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Knitting can be the perfect hobby to improve anxiety produced during confinement by Covid-19
Finding an activity that entertains us and at the same time helps us can be difficult. Not everything is for everyone, and although some are capable of kill time based on readings and movies and others fly for hours in the kitchen, those same activities can be a tedium for other people.
For this reason, much more now, in the middle of a quarantine that does not allow us to leave the house, we are deceived in the search for the “perfect hobby”. And, within that search we may discover that what we need is learn to knit. As bizarre as it may seem, we can find a multitude of unexpected benefits in such a traditional activity.
“Yoga of the XXI century”
“There are people who say that knitting is the yoga of the XNUMXst century,” jokes Alberto Bravo, co-founder of “We are knitters.” The expert explains that knitting is an activity that “requires a certain concentration”, since while we do it we must go “counting stitches and rounds”, just as it makes us “forget about problems.” Somehow “Allows us to escape from reality”, He says. Likewise, it is an activity that encourages creativity, to the power of various patterns or colors.
On the other hand, in a situation of uncertainty that generates nervousness and anxiety like this, you can help us calm our nerves and take our mind to another place. “It has been proven that knitting lowers the heartbeat: it is a stress-free activity,” says Alberto Bravo, who adds that, now that many times just turning on the television makes “our heart turn to a thousand”, an activity such as knitting can help us focus on something else or even ourselves.
Knitting is also a mental exercise. It is not a sudoku game, of course, but you have to control a pattern, count laps: it has a lot of mathematics “, explains the expert who also remembers that, being a manual activity, it helps to improve psychomotor skills, so it is also a exercise beneficial for the oldest in the house.
A collective experience
«The youngest of us are hardly doing things with our hands; We hardly even write, ”says Alberto Bravo. That is why he explains that knitting many times generates satisfaction which is difficult to replicate. “Although it is a bit contradictory, when we finish something manual, the first thing we do is share it on social networks: we reinforce the feeling of satisfaction,” he says.
For this reason, she encourages everyone to dare to carry out such an activity, even people with less manual skill: «You have to be patient, nobody is born and knows how to knit. There are people who are better at it and people who go slower, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. ” “There are thousands of videos explaining how to get started; in the end they are repetitive movements that, although they seem unnatural, once you internalize they come out on their own “, he says and ends:” Once you learn to knit, it’s like riding a bike: you never forget. “
The benefits of plastic activities for our mind
The activities that we carry out in a traditional way, with our hands, have many benefits. From handwriting to painting or knitting, these types of artistic “hobbies” that require a certain concentration and make us be in direct contact with something bring us benefits, such as the improvement of our cognitive abilities, the promotion of our creativity or a facility for calm down.
«Any artistic or plastic expression, such as painting, drawing, making sculptures…. transmits the feeling to the material you are working with, and discharge both physically and emotionally», Explains the centta psychologist Silvia Cintrano.
For her part, Dr. Marta Ochoa, head of the neurology service at HM Hospitales in Madrid, emphasizes the benefits of these more “traditional” activities since “any activity that significantly reduces mental work makes life easier but in the long term is counterproductive ».
For this reason, Dr. Ochoa comments on some activities that benefit our cognitive abilities, such as playing an instrument. It also ensures that “any task that stimulates memory, the use of language and the knowledge of words, such as crosswords, word searches and other hobbies can help us.”