Meditation has been around for ages, and is very commonly addressed in our busy modern world. There are applications for my iPhone for mediation. I can take a yoga class to work on meditation. I can sit in stillness and block out the world. Okay, well if you have met me you know there’s no way I’m doing that last thing, but I understand the value of meditation and over time I am finding more and more that my quilting and knitting tap into a very old form of meditation.
If you are like me and cannot get into the stillness aspect of meditation (my mind will wander or I will fall asleep, neither of which help to achieve my goal) there is another form of meditation that uses repetitive physical motion to calm. Some methods involve walking a prescribed path but anything that has a motion that is repeated will work. I have found that both knitting and chain piecing in my quilting have repetitive motions that help me focus on the now, block out the world and find a sense of calm.
Specifically chain piecing in quilting brings me that sense of calm. Have 244 4 patches to sew? Great! That’s relaxing to me. 186 half square triangles? No problem! After the first few pieces, to make sure my stacks are setup right and that I can slide into production mode. As my hands make the same movements over and over, and as my eyes see the same scene over and over, I can unplug my brain and let it wander a bit. Let it go off leash, as it were. The more pieces I have to do, the deeper I can let my brain go on a subject. Over the years I have worked through some fairly big issues in my life, letting my brain sort around for solutions while I’m only half way paying attention to what it is doing.
I find a similar situation when I am knitting. Get me to a part of a project where there are just endless rounds of stockinette and I can achieve the same levels of mental calm. That’s one of the reasons I don’t chose to do horribly intricate knitting projects, those only add to the stress level, where as just sitting and knitting, like on a pair of socks, is a way for me to truly unwind my brain at the end of a long day.
The trick now seems to be always having some kind of project laying around that provides this level of repetition when I need it. I’m considering making a postage stamp quilt out of 1.5″ squares. That should give me some good fodder for chain piecing meditation. That and always keeping a pair of socks on my knitting needles….
