We are not just our minds! Everything we touch, smell, hear, see, and intuit is a part of our identity. When we sense the world around us, we create a sort of mirror image of it in our frontal lobes. This brain function is crucial to creativity, which involves imagining how we could adapt or change our selves or our environment.
Which senses do you tend to emphasize? For most, it's touch, hearing, or sight. One way to stimulate your brain to ramp up your creative energy would be to expand beyond your sensory comfort zone. If you are visual, close your eyes and listen. If you are a listener, put your hands over your ears and use your eyes or your nose to explore the world around you.
You can also use your senses to practice "cognitive flexibility", or using multiple contexts to develop deeper perceptions. Ask yourself, "what colors does that song call up for me?", or "what does sadness smell like?" Invent your own examples. Notice how rich your experiences become when you open yourself up in this way; you may tap into memories you didn't even know you had. You will be building imagination muscles that you will need to perceive the full reality around you.
As to the sixth sense mentioned above--intuition--we perceive far more than we are aware of with our conscious minds. Those perceptions can be experienced as intuitions. Being open to those fleeting, half-baked thoughts and ideas is your only way to tap into the potential those perceptions could give to your creative process.
Your conscious mind will expand and thrive if you let your six senses feed it!
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