 2023), and Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness (SUNY Albany, 2012) – the first book to apply principles of an emergent, consciousness-based worldview called Integral Theory to music theory.

Transcript

Sam Hobson:

Hey, welcome to GradWell, a limited series podcast that explores various ways the University of Michigan can support its graduate students and their journey to greater well-being in our everyday lives. Brought to you by Rackham Graduate School. This season we’ll be talking to members of our academic community whose research intersects various dimensions of well-being. I’m Sam Hobson, a PhD candidate and a GSSA in Rackham’s Professional Development and Engagement office. My fellow grad students, it’s time we start placing as much importance on ourselves as we do our work. You’re worth the effort.

Ed Sarath:

Friction is really about … It really takes us to the heart of what it means to be a fully alive human being.

Sam Hobson:

Hello. Hello. Today’s resource is Ed Sarath, professor of Music and the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation here at Michigan. Professor Sarath is also the founder and co-director of the Cross-Campus Program and Creativity and Consciousness Studies. And it’s this focus that we’ll be highlighting in today’s episode to explore the intersection between intellectual and spiritual well-being. I’m super excited to have you all with Professor Sarath and me today. Let’s jump in.

Professor Ed Sarath is a composer, performer of the flugelhorn author, scholar, and change whose work traverses wide-ranging areas within and beyond music. His compositions for large and small ensembles have been performed worldwide and interweave diverse genres and approaches to the improvisation composition interface. His books include Music Theory Through Improvisation, Black Music Matters, Music Studies and its Moment of Truth, Leading Change through America’s Black Music Root and Improvisation, creativity and Consciousness, the first book to apply music principles of an emergent consciousness-based worldview called Integral Theory to Music. Hi, professor Sarath, how are you doing today? Thank you for being here with me.

Ed Sarath:

So good to see you, Sam. Really looking forward to this.

Sam Hobson:

Me too. Me too. Okay. So Professor Sarath, how did you get into this academic focus?

Ed Sarath:

Well, it’s very interesting because I always make jokes. I’m at two kinds of academic fringes, one being in music, but within music being in jazz and improvised music. Okay. So we’re at the outer edges of music studies. Every university, it has some kind of music activity, but most of those are oriented towards European classical. So people in jazz and improvised music, they’re at the edges there. In that the area of consciousness studies is really a newcomer. What’s really beyond the fringes is now you’re dealing with the intersection of spirituality if it’s done with depth, but it’s an emerging academic field, and I’ve been involved as an outgrowth of my longtime practicing meditation and interested in topics related to consciousness and spirituality. Now there’s academic movements you might say around contemplative studies, consciousness studies and that sort of thing. And of course, all these things are connected to well-being. But so my journey has been a little bit … I came in a little bit through the back door and the entryway is expanding, but it’s still at the fringes and I enjoy it and it’s a challenge making inroads, but I’ve managed to do a few things.

Sam Hobson:

Thank you. To lay a foundation for our listeners, what is creativity?

Ed Sarath:

You’re starting with the big ones. It’s funny, it’s one of my favorite questions, but it’s also challenging. So I usually start with most people’s everyday understanding of creativity is not a bad place to start. People probably usually think of the arts, creating a painting, somebody’s creating a sculpture and music, somebody’s creating a piece of music. And then from there you realize that there are different kinds of creativity even within the arts. And again, I come back to jazz. Jazz is really great because improvisatory creativity and you also have compositional creativity. So the improvisatory creativity is actually most of the music made in the world, necessarily not in the academy, but in the real world. Every culture across the world has music. Really strong improvisatory components where the music, significant parts of it are made up on the spot. This is very different than European classical, at least in the modern times when it gets composed and notated. And players actually don’t improvise as they did at one point in the classical tradition. But improvisatory creativity is going to fall on by the wayside in that realm.

