111: Anne Kirketerp | Craft Psychology: The Link Between Crafting & Wellbeing

So this is the first time in a row we are actually interviewing someone from our country, denmark, and today we're together with you, anna Kierkegaard. It's a pleasure to meet you and I look forward to our chat today. Welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here, or be home, in my living room, actually so I wish where you are. It seems like you're somewhere much warmer than here.

Yeah, southern France it's like Denmark in April, where when the sun is shining it's oh so wonderful, but when there's clouded it can still be chilly, but it's, of course, less gray and more sun, which is the big reason we are traveling. So I wanted to get into who you are and why we have invited you and wanted to talk to you. You have written a book called Craft Psychology, and for the people watching the podcast on video and for the listeners then you must imagine a really beautiful little spoon I have made and a butter knife. So I started. After many, many years, I finally last summer got around to fall in love with working with my hands a lot and doing some crafts, but you have written a book about it. So why have you written a book about it?

Well, it's not like I have written a book about it, it's like I have created a branch of psychology called craft psychology. So it made itself into a book. But the weird thing was that I realized nine years ago I quit my job as a professor at the university and then I thought I was going into I was a research director and it was really boring, and I'm originally educated as a craft person and a psychologist and a PhD. So I just longed to get all what I always experienced as very important for my own health and for the way where my life really feels meaningful is when I'm creating things. And it was kind of always mocked or people were like laughing oh you're just sitting there carving, or just sitting there doing this, aren't you going to do something? You know?

more meaningful meaningful, something more I don't know. Yeah, don't waste your time. And then I I thought nine years ago when I quit, I wanted to be that place in the world where they were studying health promoting effects of craft. And then I started to, you know, google it and finding out that craft psychology as I thought my research area would. As I mean, I was willing to sell everything and, you know, go into an auto camper and just be there in the world where they were studying what I thought was already there craft psychology. And then I found out it's never been formulated, it wasn't there, it wasn't a thing, that was a um, they were selling clothes or something, bed linen or something in California called craft psychology. I don't know why it's called that. And then I just kind of was almost I was angry and I was a bit is that really true? It's never been formulated. I just kind of thought, okay, I have to formulate, or start to formulate and study and make the science behind what is the health promoting effect of using your hands.

So that is kind of the research area that I developed and I asked 1,000 people why do you craft? It could have been people like you. Oh, when I carve. When I sit and do this, suddenly I don't have any worries in my head, or suddenly I feel that the question of what is the meaning of life, it just is not there, because this is when we are present, in the present moment, completely focused on one activity. That is where and a lot of other things too that's where the purpose and the meaning of life just presents itself, and all of that it's been.

I also made what you could call a full literature review. I read everything that was ever written about the craft, all kinds of different craft and health promoting effects, and there was only 470 articles, which is ridiculously little. If you compare it to exercise and sports, there are 50,000. So it's like that is also why, if you go to a doctor and you have any kind of diseases, or mentally or physically, you will be ordered exercise, because it's evident that this is working. So, yes, I collected all of it and then I kind of looked from up above and I saw the overarching effects and that is what I have written a book about called Craft Psychology. So, yes, it's an area. And then it turned into a book.

So yes a book. Well, well done, yeah and thank you, we needed that yeah we all needed that. Yeah, it's weird, it's weird it is actually really weird, because I I suppose everyone who do craft knows this yes, yes, everyone.

That's what I hear all the time.

Yeah, it's like in Danish. I don't know if I can translate it, but we have this little poet, piet Hein. Yeah, I'm a psychologist as well, so I suppose we both know this one. I'll say it in Danish and then I'll try to translate it. But he says in one of his little poems in psychologe they sit and six wills to d and d v l will. So in danish it rhymes. It says psychologist is someone with the with, who with a lot of hard work will study the things we all already know yeah, exactly and we can get skewed of what we know.

Oh yeah, but I just like his little comment on it. I mean, we know it deep down, but did we really know before we studied it, before we wrote books about it? I don't know.

And I think what I often hear when I give lectures or whatever I do, it's that people say thank you for defining this. Yes, I knew this already, but now suddenly I can somehow, you know, turn up the effects in a more deliberate way. And that's also what I am trying to do. It's to make people aware of. Yes, I know what happens with me when I carve or when I knit, or when I bake or when I whatever kind of craft activities I do.

But very many people actually not so conscious about that they might also be they should make something that's more difficult sometimes and they should make something that's not so difficult. And very many people just have this notion of oh, it's so healthy to craft. Yes, no, actually sometimes people tend to do something that's yeah, it has too low, a high structure, as we can talk about later and it's not just. There's so many things about having craft as something that promotes health and it. You need to know things, you need to know the effects in order to make the effects work for you more deliberate. So it's actually good. Yeah, that's a little bit more.

Yeah, the effects are defined and an area I would love to unpack together with you is about the, the love of creation that we people have. And if I take my own story, then I have been creating projects since I was young. I made a amateur feature film, I made animated movies and written books and stuff like that. So I've been creating projects since I was young and there was always this drive to create, but at the same time, there was this drive to both get acknowledgement for it and could it be sold and be turned into a career somehow. There was this oh, it needs to be something to be worth something, and it almost feels like I have this mindset of it needs to be something, otherwise I'm not worth it and it's not good enough and I need to make money on it. Where and it's where, with whittling and making fun stuff in, I'd make a lot of spoons With making the spoons. I don't lot of spoons, uh, with making the spoons, I don't care, I just love making the spoons. And then we get too many. We had 20 at some point and I I started to give them away to people as like a welcome present. Hey, hey, it's good to see you. Here's a spoon, um, but then we had this actually I will circle around.

