Doctor’s Orders: Knitting

Lily Hamson

05.09.2024

Tactile activities like knitting and crochet induce what psychologists call a “flow state,” relieving anxiety and allowing the crafter to sink into a relaxed yet focused frame of mind.

“A lot of people want to know how to affordably and efficiently reduce stress without seeing a doctor or medicate or paying for a therapist,” said Aris Karagiorgakis, a Penn State University professor of psychology with an emphasis on stress reduction through means of art.

And that’s exactly what the youth of Generation Z wanted to know. Their solution? The same answer grandmothers across the world have been using for centuries – knitting and crocheting.

Amid the pandemic, hand-weaved clothing pieces dominated fashion trends. Perhaps that was due to the copious amount of free time lent from months under lockdown, or the desire to express themselves through fashion in an environmentally sustainable way. But aside from the more obvious pluses of knit and crochet, scientific evidence can account for notable therapeutic benefits.

“It gives you a metaphor for control,” said Karagiorgakis.

The psychology professor described a few ways that knit and crochet can subdue feelings of anxiety. For one, tapping into the creative part of the brain has a calming effect. Even if it’s subconscious, engaging in imaginative practices broadens perspectives and encourages the brain to consider alternative solutions – beyond just what stitch to make next.

In addition to an exercise in creativity, the sense of control that Karagiorgakis describes comes from its “rhythmic and predictable nature.” As much as the crafter can concoct wild designs that scrape the edge of their imagination, a purl stitch will always be a purl stitch.

Cynthia Doherty, president of the Greater Boston Knitting Guild, does admit to a steep learning curve when it comes to mastering the art of knitting. She said it can be frustrating at first, but once you can grasp the mechanics and find a rhythm, “you can spend hours in the zone.”

Young adults were hit hard during the pandemic – a “two-week vacation” from school starkly shifted into a year-and-a-half long extraction from classes and typical social life. The undetermined fate of families, sports, college decisions and a plethora of other uncertainties filled the air with “I don’t knows” and “We’ll have to wait and sees.”

But one thing about knitting and crochet – it’s reliable. The same small hand movements and swift pokes of a crochet hook can produce the same garment over and over again. Doherty reports that the most popular professions among members of the Greater Boston Knitting Guild are retired engineers and mathematicians. Because ultimately, knitting is formulaic.

Doherty described the Guild as being “on the plus side of Covid.” She expected monthly meeting attendance to plummet during the pandemic, but to her surprise – the numbers more than doubled. “There was a massive surge,” she said proudly.

Prior to 2020, the Greater Boston Knitting Guild was home to 140 members, but today, the Guild’s president has to plan meetings that can accommodate over 300. The massive uptick includes a number of high school students who, according to Doherty, were gifted a membership by a family member and “kept coming back.”

She figured families pushed their teenagers toward the Guild since knitting is a better cure to quarantine-induced boredom than tapping away on a phone for hours on end. At the root of inordinate amounts of screen time is a need for distraction. Knitting, as described by University of Rochester psychologist Jeremy Jamieson described, is a “productive distraction.”

Jamieson noted the importance of regularity tools: methods that can be used to reset negative mental frameworks back into a state of calm. “You need to find the right tool for the right job,” he said. For Generation Z, confronted by over a year of malaise, knit and crochet was just the fix they needed.

“You’re doing something with your hands, and you’re completely focused on the task,” said Karagiorgakis. He said anxiety reduction is the byproduct of concentrating on one thing, allowing the stressor to fade into the background. Karagiorgakis even went as far to say that by devoting energy to activities like knitting and crochet, it's possible to induce a meditative state.

But he also acknowledges that these benefits were likely not the reason that teenagers picked up knitting needles in the first place. All the traction that knitting and crochet picked up during the pandemic could have just been, in the eyes of members of Generation Z, “something to do.”

Whether it's obvious what young adults are gaining from knit and crochet or not, scientific evidence and a rapidly emerging fashion trend made it clear that there must be something to it.

“We all have the same disease,” chuckled Doherty, “Whenever something is wrong, we just need to start knitting.”