Even with the arts, you have a wide range of creativity. And then there’s emergent interest in the fact that creativity really applies to all academic disciplines. The sciences, mathematics, sociology, engineering, business, I’ve lectured at the Harvard Business School in their graduate program on improvisation as it applies to business. They’re very interested in jazz. The business world is. So,= creativity is really about … It really takes us to the heart of what it means to be a fully alive human being. Because really everything we do is creative, and we think now we see we’re at a political moment. There’s a lot of activism happening now. That’s an amazingly creative endeavor. So really creativity is kind of like … I think about it. We dig into our reservoir of human potential and human beings, we make things everyday life. We can engage in any given moment, even if we’re doing housework or something like that in more or less creative ways. It’s a big area.

Sam Hobson:

I have so many questions. So I like what you said about how everything that we do in academia, well what creativity is tapping into what it means to be human. But that everything that we do in academia is a creative process. I don’t think that’s necessarily, it’s framed as such oftentimes because it’s science and science is so linear and serious, and creativity is so artsy and flowy and therefore there’s this distinction in the cultural narrative that what we do as graduate students, as scholars is not part of the creative process. Knowledge production is not part of the creative process. And so to think of it as that, what do you think that that reframe can do to the things that we’re able to create and to say and to put out into the world as academics?

Ed Sarath:

This is huge and you’re really hitting it on the head. And this of course will open up to consciousness when we talk about that. But this is really important. That every area of human endeavor can be approached in creative ways. But the academy squelches that for sure, as I think you were intimating. And there’s more and more awareness of this in the academy. It’s a challenging thing. But I think we start with just awareness that virtually every field could be approached with a creativity mindset. And we can start with an awareness of being in the moment. And also … And this is a huge part of creativity is critiquing the patterns we’ve inherited from life as a whole, cultural backgrounds, disciplinary backgrounds, the academy. That actually confine our thinking, our awareness to narrower horizons that dispels creativity. Here’s something to give you more precise.

There’s a very strong tendency in the academy to favor the product, the objective realms or knowledge that … And of course in the sciences, this is a huge thing. Expertise in terms of information, in terms of data, in terms of product, when actually there’s this whole process dimension that takes a very different kind of thinking. Where it’s exciting to me is when these things come together, it’s not product versus process. It’s integration of the whole thing. The academy errs in the direction, and it’s very good at this in a way. Thee academy excels in certain ways, but definitely errs in the direction of product at the expense of process. And as soon as you switch that narrative, then you’re starting opening up into the inner awareness that is a realm of consciousness. So ultimately creativity and consciousness, you can’t really talk about one very long without … Unless you’re going really superficially without really hitting the other.

Sam Hobson:

And I really want to move on to consciousness in a moment, but I want you to say more about the idea that creativity requires critique of the particular ways that we have been taught to be. That seems to be a fundamental aspect of what it means to create. That is fascinating.

Ed Sarath:

Yeah. I might reword it. I might not say creativity requires, but if we’re inquiring into creativity, then the critique of the patterns that inhibit creativity would be a part of this endeavor. It’s a story of our times in a way, because even before recent political ordeal that the academy faces, the question that comes up is how equipped is the academy to prepare individuals to deal with the challenges of our times? For instance, sustainability, political ideological, polarization, a number of these. AI. All of these things we could go down … Nuclear proliferation, all the challenges they’re facing. The future of human civilization are really challenges of creativity, challenges of the academy being able to cultivate a broader awareness of the circumstances we’re in. This is a big part of creativity. It’s just being in the present and really having an awareness of what are the conditions of the present and then how to deal with those.

And so this is looping back to this aspect of condition patterning. I think the environment is a huge example of we’ve inherited condition patterns about how we interact with the environment. Generally is species. And we’re going to have to really come to terms of how deep that goes, how deep that conditioning goes. And so this is part of that whole creative critique, that critical interrogation of the patterns that inherit creativity. Because to solve the environmental crisis, we’re going to have to tap incredibly deeply into direct creative potential to break out of these patterns and establish new relationships.

