For many, activities like meditation or yoga have become life-changing habits that help to bring calm both to mind and body in times of stress, anxiety or pain. But did you know that knitting can also help you cope with mental health challenges?
The rhythm of knitting helps with serotonin release. This is the chemical transmitter that helps regulate anxiety, happiness, and mood. There is a strong connection between knitting and the feelings of calm and happiness in the brain. It reduces stress, jumpstarts literacy, and reforms inmates.
The social aspect of knitting can also lead to better mental health. Whether it is online groups or real-life knitting circles, the support networks can help with anxiety and depression. The groups or circles may also knit for charity. By giving back to the community, mental health can be affected positively, and the sense of wellbeing can increase as well. Let’s investigate the health benefits of knitting, shall we?
1. Knitting Reduces Stress
The repetitive and rhythmic motions that make up knitting could be the key to relaxation. Dr Barry Jacobs of Princetown University found that animals who perform repetitive motions trigger a release of serotonin, the neurotransmitter associated with calmness and well-being. This could explain why most devoted knitters swear by knitting as a de-stresser: doing it may cause a spurt of serotonin!
2. Knitting Helps With Chronic Pain
Chronic pain plagues many people around the world, of all different age groups and backgrounds. Finding a way to alleviate chronic pain can sometimes take people to unexpected solutions, and for many knitting has become an integral part of managing pain. In one study, knitting offered both physical relief and social support which significantly helped reduce feelings and effects of chronic pain.
3. Knitting Promotes Social Connection
We’ve already mentioned that knitting in a social setting, whether in real life or online, offers great mental health benefits, but another element is that knitting is often a chance to give back - which can be a great boost to your mental health. There are many ways to knit for charity and many studies show that giving back to the community supports mental health and can help with feelings of depression and loneliness.
4. Knitting Can Keep Alzheimer’s at Bay
Mental exercises like playing board games, reading and knitting can lower the risk of dementia according to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine and the Mayo Clinic. Although inconclusive, researchers believe that activities that stimulate the mind can create networks of connections between brain cells. If some of these connections break down, the theory goes, others will take over. No damage done!
5. Knitting Teaches Important Life Skills
Lynn Zwerling, along with her friend, Sheila Rovelstad, started Knitting Behind Bars in 2009. It’s a program that teaches knitting to inmates in a minimum-security prison in Maryland. So far, the program has been a resounding success with an eager and growing wait list. To date, over 400 inmates have gone through their weekly knitting class. No one was more surprised with the results than Margaret M. Chippendale, the prison’s warden and resident skeptic. She noticed lower rates of violence among the men who knit. “It’s very positive because you can see when you go into the room, the dynamics of their conversation; very calm, very soothing,” she says. “It radiates even when they leave the room and go out into the institution.” In the weekly class, men knit comfort dolls for traumatised children and hats for themselves, their own children and loved ones. It’s a chance to socialise, open and forget about troubles.
6. Knitting Helps Overcome Addiction
The irony is that knitting itself is addictive, but the key is in swapping a truly self-destructive addiction for the relatively tame addiction of knitting. Knitting support groups like this one in Massachusetts and Australia’s Knit to Quit group for smokers have been life-changing, largely because of the community support and knitting’s inherently soothing quality. For these knitters, the health benefit of knitting is truly transformative.
