Master the Creative Process | Twyla Tharp

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

It's not a ritual, and I never enjoyed it. It's a reality, and, uh, 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.

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, the voice that says, "Maybe not today"?

It's simple. I- if you don't work when you don't wanna work, you're not gonna be able to work when you do wanna work.

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 is still in the gym every single morning at 5:00 AM 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.