And then I think of creativity in sports. Oh my gosh, you and me more and more now we hear the term creativity applied to the performance of the athlete and the business world and law. There’s this whole wave of in practice of law dealing with improvisation, looking to jazz. Guidance in terms of improvisatory creativity and law from jazz. And it’s hard to imagine. There’s a woman I was on a panel with, I’ll think her name in a second. She’s a law professor in British Columbia. Her specialty is jazz and law. She writes academic papers on bebop and law practice. So basically creativity and especially improvisation, it’s like a wave that’s overtaking virtually every field, even fields that seem … You wouldn’t think of as creative field. Karl Weick was a scholar at Michigan. I think he was probably long since retired. One of the major people in studying improvisation in firefighting. Firefighting. And then you can see the application to first responders, law enforcement and everything. Medicine. When you think about the physician-patient relationship, that’s an incredibly improvisatory relationship when the physician is interacting with the patient and every person has, at some point in time, they’re going to have some kind of medical history, even if it’s routine checkups, where they’re going to come out of that feeling like that was an incredible interaction.

And unfortunately, there’ll probably be other times when they felt like that physician really did not connect with them at all. Probably the effectiveness of the care they get is going to be really predicated on you connect with it. It’s an improvisation that happens there. So medical schools … Even the UM medical schools had me come in and talk to Tim Johnson who’s vice president of medical operations, had me come in to talk to his OBGYN class on improvisation. The improvisatory, because it’s in the moment it’s like a heightened experience of being in the moment and dealing and drawing on the totality of your expertise no matter what it is. Law enforcement, firefighting, jazz, ice hockey, basketball. You draw upon the totality of your expertise, but you also have to be free from it.

And I love the fact that you mentioned that word play early on and get into the real serious play. And then even science could become a play in a certain way because you tune into the process and we thought, we hear from the great scientists and read their words. Einstein was very famous for … It was intuitive. His discoveries were intuitive more than they were intellectual. There were impulses about the functioning of the structure of reality that he would then give shape to through words. And even I think the mathematical formulation even comes last.

Sam Hobson:

Professor, Sarath would you say I’m trying to paraphrase your definition of improvisation. Is being able to be completely present in the moment, but also being able to tap into all of your expertise and training in whatever field you have while also being free from the bounds and the confines that field creates.

Ed Sarath:

I love this question, and I have this thing called the artist paradox. So you’ve got the very thing you’re describing. You hit it perfectly. Because it’s elusive. People think of improvisation or you just do everything you want. That takes no skill and all that. And of course that’s a form of improvisation, just winging it. In this sense that’s a stereotype. But the thing is, when you look at high level improvisation, say that happens in music or sports or again, any discipline among high level practitioners, the stereotype is that they lose touch with their training and all that thing, but it’s the opposite. They actually … This is where the paradox has been. It’s two things that don’t seem to go together. You tap into the years and years and years and hours and hours and hours a day of practice and studies. That’s how human beings learn. You’ve got it all in there.

If we’re not very improvisatory we’re automatized we’re just regurgitate. But the improvisatory awareness gives us access to the totality, all the rigor and all that kind of thing, as well as is playful freedom to just operate on a moment to moment basis as opposed to being bound by conditioned, almost scripted responses. Moment to moment with great freedom. And with the great freedom comes a kind of capacity to penetrate to the inner dimensions of the creative process. It seems contradictory. You’ve got access to the totality of all the technique, yet also that exquisite freedom from … Like you said. And then you go deep in the professions. The expressions are very profound. They come from deep within your psyche, deep within the soul. And the listener is impacted by this. The listener can feel where that music is coming from.

It’s like in deep improvisation, the artist is taking the listener on that journey with them. There’s a lot of literature from athletes on this too. And it’s like you take away the difference between improvising a sound and improvising a sport is incredible commonality where they’re talking about they go deep in the moment and there’s a fusing between the performers. Okay. So you’re basketball team, okay, we we’re functioning as one. Five basketball players, five jazz musicians, we’re functioning as one. The home team. The home crowd. We felt like we were one with our fans. The five jazz musicians we felt like we were one with the listeners. Collective consciousness is a whole dimension of consciousness when we go into that realm.

