Does knitting stimulate the brain?

When you knit regularly, you force your brain and hands to work together, maintaining your fine motor skills. It can also improve and maintain dexterity and strength in the hands, which can be great for those who want to improve their grip.

knitting

can also be considered a relaxation tool to replace other habits such as smoking, drinking or binge eating. But research shows that weaving and crafting with threads, like other meditative activities, can “activate areas of the brain that are good at generating a sense of calm (and contribute to) better emotional processing and better decision-making.

Tissue puts these functions back into practice and keeps them healthy despite the gradual loss of cognitive ability due to aging. The rhythmic movement of the fabric eases the mind, allowing you to focus on the task and keep worries at bay. Knitting forces the brain to use its memory actively, and the more you use your brain, the healthier it becomes. In a clinical setting, a study of a group of people who have eating disorders showed that tissue had a significant effect on reducing anxiety and calming obsessive thoughts or worries.

There are many ways to weave for charity, and many studies show that giving back to the community supports mental health and can help with feelings of depression and loneliness. Knitting can also put you in a state of mindfulness, where you focus on just one thing and let go of other things that can occupy the mind. In one study, tissue offered both physical relief and social support, which significantly helped reduce the feelings and effects of chronic pain. Knitting and crocheting have been shown to help people with anxiety related to eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The calming effect of repetitive tissue movements prevents adrenaline from acting and activates the parasympathetic nervous system to dampen the body's fight-or-flight response. Reading a knitting pattern requires you to have some patience to understand the fabric jargon that finishing a knitting project is an excellent feat. Now, knitting is no longer associated with domesticity, but with a creative activity for men and women of all ages. When you knit, you are subconsciously doing math and using your memory remembering the steps you need to do, such as how many rows you need to knit, when to knit and when to do the reverse, and what color or pattern comes next.

Jane MacDonald
Jane MacDonald

I am of the author and owner of I Love Knitting. I first learned to knit when I was around five years old, and stop doing it when I hit my teens! I than picked it back up when I had my first child, and have since taught all three of my children to knit.

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