BEYOND THE SURFACE: THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF FIBER ARTISTRY

As evidenced by the time I’ve spent exploring fiber artistry in its many iterations on this blog, I clearly find it to be a medium of immense artistic and practical value no matter how you choose to show your creative skills. But beyond the beautiful and useful end result, the act of creating a piece of fiber art has a set of unique benefits all its own. I am by no means the first person to comment on the upside to cultivating a fiber arts practice, and beyond individual, anecdotal accounts (of which there are many!), the benefits of fiber arts have also become a topic of academic study.

In their pithily named peer review, “Happy Hookers: findings from an international study exploring the effects of crochet on wellbeing,” authors Pippa Burns and Rosemary Van Der Meer explore the results that emerged from an online survey reaching more than 7,000 crocheters worldwide. Their work not only looks at the place that fiber arts holds in the lives of many people in treating mental health disorders like anxiety and depression, but in the broader implications of fiber arts being a community building tool that can help address other social detriments of health. One of the most interesting categories noted by Burns and Van Der Meer was the “impact of crochet.” They noted respondents’ commentaries on the way crochet changes their mood and found nearly 90% of respondents reported feeling calm, 82% felt happier, and 73% experienced improved self-image. Beyond altering the mood, crochet also appears to fundamentally alter the way people think. Nearly 75% of respondents noted they felt crochet improved their memory, 70% reported improved concentration, and more than 50% of respondents reported that crochet helped them forget pain and problems in their lives.

An article from Women’s Brain Health Initiative discussed several studies that echoed the findings assembled by Burns and Van Der Meer. Author Janice Lloyd wrote about several articles, including a study by the Mayo Clinic and a University of Texas at Dallas study that found other fiber arts, like knitting and quilting, also increased memory and concentration, along with the Mayo study noting that knitting fell into a category of activities that significantly reduced the risk of cognitive impairment developing. Beyond these specific benefits, fiber arts also serve as an important tool for overall stress management in daily life, and reducing stress has been shown to immensely improve the health of the brain and help reduce the risk of harmful diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia.

We are confronted with a plethora of stress-inducing tasks and concerns each and every day, whether that be financial stress, academic or professional stress, or familial stress. Prioritizing physical health is important, but taking steps to ensure the continued health and wellness of our brains is just as critical. By investigating the important health benefits of fiber arts, researchers are providing new avenues for improving mental well-being and helping to empirically demonstrate what fiber artists have always intrinsically known to be true: fiber arts change lives for the better.

An image of the human brain. While not always easy to see with the naked eye, the brain contains several distinctive regions, each responsible for its own key functions. Some areas, like the prefrontal cortex, may suffer when the brain is inundated with stress, since during those times, the brain often prioritizes the survival instincts governed by amygdala, as explained by this article produced by Harvard Health Publishing. By helping reduce stress by undertaking fiber arts activities (as discussed above), the brain may be spared the damage resulting from having to prioritize only one of its important zones.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shawn Day on Unsplash