Master the Creative Process | Twyla Tharp

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
You have a reputation for having risen early and gotten to the gym by 5 a.m. for two hours, day in after day out. Tell us about that ritual, and do you still enjoy it?

**Twyla Tharp** (0:12)
It's not a ritual, and I never enjoyed it. It's a reality, and you do it because you need an instrument that you can challenge. Just set the mechanism for the day you're gonna have to do it. It's kind of boring, and it's kind of loathsome.

**Andrew Huberman** (0:29)
Could you give us a bit of insight into your inner dialogue around days when you don't want to go? Is there a self-talk, or have you learned to push aside the voice that says, maybe not today?

**Twyla Tharp** (0:40)
It's simple. If you don't work when you don't want to work, you're not gonna be able to work when you do want to work.

**Andrew Huberman** (0:49)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Twyla Tharp. Twyla Tharp is a world-renowned dancer and choreographer. Her onstage and film works easily place her not just in the top 1% of all choreographers of all time, but also among the top tier of all creative artists past and present. I knew I wanted to host Twyla on this podcast after listening to her book, The Creative Habit, where she spells out how to build a schedule, habits and routines that make your best creative expressions come to life. What I love about it is it's direct and it's action oriented. There's nothing mystical about it. She explains in her book how even for people that have just one hour a day to write or sing or draw or paint or whatever, to get the most from that time in terms of creative output. Then as I learned more about her, I was also super impressed that even in her 60s, by the way, she's 84 now, she could deadlift more than 200 pounds, which is more than twice her body weight, bench press her body weight for three clean repetitions, and was taking up boxing to keep her movement and reflexes sharp. As you'll see today, she is a phenom, and it comes by way of hard work. She's still in the gym every single morning at 5 a.m. for two full hours. Today, we discuss how to build self-discipline in and around your creative mind, and we discuss movement as a language. There's this new idea emerging in neuroscience that bodily movement, then music, and then speech is how humans came to communicate with each other. We discuss that and how movement can help us process and explain our emotions and our ideas. We also discuss Twyla's life growing up on a farm and how that shaped her mindset about work and community. And we also talk about what it means to have and express your unique creativity and how to evolve your sense of taste. Oh yeah, and we also discuss telepathy. You'll notice the rapport between Twyla and I is very different than is typical for other Huberman Lab podcasts I've done. She is a real firecracker and we had a ton of fun exploring and challenging ideas, mostly her challenging me. It was a true honor and pleasure to learn from such a virtuoso of the arts and frankly of life. And as you'll soon learn, we can all learn a lot from Twyla. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Twyla Tharp. Twyla Tharp, welcome.

**Twyla Tharp** (3:30)
Thank you.

**Andrew Huberman** (3:31)
Huge fan, huge, huge fan and love, love, love your book.

**Twyla Tharp** (3:37)
Thank you.

**Andrew Huberman** (3:37)
The Creative Habit. It's just an incredible book and it's taught me so much. And I want to talk about that today, but I want to talk about a bunch of things.
Let's start with what a spine is. I think this is such an important component of the book and this concept of a spine. And the way I think about this is that many, many people feel they might have something inside them that they want to put into the world. They want to access their creativity or they're creative. And there's so much information out there about how to go about that. But this notion of a spine is really critical because it keeps us on track. Otherwise, it can be a wandering in the desert, suddenly you're swimming in the ocean, suddenly the phone, you get a text. And please explain what a spine is and why this is such a vital concept for anyone that wants to create anything.