For Mental Health Awareness Month, a few stories on how using your hands to make can help heal the brain.
Women have innately basked their brains in feel good juices since time immemorial to get through tight economic and emotional times. Though dovetailed as woman’s work and not really discussed, for centuries women have enjoyed the calming properties of natural dyeing, knitting, sewing, embroidering or even just rhythmically folding or ironing clothes.
In 2011, working as editor of an online magazine, I came across a blog post from sustainable designer and writer Natalie Chanin. It not only piqued my perception of the positive effects of “women’s work,” but it brought to light a real aspect of how using our hands to do meaningful tasks can benefit our overall health and well being.
Chanin cited neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, author of the book Lifting Depression:
“Lambert shows how when you knit a sweater or plant a garden, when you prepare a meal or simply repair a lamp, you are bathing your brain in feel-good chemicals and creating a kind of mental vitamin. Our grandparents and great grandparents, who had to work hard for basic resources, developed more resilience against depression; even those who suffered great hardships had much lower rates of this mood disorder. But with today’s overly-mechanized lifestyle we have forgotten that our brains crave the well-being that comes from meaningful effort.”
I asked Chanin myself, with all the women working for her, has she ever heard a remark about how working with their hands helped get them through hardships or that their disposition changed the moment they picked up needle and thread?
“We have had several stitchers remark that they just don’t ‘feel good’ when they don’t have a project to work on. I remarked in Alabama Stitch Book that I sometimes use sewing when I have a difficult decision to make or when I need to brainstorm and find ideas,” says Chanin.
So does the physical act of using your hands to “make,” increase some sort of chemical reaction that basks your brain in feel good, all-natural cocktails that can enhance your sense of well being? I wrote a series on it years ago. Seriously, We’re going vintage Amy stories here and though these were written 12 years ago, I’ve never forgotten how much I learned from the interviewees in the series.
What can we learn from this sustainable stretching out of the fashion movement that harks back to the glory of heritage and craft? One might say that perhaps we have lost much in the translation of living fast paced lives filled with convenience. That rethinking the use of our hands to natural dye, mend and touch is a missing part of our successful life equation. That, simply put, strands of fiber and our ability to know how to do something with them might ultimately hold the key to our spiritual happiness. At the very least, it’s fun to color and create our own wardrobe.
You can read all three here on my site. I want you to know, most of the people interviewed have gone on to do different things with their careers but they are still around, still doing amazing things.
Try reading without clicking on all the links and take it in.
Want to make something and build those brain cells and do some healing?
New to natural dyes? Jump in here.
Want to start small? Grab a kit.