Waterwoman Knits

Knitting as Self-Healing

The card above I received from my cousin made me laugh at first but then led to an aha moment. (Shout-out to card sender Lisa, fellow knitter). I would answer the question, “Nothing.” Which is the point. When I knit, the part of my mind that is on a continuous anxiety rumination loop about the state of the world and some humans in it gets muted.

I’ve always been uncomfortable calling knitting or crafting a hobby and this is why.

Being a bilateral, cross-body action, I feel knitting is comparable to any similar trauma healing mode. As philosopher Immanuel Kant said:

“The hand is the visible part of the brain.”

Much has been written by psychologists and healing professionals about the role of our hands and benefits of bilateral cross-body motions to reduce fight or flight trauma response. Betsan Corkhill, who spearheaded an effort in the UK to get knitting approved by the National Health Service as a healing modality wrote a book called Knit for Health and Wellness.

For a more evolutionary biology approach to understanding the hand-brain connection, I recommend this book.

Psychology Today includes an article about bilateral drawing and other forms of bilateral stimulation helping folks self-regulate. I experience knitting’s impact in the same way. I recall hearing a drummer in a rock band once describe how drumming (big bilateral hand motions) healed him from PTSD. I thought, what if any bilateral motion can do the same?

What Knitting Has Seen Me Through

• Two weeks in infection precaution isolation in a pediatric cancer room.
• Two years of children’s hospital waiting rooms.
• Two months of waiting room chatter for my radiation treatments.
• A month of major surgery recovery that spared use of my hands.
• Waiting in airports.
• Attempted but failed to pass knitting through security in domestic violence court.
• Online graduate school multiple choice tests that put my brain in freeze mode, as long as I showed professor on camera that my knitting did not contain answers. (Though that would always be possible if a person was more committed than I was to code their fabric like the knitting spies of both world wars).

The healing aspects to knitting are why I would like to pass on the skill to anyone willing to learn. In the past, I spent a summer teaching beginning knitting at a community center and also completed half a degree in Special Education, which instilled in me the importance of different learning modes. I am seeking opportunities to carve out time from my paid work and collaborate with others to share the lifeline of knitting.

And if anyone runs across a job posting to work in a yarn store, please send it my way!