Sam Hobson:

So it seems like you have to deeply know and understand your field in order to be able to transcend it. And it is in that transcendence where you’re really able to connect with other humans on a really human basis rather than just a material rote basis.

Ed Sarath:

I could not have worded it better myself. That’s really, really fantastic.

Sam Hobson:

Thanks. Okay. So you keep bringing up consciousness and how we must understand it in order to truly understand creativity. Please tell us what is consciousness.

Ed Sarath:

All right. So now it’s like you started with a challenging question and now it’s even more challenging. But this is really where the action is. A central part of my writing is creativity and consciousness together, improvisation is the link. I’ve been saying lately that consciousness is the next frontier for humanity. Not only the next frontier for human education, the next frontier for humanity, the creativity, consciousness, nexus. Consciousness is like the innermost essence, you might say. We do our best with words here, right? Innermost essence of the human being. And once we get to that level, now we’re talking about the soul. And this brings up all questions because the modern academy is actually … It’s not a formal doctrine or something like that, but it’s largely averse to anything in that direction. And when you look at the intellectual roots of the modern academy, however … I’m talking about the Western Academy. The ancient Greek and Roman traditions, the philosophical traditions which is the basis of systems of logic and reasoning and critical thinking and all that kind of thing rooted in meditation practices and the existence of soul in this area of consciousness.

And so the intellectual happened atop of those foundations. And what the academy has done is lopped away … It’s lopped off the surface byproducts. So it’s like the functioning of the mind at the expense of this is consciousness, the nature of the mind. So consciousness is like the full spectrum of subjective reality. Commonly, especially in eastern literature, the metaphor of the ocean and the waves is used. So the waves are like an ordinary functioning everyday life. We make decisions, we’re studying this or that, we’re ingesting information and all that kind of thing. Those are the waves. The ocean is the silent depths of awareness that underlie the waves. And so the gain is can we have both of waves in the ocean together? And so the consciousness revolution is … And this is where meditation practices come in. In a whole realm of related disciplines. Contemplative disciplines that come in which take awareness … By the way, the philosopher from Yale, I think he’s passed away. Pierre Hadot has been eloquent on this, on elucidating the meditative contemplative foundations of western philosophy, which the academy has totally flopped about. It’s not even in the conversation to our detriment. But the human being is an ocean of consciousness.

We are an ocean of consciousness. And the world’s religious and wisdom, spiritual traditions and philosophical traditions tell us this. Human nature is an ocean of consciousness with surface waves that can be integrated by expanding the epistemological spectrum. That’s all. So epistemology dealing with ways of knowing. Diverse epistemologies, diverse ways of knowing. And this unfortunately in the DEI and the pluralism discourse, this concept has been pushed to the side because this would’ve been an opening for really transforming the entire academy through the lens of pluralism, activism, diversity but it never got there. It never went as deep as it could.

So another way of thinking about consciousness is it’s like the essential fundamental self-awareness at the heart of the human being, at the heart of cosmic reality. So there’s no distinction between … When we really go deep into the wisdom traditions, east and west, you find there’s a non-dual relationship between subjective and objective reality and consciousness is the connecting thread. Now there’s one more thread here. I realize this is a really long answer. It’s the risk we take when we go into these realms. In consciousness studies there’s different schools of thought on consciousness. So the academy, to the extent it deals with consciousness, is approaching it through a materialist perspective and basically that that consciousness is basically reducible to the brain. Forget about spirituality or ideas like soul or anything like that. No, no.

