I have often thought that one of the reasons that knitting is popular with health professionals is that we (as I am one of them!) aren’t always good at resting, or ‘doing nothing’. Knitting offers us a way of ‘doing something purposeful’ while also experiencing relaxation.
In reading the recently published scoping review (Lagadec et al 2004) on the impact of needlecraft on wellbeing and mental health, I noted the authors referring to needlecraft offering a ‘purposeful break’. For example, in one study they reviewed respondents reported experiencing guilt in taking time out from their chores, but that sewing during this break allowed them to feel that the break was purposeful.
Knitting has also historically been a female-dominated pass-time. I can’t help but wonder whether women struggle more with taking up space and engaging in leisure activities that don’t have a useful outcome. In all likelihood, this is largely due to society reinforcing the idea that we must prioritise the needs of others, and that putting our own needs first is selfish. Perhaps taking up a hobby that creates a useful product has allowed us to engage in something that lets us access rest or relaxation when this is something we might otherwise struggle with – often with our own guilt getting in the way.
The theme of knitting allowing us to rest or relax has been one that has emerged several times during my interviews for the Why I Knit podcast, but in different ways:
Legitimising rest and relaxation
Many people have spoken about feeling that they need to do something useful, and that they aren’t good at sitting still, and that if they are busy making something, this gives them permission to sit down. It is common to hear of knitters who first began to knit in order to make something for someone else, perhaps a baby or another family member, and then they experienced the benefits of the process of knitting later on. I strongly suspect that many of these people wouldn’t have begun in the first place if the main aim was purely self-care (e.g. spending the same amount of time doing a hobby purely for the relaxation, or knitting but for themselves). In fact, it is not unusual for knitters to have engaged in the hobby for many years without ever making something for themselves.
Enabling you to sit still
Another way in which knitters speak about knitting allowing them to relax, is in the act of allowing them to sit still, which they might otherwise find difficult. Several of my podcast interviewees have spoken about finding it hard to sit down, finding themselves constantly being busy, either due to struggling to feel deserving of rest, or because they might get easily bored or distracted. Staci Perry on her own podcast answered my question about how knitting benefits her mental health. She spoke about struggling with sitting still and described feeling as though knitting ‘seatbelts her into her chair’ and feeling that engaging in a knitting project gave her the ability to sit down and thereby access rest.
Allowing your brain to relax
Another barrier to accessing rest is when we try to take time to sit still and relax, but find that our brains aren’t able to switch off. This is a challenge I encounter often in therapy sessions, and it’s one reason that I might bring up knitting (or other similar craft activities) in therapy with my non-knitting clients.
When we are struggling with anxious or negative thoughts, or just have a busy brain, stopping everything to relax is often a lot harder. If we remove all distractions we can then feel flooded with anxious or racing thoughts that actually feel actively more stressful and the opposite of the relaxation we are seeking.
Marceline in Series 4 Episode 7 of the Why I Knit Podcast put this better than I could when she said: ‘If my mind is noisy or life is a bit busier, I can’t necessarily shut the brain work off but I can shift where it is focussed, and so I want something complicated. So the busy mind is still useful to me but it is focussed on this thing that I like that isn’t an obligation’.
I refer to this as a task that offers ‘Active Relaxation’ because it is giving your brain a neutral or positive task on which to focus your attention, which then offers a break from the negative, anxious or frantic paced thoughts that might otherwise occupy it. The theory behind what is happening in this process is that when our brains are without a task, or are on ‘autopilot’ they are then taken over by the Default Mode Network (DMN) – it is thought that the job of this network is to go over past events in order to prevent future threat. You can see how this could easily tip into some unhelpful and distressing thinking patterns – overthinking, ruminating and catastrophising are some of the terms we might use for when this process escalates. However, if we give our hands, and by definition also our brains, a task, we switch out of DMN into the Central Executive Network, where our brains are busy solving problems and completing a task, and therefore not focussed on past or future problems (Kirketerp, 2024).
Obviously we can’t be constantly distracted from our problems, then we don’t have time to process things have that happened or to learn from our mistakes. However, what we know is that we as humans often spend far more time thinking about the past or the future than is helpful for us, and that many of the most effective strategies for improving our mental health (like mindfulness or meditation) involve bringing our focus into the present moment. It’s something so many of us know would benefit us, but don’t always find it easy to achieve.
In fact many of my podcast guests have spoken about feeling that they are ‘bad at meditating’ or find mindfulness difficult, but that knitting allows them to bring their focus to the present moment much more easily, while also allowing them to experience joy, creativity, a sense of achievement, and crucially also rest.
For more resources to help you use knitting for your self-care, check out our audio course, Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.
References
Danielle Le Lagadec, Rachel Kornhaber, Colleen Johnston-Devin & Michelle Cleary (15 Jul 2024): Healing Stitches: A Scoping Review on the Impact of Needlecraft on Mental Health and Well-Being, Issues in Mental Health Nursing, DOI: 10.1080/01612840.2024.2364228
Kirketerp, A. (2024). Craft Psychology: how crafting promotes health. Publisher Mailand, Hjorring