How to meditate when you can’t sit still

We’ve all heard of the benefits of meditation, right? Reduces stress, lowers and controls anxiety, lengthens attention span, can decrease blood pressure, improves sleep and so many more benefits. We all want those benefits right? But how many of us can actually manage to sit still and stay calm and let the thoughts come and let them pass in order to sit in silence. Not all of us!

This picture looks ideal but it isn’t the daily reality for most people. Personally, I do like to meditate but I find I get more benefits from a slightly different form of meditation.

Are you ready for my groundbreaking, new word?

Make-itate

That’s right I made a new word. I don’t meditate, I make-itate. I find the benefits of meditation when I am making something. Whether crocheting, or kneading bread, or colouring in, or painting. (And I don’t mean art painting because that’s not a skill I’ve learnt, I mean painting furniture or walls.) The key here is that I am making something with my hands.

There has been so much research on the benefits of making things with your hands, and more so now because so much of our lives are lived out online, and virtually and there is only one click to get whatever we desire delivered right to our doors with minimal effort. The convenience of this click-and-deliver lifestyle we have created means that so few people are getting the feeling of satisfaction that can only come from working with your hands, and that can negatively impact our mental health and our ability to feel fulfilment in our lives.

In my years of battling with post natal depression and anxiety, one constant thing was a source of joy for me. Making something from scratch with my hands. For me, crochet was my tool of choice, a hook and yarn had the ability to transform my mood and calm my mind in order for me to see through the brain fog. The feeling of accomplishment when I completed a project was something I was missing in my day to day life of being a stay at home Mum with multiple littles running around. Nothing ever stayed clean, tidy, or finished for long, but when I finished a crochet project, it would stay done and I had a tangible thing I could point to and say look what I did today.

I have tried on and off to add baking and cooking to the list of things that relax me, but after years and years of fussy eating kids, I lost the love for cooking and have had to work really hard to get it back again.

Crochet has helped me during some tough personal times outside the walls of my home. I have on multiple occasions crocheted while sitting next to a hospital bed to help calm my nerves and my mind. Firstly when my husband had a cardiac arrest and was in hospital for 2 weeks, and next when my 5-week-old daughter spent 5 days on oxygen with Brochilitis. Having a meditative-like practice of creating stitches and making things really gave me an anchor to ground myself with on the tough days.

Just this week I used this theory of making with my hands to help ease my mind and help me process some stress. My 7-year-old son was victim to an attack from a bully at school and ended up in hospital with a massive gash in his forehead requiring 8 stitches. The day following this was a waiting game while we waited for the school to investigate and hold these kids accountable. (Side note - the school was very quick to act and investigate and got admissions from the boys involved and consequences are following, we are very thankful and grateful that our little man will be ok.)

But that day my stomach was in knots wondering if I would have to fight to have these kids held accountable or potentially change our school. So I took some time to paint a fruit stand my Dad made for us. It is made with lovely light-coloured timber, and all it needed was a clear coat of varnish, so that’s what I did. And while it didn’t solve all my problems just by picking up a paintbrush, it did help to distract my mind and help slow it down. It felt like one-half of my brain was busy telling my hands what to do, so there was only one-half of my brain available for a single file of stressed-out thoughts, rather than a whole traffic jam of them. For me, it is like turning on the autopilot in my brain and body for a while and that helps me ease into the make-itation.

But on a serious note, can we please make Make-itate a new word?!

Currently I am on a self-imposed break from crocheting as the pain in my elbow has become too severe and I need to work on fixing this problem. So I am working on directing my making time to upcycle projects for the house, and baking and dinner projects in the kitchen because I need to be making something to help manage my mental health. It certainly is an ongoing process, not a one and done thing!

What does it feel like to make-itate?

When my hands get moving, the voices and reminders and internal chatter quieten and take their turn speaking. They don’t stop, but they slow to a speed where I can deal with them one at a time instead of drown in the noise.

My heart-rate slows, my breathing deepens and my body relaxes and releases the tension it has been holding.

Sometimes I need silence for this, sometimes I need an audio book, sometimes I need a junky TV show to watch, it depends on what the thoughts are that are running riot in my head. This week I’ve needed silence or just chill music to help my mind slow and be able to hear the thoughts properly. Some other times it needs to be a badass motivational podcast or a romantic audio book, it always changes.

Can make-itating help you?

If you can’t sit still to meditate or are feeling a lack of fulfillment in your life, maybe you can try make-itating?

What craft/skill could you use to make-itate?

Crochet, knitting, colouring in, baking, pottery, spinning, gardening, weaving, whittling, lego, woodwork, calligraphy, felting, the list really is endless. The secret is to just make something, even if it turns out a little bit shit. Your body will still feel the benefits.

Head to your local craft store or even hardware store and have a look at what new thing you can find to make. Let’s not forget our old friend Pinterest, she is always available with suggestions and inspiration.

Try Spotlight online for my Australian friends and grab some yarn and a crochet hook set, or some fabric and learn to sew if that strikes you as interesting or even just a colouring book and some nice pencils. Whatever grabs your fancy, there are thousands of tutorials online that can help you fumble your way through learning how to make something!

And yes, your first try will probably be a bit average, it will probably not look like you meant it to, my first try at crochet was certainly average. But everyone starts there. Everyone has a messy beginning, you just have to stick it out and you will get better.

When your hands get moving, the magic starts happening.