Meditative Hobbies: How to Get Active Rest for Better Mental Health
Every now and then, Lauren Rad, one of the team members behind the scenes here at Myrth, will pop in with a personal blog post. This month, we’re talking about caffeine and her experience with quitting it cold turkey.
How many times have you heard (or said) something like the following?
I can’t meditate because I can’t sit still. I can’t meditate because my brain is too busy and my thoughts wander. I can’t meditate because I have too many other things I’d rather be doing.
Hey look, I get it. Heck, I’ve been there. I struggle with maintaining a formal, active meditation practice, even though I know it’s good for me and have seen the results when I can stick to it.
But I have a magical hobby that allows me to meditate without sitting still. You see, I’m a knitter.
I took up knitting in law school when I started struggling with the stress of preparing for final exams. I had this intuitive sense that it would help me, but I didn’t understand how or why. Sure enough, from the moment I picked up my first needles and yarn, I found myself soothed and comforted every time I sat down to stitch. It got me through law school, the bar exam, and nearly eight years of litigation work. Knitting was my rock during those times when I was so stressed I couldn’t eat or sleep well.
And it turns out, there’s a reason for that. Knitting is a form of what I like to call “active rest.”
Active rest lets the brain relax without going entirely still.
I’ve borrowed the concept of active rest from the world of strength and conditioning. Active rest is premised on the idea that the body needs time to recover after an intense workout. At the same time, you don’t want to let it go completely still because you need to keep moving the muscles and joints to prevent soreness and stiffness. Athletes use active rest days, with very gentle activity, to rest the body just enough.
The brain, too, needs rest after an intense workout. If you have a mentally taxing job or are going through a period of intense study (like, say, prepping for the bar exam - good luck this week, exam-takers!), then you know what it feels like to have a brain that’s exhausted but also too wound up to completely relax.
That’s where meditative hobbies come in.
Meditative hobbies are a way to practice active rest for the mind.
Activities that I lump together as “meditative hobbies” are those that occupy your hands and/or feet just enough to allow your brain to quiet a bit and focus on something simple, repetitive, and soothing. They can be things like knitting, walking/running, woodworking, gardening, quilting, or playing a musical instrument.
When you can settle into a simple stitch pattern, an easy gait, the rhythm of sanding a piece of wood, or a half-hour of practicing easy scales, you also give your mind a way to still be active, but in a quiet way. When I’m knitting, I like to focus on the rhythm of the stitching movement, matching the inhale and exhale of my breath to the pace of my stitching. Sometimes the quiet click of the needles also lulls me into quietness, kind of like the steady tick of a clock or the drip of water in a cave.
Active rest can allow you to harness some of the benefits of meditation.
I’m not the only one who’s figured this out, of course. Walking meditation is a real discipline. Knitters have long talked about how their hobby can have a meditative quality. Online magazines like Bustle have compiled entire lists of hobbies that can be meditative.
The benefits of meditation have been well established for quite some time now. It’s linked to reduced depression and anxiety, better social functioning, and improved productivity, among other things. That’s why a meditative hobby can be a great solution for people who want to take up meditation but, for whatever reason, find it too much to sit still in a quiet room.
Do you have a meditative hobby that you use to find stillness in your busy day? Share it with us in the comments below!
Lauren Rad is one of the team members behind the scenes here at Myrth. During a particularly stressful period, a friend introduced her to mindfulness as a tool for managing emotional responses. She’s been a fan ever since. You can usually find her knitting, adventuring with her small daughter, or tending her rose garden.