Craft to Heal: Soothing Your Soul with Sewing, Painting, and Other Pastimes
Nancy Monson
Paperback, 6x9 in, 124 pages
Hats Off Books, March 2005
ISBN: 1587364255
Description
Over three-quarters of American households contain someone who loves to craft . . . and for good reason. Hobbies like painting, sewing, scrapbooking, woodworking, and photography provide crafters with more than just a way to have fun or make gifts. Even at their most basic, they're potent art forms that can distract the mind, soothe the soul, and de-stress the body.
Craft to Heal describes how creative pursuits can be transformed into healing arts, which, in turn, can transform you. Mind-body research now shows that crafts are good for our mental, physical, and spiritual health, so we no longer need to make excuses for doing what we love. The truth is, crafts aren't just enjoyable, they're downright therapeutic!
About the author
Nancy Monson is a nationally published freelance magazine and book writer who specializes in the topics of crafts, health, nutrition, fitness, and psychology. She has been a crafter since she was a child and an avid quilter for the past ten years. Visit her Web site (and send her an e-mail message to let her know what you think of the book).
Excerpt
Time heals all wounds. But until time kicks in, what do you do while you're waiting? How do you relieve stress and decompress from everyday pressures? How do you ease the pain, distract your mind, soothe your soul? If you're like me—and I suspect you are—you craft.
I've been a crafter for as long as I can remember. I quilt. I sew. I collage. I paint. I make wreaths. I design note cards. I love to create something out of nothing and put my personal stamp on it. I love the process, and I love the product. The creative arts, my crafts, keep my hands, heart, and mind busy, and sometimes I think they're the only things that keep me sane. And I'm not alone. Far from it. In fact, from the time that man began recording time, the creative arts have been used as unique forms of expression, communication, and release. Just think of the stick figures found on the cave walls of our earliest ancestors, the decorative vases molded by ancient Chinese cultures, or the ornate tombs of the early Egyptians. Now, in the twenty-first century, these arts have been elevated from mere crafts to important components of healing therapies for people with illnesses, both physical and psychological. Patients with cancer, for instance, are encouraged to paint, to visualize their bodies fighting off malignant cells, and to pour their thoughts and emotions into journals. Likewise, abused children are asked to draw pictures to help therapists gain access to their feelings and fears. Arts and crafts are even used as part of the therapeutic rehabilitation of the disabled, the mentally disadvantaged, and those with substance abuse problems, and to engage the elderly.
But the best news is that you don't have to be ill to benefit. "We're now finding that crafts are beneficial for healthy people, too," says Gail McMeekin, MSW, a career coach in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, and the author of the inspiring books The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women and The Power of Positive Choices. "Thanks to their ability to tune you into yourself and your feelings, crafts clearly have physical, psychological, and spiritual powers." Adds Diane Ericson, a California fabric artist, teacher, and pattern designer, "Crafts are a way of valuing yourself and giving to yourself. They allow you to express what's inside."
The Study of Crafting
Crafting is a multibillion-dollar business in America, and over three-quarters of American households have at least one family member who spends an average of 7.5 hours weekly engaged in crafting or hobbies. But despite crafting's popularity, researchers haven't spent much time exploring its benefits.
Luckily, there is one landmark study—one that was deemed important enough to be mentioned in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. In the study, which was sponsored by the Home Sewing Association, researchers took thirty women (fifteen experienced sewers and fifteen novice sewers) and measured their blood pressures, heart rates, perspiration rates, and skin temperatures—all gauges of stress—via biofeedback before and after they performed five leisure activities that required similar eye-hand movements. The pastimes included sewing a simple project, playing a card game, painting at an easel, playing a handheld video game, and reading a newspaper. The results showed that sewing was the most relaxing activity of the five studied; it produced drops in heart rate, blood pressure, and perspiration. In contrast, stress measures increased after the women performed the other tasks, especially after playing a card or video game.
According to Robert Reiner, PhD, a New York University psychologist and the study's author, the findings prove what crafters already know: crafts de-stress. "The act of performing a craft is incompatible with worry, anger, obsession, and anxiety," he says. "Crafts make you concentrate and focus on the here and now and distract you from everyday pressures and problems. They're stress-busters in the same way that meditation, deep breathing, visual imagery, and watching fish are."
Harvard University's world-renowned mind/body expert, Herbert Benson, MD, says that repetitive and rhythmic crafts such as knitting may even evoke what he calls the relaxation response—a feeling of bodily and mental calm that's been scientifically proven to enhance health and reduce the risk of heart disease, anxiety, and depression. "You can induce the relaxation response through any type of repetition, whether it's repeating a word, prayer, or action, such as knitting or sewing," he notes. "The act of doing a task over and over again breaks the train of everyday thought, and that's what releases stress."
Unfortunately, many of us push crafting and creativity to the bottom of our "to do" list. Maybe we feel guilty for doing something for ourselves—women, of course, are taught that everyone else's needs should come first—or maybe we feel that even when we're relaxing, we should be doing something productive (that old multitasking thing). But now that research is showing the creative arts are good for our health and relationships, we no longer need to view leisure pursuits as self-indulgences. We can recast them in a new light: crafts aren't just enjoyable, they're downright therapeutic.
