Repetitive Motion, Meditation, and You
For years, knitting and other crafts have been touted as ways to manage anxiety and other mental health challenges. But why? What is it about repetitive motion that is so good for your wellbeing? How does it work? Will the cozy scarf I make really solve all my problems? A cozy scarf will probably not solve all of your problems, but you might feel better and it’s due to the connection between repetitive motion and meditation.
What is meditation and how does it work? Meditation is a centuries old practice that involves focusing or clearing your mind using a combination of mental and physical techniques that can be related to religious practice or can be totally secular. Multiple research studies have found that people who meditate regularly have certain differences in their brain structure typically involving brain tissue that’s denser or certain areas of the brain that are larger than expected, which is a sign that the neurons there have more connections to each other and the connections are stronger. The affected areas of the brain are usually those that manage or control your senses (vision, hearing, etc.), your ability to think and concentrate, and your ability to process emotions. That means the brains of people who meditate regularly are healthier and less likely to show age-related loss of function. They also have a stronger ability to deal with and process negative emotions like fear, anger and grief. When it comes to stress and anxiety, meditation helps by serving to dampen activity in our amygdala and increase the connections between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Both of these parts of the brain help us to be less reactive to stressors and to recover better from stress when we experience it. This occurs both in the presence of a stressor, and also in the absence of stressors suggesting that meditation changes the baseline structure of the brain’s ability to manage stress.
What counts as repetitive motion? Repetitive motion is just what it sounds like, an activity or movement that is rhythmic in nature and repeats. Knitting is an example as well as other fiber arts like weaving, crocheting, embroidery, and needlepoint. Other repetitive motion activities include biking, string games, playing with fidget toys, drumming, practicing scales on any instrument, dance warmups, sun salutations, chopping vegetables for meal preparation, walking, running, swimming laps, and many other activities. You might feel yourself getting into a flow state or feeling as though there is a degree of effortlessness as you engage in the activity.
How does repetitive motion mimic the benefits of meditation? Movement, generally, helps to release stress and tension, repetitive motion in particular allows us to reach a state of mindfulness which serves as a reset button to bring us back to our baseline. Repetitive, rhythmic, motion can also serve as a grounding exercise that allows us to release worry or perseveration. The repetitive nature of the motion allows us to think less about the how and what of what we are doing and focus in on how it feels to do the thing we are doing. For example, in walking, rather than thinking about how to walk or learning complicated steps, your brain can focus in on what it feels for your foot to roll through a step and the feel of the ground underneath your feet. Similarly to a seated or chanted meditation, this clears out the clutter in your mind.
For many of us, repetitive motion activities are already a part of our day, even if we haven’t thought of them as such. For example, for many of us, we walk at some point on our commute to work, or we run on a treadmill, or bike on a stationary bike, or have hobbies that involve fiber arts. For that portion of us, the trick to reaping the benefits will be to engage in these intentionally. If you’re on the bike, focus in on the rhythm of the ride. If you knit, pick a basic pattern that allows you to stitch without having to follow the pattern too closely so you can feel the rhythm of the stitch. If you don’t already have an activity like this in your life, you can start small. If you have a typical walk in your life (even if it’s just from your bed to your home office space) consider your footfalls. How do they feel? Rather than rushing through, focus in on that moment. If you find yourself regularly watching TV, maybe take the length on time for one 30 minute episode and try something new. That can be a walk, that can be working on a new embroidery project (they sell beginner kits all over the internet), it can be picking an instrument back up and running up and down scales. When the 30 minutes (or 22 if you’re really following the tv schedule and runtime of that episode), resume your regular mindless activity. You don’t have to sit still and quiet for hours on end in order to get some of the benefits of meditation and repetitive motion.
Meditation feels out of reach for so many people and meditation can look like so many things. Repetitive motion activities can help you to slow your brain, calm the perseveration that comes with anxiety and stress, strengthen the connection between your amygdala and prefrontal cortex, and serve you in every part of your life. If you’re struggling to implement this or find yourself getting stuck when trying to shift your experience of these kinds of activities into one that allows your to reap the benefits of meditation, click the button below and let’s have a conversation.