And I realize this whole thing is about well-being, but to me, the materialist paradigm. So we have materialism as it manifests in say modern society’s consumptions, waste habits and all that. That’s materialist, greed and all that. But also philosophical materialism, which reduces the vision of the human being to a tiny spectrum of what the human being is. These are incredibly egregious impediments to mental health and mental well-being that are not recognized in their forward. They’re perpetuated by the academy. This is a story that needs to happen. It needs to take hold in mental health wellness conversations.

Sam Hobson:

So if I’m understanding you correctly, we at least consisted of two parts. The waves and the ocean that creates the waves. And oftentimes we get caught up and distracted by the erosion, the friction that the waves cause and keep our focus at that level. And creativity allows us to tap into the ocean that is the source of the waves. When we tap into that source, we have a deeper understanding of the waves, which then allow us to move past the waves and tap into the ocean. And it is that tapping into that ocean that existed within all of us that allows us to feel and experience the interconnection between ourselves because the waves can manifest all uniquely and individually. The erosion, the friction, it all looks different for on all of our beaches. But the intense ocean that is the source of it is universal.

Ed Sarath:

Yeah. And I’ll tell you something. You know what? Brilliant, really, and it’s so simple, isn’t it? We have this choice. We want to live within a worldview that’s bigger or one that’s smaller. Many people, their whole life is the waves. They’re caught up in the waves, they’re not even aware of the ocean. Here’s the way I put it. Deep improvisation takes us from the waves to the silent depths of the ocean, which is again, it was perfect. That’s the source of the waves. And then we have both. And then meditation … So where improvisation proceeds from the waves takes us from the surface to the depths, meditation proceeds from the silent depths of the ocean. And then over time, we’re able to engage in the turbulence of life with grounding in the silence of pure spirit. So the improvisation is top down meditation … And by meditation that can apply to a broad range of contemplative, spiritual practices and all that kind of thing. Goes hold parts or bottom up. You have a template for a whole new educational, a whole new societal paradigm. Can you imagine if our government were actually politicians were grounded in this kind of thing and the kind of conversations they could have? I think about that a lot.

Sam Hobson:

What a different world. So it seems as if meditation helps us, allows us to more smoothly and easily ride the waves. It’s not as if the waves disappear through a practice of meditation, but it is that we are better able to navigate them as a result. And so you say that, what would it look like for a world where this were our foundation? That leads me to my next question of why do creativity and consciousness matter? I know we’ve talked about it, but I’d like to go a little deeper.

Ed Sarath:

Okay. So I’m going to come back to this idea of epistemology, diverse ways of knowing. And the message of this moment is are we going to continue with a very narrow epistemological scope in the academy, which basically is devoid of creativity and even more devoid of consciousness? Are we going to expand the epistemological scope, reclaim ancient knowledge and contemporary manifestations of it and combine it with the best … Obviously a lot of people get snagged on this. They think that we’re replacing convention. No, it’s like we’re combining it with the best of conventional practice so we have everything. We going to stick to a narrow model, we’re going to expand. And obviously I don’t see how anybody could, although I know that people do want to cling to the past. In the name of rigor, in the name of all the things but when you look deeper at that kind of things you realize that rigor is actually not possible without creativity and consciousness. It’s a false conception of rigor pervades the academy.

So why does it matter? To start with the biggest answer, the future of humanity depends on this shift. Revolution of creativity conscious. That’s the overarching answer. We’re at a point where we cannot continue. Future of human civilization does not look that great. I’m an optimistic person, I’m a very hopeful person, but I’m also realistic. We’ve come to the end of the line in terms of the current paradigm, socio-educational paradigm, which is quite narrow. A lot of people might feel like, how can you say … We’re part of a huge university just in terms of physical location and everything like that. How could somebody describe this? Incredibly brilliant people. You have fields and sub-disciplines and sub-disciplines and sub-disciplines. A lot of really smart people among the students and the faculty and the staff. All right. How can you say it’s narrow? It is narrow. Compared to what it could be and compared to what humanity needs and compared to when we use the creativity consciousness lens, which is grounded in history, it’s grounded in psychology, it’s grounded in philosophy, it’s profoundly grounded in science. We realize that it’s narrow.

