Wednesday, July 29, 2009

‘Fiber yoga’: Crafting as meditation

“You need to stay present when you knit, even if you are just doing a garter stitch and don’t have to pay super-close attention. Touching the yarn and needles gives us a feeling of being connected to ourselves and our world. This kind of connection is what yoga is all about.”
— Cyndi Lee, knitter and director of OM Yoga
The latest issue of Yoga Journal (September 2007) has a good article about knitting, a.k.a. “the new yoga.” I have long thought that handicrafts like knitting and crochet had meditative validity and it is nice to have my belief corroborated. A particular book that might be interesting might be interesting to read is Knitting Sutra: Craft As a Spiritual Practice by Susan Gordon Lydon.

In the words of Tara Jon Manning, author of Mindful Knitting and Compassionate Knitting, “Each [yoga and knitting, or in my case crochet and loom-work] allows the practitioner to leave thoughts and distractions behind and focus on a specific object or action.” To me, this meditative practice can be described as “fiber yoga.”

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