CRAFT TO HEAL
The Surprising Connection between Crafts, Creativity and Healing
BY:NANCY MONSON
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, 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.
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 21st 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, 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
A landmark study—sponsored by the Home Sewing Association and important enough to be mentioned in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association—involved researchers taking 30 women (15 experienced sewers and 15 novice sewers) and measuring the stress gauges of blood pressure, heart rate, perspiration rate and skin temperature 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 hand-held 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. 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-indulgence. We can recast them in a new light: Crafts aren’t just enjoyable, they’re downright therapeutic.
Letting in the Power of Crafts
In interviewing creative women for her first book, Gail McMeekin learned that there are no mistakes in creating, only lessons. “Many inventions are the result of so-called errors,” she says. “When you suspend judgment about what is and what isn’t a mistake, you open your mind to creating extraordinary things and to receiving extraordinary things, too. You let in the healing power of crafts.”
This article is adapted with permission from Craft to Heal: Soothing Your Soul with Sewing, Painting and Other Pastimes by Nancy Monson (Hats Off Books, 2005). All rights reserved.