There are interesting studies on collective consciousness. This would be a manifestation of not just individual wellbeing, wellness, but societal wellness in this sense. There have been interesting studies. I know some that happened in Washington DC during the summer months when crime was at its maximum. And the organizers of the event went to the local authorities, public health authorities and said, “Here’s our theory. We’re going to have something like 5,000 advanced meditators come for a period of three weeks.” I think it was three weeks. From all over and engaged in this intensive program of practice, seven, eight hours a day using specific methods.

And our theory is that this practice can enliven … There’s a collective field of consciousness to which everyone is connected. Not just the meditators, but everyone, all of life and all of creation really. But we’ll say just all of life and definitely all of a community, all of a society in a metropolitan area is connected. Whether they know it or not, it’s just part of consciousness, it’s collective. And the public officials agreed. The organizers of the meditation practice said, “If we’re right, then we may see decreases in violence, which can be measured, violent crime, accident rates, and illness.” And there were several other parameters, but those are the three I remember. Accident rates, illness and that kind of thing. Because if there’s more coherence in this collective backdrop to which we’re all connected, then this will have a harmonizing influence on day-to-day life. Improvisatory actions it as they manifest in all dimensions. And sure enough, when this came out in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, which was from Yale, they did not want to publish this because it just defied materialist understanding of how people would think about consciousness and the nature of reality and human connection and all this kind of thing.

But sure enough, during that three-week period, you had reduction of it. Something like 30% In those three main parameters. That seems like there were seven or eight other parameters. Reduction to accident rate, hospital rate, crime rate. And it stayed after the project disbanded because people went back to their homes and their jobs and the families and all that kind of thing. It retained a little bit after that, but then it went back to normal. So thinking is creation of these large meditation groups. This is one example of an intervention, like a paradigmatically new intervention when it comes to societal and I would say by extension, individual wellness. And so what I’m hoping happens is that within the wellness movement, which is happening on all campuses … And bravo for your leadership in this by the way. That we think really expansively about this topic. How could it usher in new paradigms of thinking about the educational process in societal health and flourishing? What a moment for this work though.

Sam Hobson:

Definitely. Definitely. If a graduate student here, professor Sarath, were interested in exploring their creativity and their consciousness more deeply, where would they go? What should they do?

Ed Sarath:

Yeah. That’s a really good question. So on campus we have the Program in Creativity & Consciousness Studies, so there’s a website where we update it. I think there’s some listings of courses that deal with this kind of thing. But definitely in the jazz department, we have some really great classes. Professor Martha Travers is doing most of the teaching now. I founded this area a number of years ago, and I usually teach one or two classes a year. And they could just look for classes with the creativity consciousness or some kind of related title. I would recommend they check all different meditation centers in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor’s like a hotbed for that kind of thing. It has been for many years. I think between those two things, I think there’s some good things to draw from.

Sam Hobson:

Thank you. Are there any other resources that you could share that could help us better navigate our creativity and our consciousness?

Ed Sarath:

There’s organizations like the Institute of Noetic Sciences, IONS. That was founded by the astronaut Edgar Mitchell way back in the ’70s to explore all the kind of things we’re talking about, the further dimensions of consciousness, the post-materialist paradigm. And of course his contribution, he’s somebody from the sciences, somebody who has scientific credibility but issued even decades ago in IONS is about this Institute of Noetic Sciences, challenging this scientific materiality paradigm that basically pervades academies like ours. There’s the California Institute of Integral Studies. Maharishi International University, both of those offered graduate students in consciousness-related degrees, including at the doctoral level that are fully accredited. California Institute of Human Science. I happen to be part of the society. I’m on the board for the Society of Your Consciousness Studies. So there’s a number of organizations like this. They have conferences. Yeah.

Sam Hobson:

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I have a final question. So creativity is often portrayed to be quite binary in happenstance. Either I’m feeling creative or I’m not. I’ve either got it or I don’t. How can someone intentionally tap into their creativity?

