Knitting -It's official - it's low fat and GOOD for you!

It's official - knitting is not only good for you - it's a potential lifesaver!  And I'm not making wild claims here - it's backed up by proper bonefide medical research.  According to Dr. Herbert Benson, president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University, knitting can counteract the consequences of stress by slowing your heart rate, breathing rate and lowers blood pressure.

According to him, there's no good drug or surgical procedure to treat stress. So to reduce our suseptability to the negative effects of stress (and lets face it - who doesn't face stressful situations on a daily, if not hourly, basis?)

“just as we all have within us the ‘fight or flight’ or stress response,” says Benson, “so we also have within us an opposite response, which is called the relaxation response.” And a person should elicit that on a regular basis.

The stress response comes about automatically. The relaxation response requires two steps. Step one is a repetition- repetition of a word, a sound, a prayer, a phrase or even a repetitive movement. And the second step is to ignore other thoughts when they come to mind while you’re doing the repetition. The technique should be used once or twice a day for 10 to 20 minutes. So a person could sit quietly and choose an appropriate repetition. Or one can do a repetitive exercise such as yoga, tai chi, or jogging. Other repetitive activities are knitting or crocheting.

When you break the train of everyday thought by doing this type of repetition, you become calmer and better able to cope with the stressors. And not only that, it’s protective because there is a carryover effect that lasts throughout the 24-hour period. But it has to be done regularly"

Well what more do you need?  So next time your partner complains about you spending on your ever expanding stash -simply explain your doing it as preventative medicine!  AND I've always felt a bit guilty that I don't do 'proper' relaxation -like meditation, but now I realise that knitting IS my form of meditation - of switching off from the world and entering a zen buddhist like state (OK, until something goes wrong and I end up ripping the stitches out and cursing at every one of them!) but hey - enlightenment is a lifelong process!