Knitting: 5 health benefits

The knitting benefits are many. Let’s discover them together!

Knitting is a hobby that is experiencing a golden age. Even if in the common imagination it was depicted as an activity for grannies, this has no longer been the case for quite a few years. Indeed, it is back in fashion and in a truly engaging way. Today, in fact, knitting is considered a stylish and trendy activity.

Seeing someone knitting on the train, in a bar or in outdoor has become a pleasant habit. In short, the passion for knitting has spread like wildfire without age limits, not only among women but also among men.

Knitting benefits

Only few people know that, in addition to being a fun and trendy activity, knitting is good for you and offers so many health benefits that some no longer consider it as a simple hobby, but as a real therapy. Here the reasons why.

1. Knitting is relaxing and an effective stress reliever

Knitting, counting stitches, touching the yarn and doing repetitive movements is a great way to relax and is an effective stress reliever. The coach of the Finnish Olympic snowboard team understood this well: at the start, instead of counting the remaining seconds, the athletes counted the stitches on the needles (find out more here).

In fact, as if they were a mantra, the cadence of the movements and the repetition of the stitches make the mind easily reaches a sort of meditative state. In practice, after a knitting session you can find yourself in more or less the same state of relaxation that you get when you finish a Yoga session.
It is no coincidence that Bettaknit wanted to include a line dedicated exclusively to yoga and dance clothing among its knitted collections. In this way, yoga-loving knitters and yogis who are starting to knit will have patterns available to create warm, light garments with a gymnastic look. Nice idea, isn’t it?

2. Knitting improves your mood

Did you know that knitting improve moods? We are often so overwhelmed by work, thoughts, anxiety, daily worries, that we forget how important practical activities and manual gestures are. In particularly delicate situations, difficult moments or depressive states, dedicating yourself to manual work, such as knitting, helps you find serenity without resorting to drugs. In fact, it is well known that manual activities help the brain to free itself from thoughts, conditioning and worries and to free itself from the sense of helplessness that people feel in certain periods. Rediscovering how important and useful certain practical gestures are and how beautiful it is to do it yourself promotes the natural production of substances that promote joy, happiness and satisfaction.

Cases histories

As a demonstration of the knittig benefits, we cite a study done on 3,500 knitters, by the British Journal of Occupational Therapy , in which 81% of the interviewed people with depression said they were happy after knitting. Among these more than a half said they were even “very happy”.Psychiatrists believe that creating something useful with your own hands makes you feel immediately positive and that knitting – like activities such as eating or having sex – releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that lift your mood tone. If you like to read something on this topic I recommend Ann Hood’s The Knitting Circle. It is an autobiographic novel about how knitting helped a knitter deal with her depression. We have read it and we recommend it!

3. Knitting helps concentration

Knitting stimulates the logical part of our brain and keeps us young and active. In fact, calculating the quantity of yarn, counting the stitches and rows frequently, passing the thread from one needle to another, making sequences of the same or different stitches, are all operations that can only be done if we are concentrated. This ensures that our mind is always well trained and active. For this reason, knitting is a good activity for all ages. Children, for example, can channel their energies into a manual activity that tends to calm, while the elderly are called to exercise their mind by performing actions that require attention and coordination.

4. Knitting increases self-esteem

Creating something from nothing by working a simple thread with your own hands is something that is very satisfying and rewarding. In fact, when we complete any kind of project and reach a set goal, the consideration we have of ourselves improves considerably. If it happens that someone shows their appreciation for our knitting, then our efforts are rewarded and our self-esteem skyrockets. All this can only be good.

5. Knitting stimulates social relationships

In an era in which every form of interaction with others is seen as tiring, knitting represents an extraordinary way to communicate and socialize. There are numerous groups of knitters around the world. They come together both virtually and actually to knit together, with a continuous exchange of advice and suggestions. Themed events and workshops are organized in almost every city and knit cafés and meeting places host groups of passionate knitters every day. These, between one chat and another and in front of a cup of good tea or coffee, carry on their work. Isn’t this all beautiful?

The knitting benefits are many. We have listed just a few…
Don’t you want to start knitting even if you’ve never picked up a pair of needles?