Knitting as Mantra

I cannot get enough knitting time. It’s my favorite meditation and I love the product. It’s therapeutically and aesthetically rocking my world right now.

Why? I think Herb Benson, MD, a mentor of mine from the Harvard Mind-Body Institute articulated it best.

“Working with yarn provides stress relief. Like meditation or prayer, knitting allows for the passive release of stray thoughts. The rhythmic and repetitive quality of the stitching, along with the needles clicking resembles a calming mantra. The mind can wander while still focusing on one task.”

Those of you who knit know the pleasures and meditative aspect of which I write. If you’re looking to learn to knit or advance your training, here’s a glorious story of a local young woman, Allison Reilly, who taught herself online (!) and is a knitting prodigy. Awesometown.

There is something interesting happening in the brain when you knit, a knitting together, if you will, of right and left brain. For those of us just too damn cool for Sudoku, this is your game to slow down the aging process! For more data on slowing down aging – check out Dean Ornish’s blog on HuffPo where he describes the incredible news that meditation lengthens telomeres and slows down biological aging. Even Sudoku has not been shown to do that (or any prescription drug, for that matter!).