Ed Sarath:

Yeah. This is a really good one, and I think one is it’s just adopting a creative headset in terms of whatever one does. Be in the moment in life as a whole, and definitely in your field, even if the people are not thinking about your particular field, like engineering or something like that. Or some area, you hit this quite nicely in the sciences, that’s really hardcore information or something like that. There’s still creativity that can happen. But probably more important is that is expand your epistemological scope in terms of the things you do every day. Everyone can partake of the arts in some way or another. Again, like our creativity and consciousness and coursework, which engages … I think our school has some kind of creativity class also. Engages students in creative activities. So if you’re in the sciences, sociology or something like that, or cultural studies you can engage in and make creative activity, creative engagement part of your daily or certainly weekly schedule of events and definitely meditation practice. You’re actually expanding not only your engagement in the waves, as we were saying in the ocean, tap into that ocean and the Maharishi in the university, there’s a saying that’s like meditate and create, hit the depths of the ocean and then plunge into activity.

Sam Hobson:

Okay. Okay.

Ed Sarath:

Might be a good way of summing up the project.

Sam Hobson:

Okay. Meditate and create. And I want to make sure that we’re clear by create it could be anything, right? We don’t have to go and paint an elaborate, extravagant painting or sculpt the next famous sculpture.

Ed Sarath:

Yeah, I think it is an interesting question. I think it’s an important one to expand the narrative on creativity so it’s not just the arts because a lot of people have this thing, it’s like the arts are about creativity. Business is definitely not about creativity and that’s limiting. On the other hand, know questions. Can we take it too far and kind of lose sight of what the arts bring to creativity, finding a grain of truth, at least in the stereotype. And I just say, yes, we can take it too far.

Sam Hobson:

So with that understanding that our creation and our creative abilities are not trapped within the field of the arts like it’s so often portrayed. I guess the doctrine or the call to meditate and create could be meditate and write even for your dissertation, meditate and play in the grass with kids, with your partner. Meditate and firefight. What creativity is. I think we need to expand that boundary within ourselves and then that will really open up a lot of opportunity for us to be able to tap into it as a result.

Ed Sarath:

No. I think that’s really just really tying it up really nicely.

Sam Hobson:

Okay. Wonderful. Professor Sarath, thank you so, so much. I have grown so deeply from this conversation and I am truly grateful. Thank you.

Ed Sarath:

Bravo to you, and let’s keep in touch. Let’s keep this conversation going.

Sam Hobson:

Yes, I look forward to it. Thank you.

Ed Sarath:

Great. Thank you, Sam.

Sam Hobson:

Okay, here are three takeaways from this week’s episode for your well-being journey. One, creativity means to critique and to transcend the current bounds of our fields, our industries, and our lives. Expanding into our potential as humans and as scholars means that we must see the work that we do here in grad school as a creative process. Two, because the work that we do as grad students is a creative process when we focus our attention only on that end product, we limit what we’re able to create during our time here. However, when we can tap into both product and process, we get so much more out of our experience. And three, the disconnection with consciousness at the individual end. Collective level is harmful to our mental health. So tapping into our creativity is not optional. It’s a necessity. Making creative engagement a part of our daily lives and expanding where we see creativity as a possibility will allow us to do so with much more ease.

Check out our website for all the resources Professor Sarath mentioned, and more at rackham.umich.edu/gradwell. You can reach out to Professor Sarath with any questions you have at Sarahara, [email protected]. You can contact us about the podcast at rackhampdeworkshops.umich.edu. And make sure to join us next time when I speak with Kat Nic, senior disability access coordinator for grad students here at Michigan about getting our needs met both inside and outside of accommodations. I’ll see you then.

Hey, hardworking grad student. Thank you for turning into GradWell. I hope you can take something away from this episode with you. If you like what you heard, be sure to write a review, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, check us out on social at Umich grad School.