We had a talk with a fellow Dane, dennis Namark, who have written about pseudo work and the price of unfreedom and about how work has become so overwhelming a thing we think we need to do. We need to believe that the hours needs to be filled out and stuff is not valuable if there's not an economic goal with it. And I've been fighting this inside myself and with the doing craft. I I think I've finally, after many, many years, are getting it and my wife, who I've been knitting for all the time I've known her. I'm sometimes like, oh, that's an expensive hobby and just been like a plain stupid, uh, not understanding all the values in it. Yeah, so my question to you long way around there is a question is where is the mix between the love of creating and this weird it needs to be productive mindset? That's also there. Yeah, it's not really a clear question, but it's a career.

I can wrap many answers around that. Thank, you.

I think there's this need to achieve something meaningful. That's one thing that we have always been, as a species, trying. Our nervous system is created in order to make us dry, warm and fed. So whenever we are doing something in the world, making an impact on something that will somehow make an impact on this dry, warm fat meaning that you are building something to keep you dry and making something that will keep you warm, and making some food or something, or collecting things that will make you fat or collecting things that will make you fit. So this dry, warm fit is an instinct, in the same way as our need to have kids or need to deliver our genes further in the universe, and also this instinct of keeping dry, warm fit. So in that sense, you could say work, but I mean work is not, I mean survival is not work it's just whenever I am cooking, or I'm building a cave, or I am out in the woods and making a bonfire and cooking. That's where very many people feel that this instinct of feeding, the need for dry, warm fed, that's where the purpose of life somehow comes to life. So that's one thing that everything in our sensoric and motoric nervous system is just calibrated to somehow keep us dry, warm fed. So that's one thing why craft is so. It's just an instinct to keep dry, warm fed. So that's one thing why craft is so. It's just an instinct to keep dry, warm fed, and that's one thing.

And the other thing is that until recently I would say 150 years everything that we did was kind of dry, warm fed. Of course we needed to have sleep and other things, but we learned craft activities in order to have clothes on our body and build houses and we were preparing food a lot of the time. I mean, someone at home couldn't just buy ready-made whatever. So dry, warm fat has been, until recently, kind of why we made craft. And then suddenly we didn't have to. There were very many people who were pre-prepared. And then suddenly we have, maybe inactivity in our lives and I know what this guy that you are talking about having this pseudo work and, of course, meaningless work where you feel I'm doing something that's completely meaningless, my life is just wasted. I've never, ever, talked to a person who are making their passion, feeling that it's meaningless. And now I'm going to say something, answer your question differently, because what I have been studying is what people would call a hobby-based passion, and I can also see that my research applies to people who's not into craft making as a passion.

But if we start with people who actually have a deep passion for knitting or carving or whatever a passion is defined by that, the activity in itself is the reward. So that sense it's, whenever you're doing it you're not longing to get it over and done with. You are not, you know, looking forward that oh, I'm so happy that my sweater is finally over with so I can watch some television. Or, you know, when you're carving your spoons, it's the activity in itself that is the reward and that is what make having a passion for craft also the shortcut to psychological well-being, because all your needs that is, in psychological well-being is actually met when you are in something where the activity itself is the reward. And that is why people have hobbies. And so in one sense I would say that whenever you're doing something that you love doing and you have a passion, that is never the sense of pseudo, that is never the sense of I'm doing a task because I long to get it over and done with. So if we have a job that feels like a pseudo job and we are just longing to get home and do something that feels meaningful, which would be our hobbies, then that would be different, and I can also see people who are there. Is this, yeah, for maybe 150 years. What we have been maybe starting to do craft for is mainly also the psychological effects, or the sense of community, or the sense of I am giving on the tradition of wood carving onto the next generation.

So I have this model in my book, where I have found nine different kinds of purposes of making craft, and the functionality of making craft is only one and there's eight other. One could be the aesthetic purpose like you just love to create something that will diminish your anxiety, and one could be the psychological purpose of to make craft because you feel flow and you feel all the other things. And one could be the purpose of creating something, or to make craft as a mean to feel connected to others, because it's easier for people to sit and be together when you're making something common. Third, and lots of other different meanings of making crafts. So I would say, if we only focus on craft as something that has to have a functional function or functionality, it's only a very small part of what I see and I would define as why people make craft today.

And then there's also another thing that I have studied quite a lot. It's professional craft makers who have this weird thing that I would call they pollute their passion. Because sometimes if you start making craft as something that you love, and maybe you go into craft school for five years and then suddenly you find yourself having a shop where you have to make 50 cups, ceramic cups you know you have to make them every day and then suddenly it goes from intrinsic motivation that you love doing it and you had a lot of very nice psychological effects with it and then suddenly it becomes something that you are longing to get over and done with. It's no longer you don't experience flow, it's too boring, and you don't have this repetitive movement calming effect in your body because you might actually sit and worry and you don't really feel this is very purposeful, and so on.

So this if you pollute your passion, then not even creating something and not even doing it, as you might say that you thought you had to do something where you could sell it or all your spoons could become in a shop yeah, but if you had to sit there every day carving 10 spoons every day. It would have been a very extrinsic motivated activity. You would have, in the end, thought I much rather drive parcels out to people, let me just all work in Tesco or whatever you know, because what started as something you love doing suddenly became the thing that you love the least, and that is where you pollute your passion. It's no longer your go-to to have a sacred place. So many answers to Great answers.

Very open questions. Yeah, that's how I do it. I can take the question anywhere, yeah, so.

I have some very specific questions, but I think the things I'm thinking right now are more interesting. I was thinking about would that be a note to self in general to explore? Am I doing this because I feel I have to or am I doing this because I like doing it? Yeah, about things that are not 100% necessary. I mean, I do a lot of cooking, to take that example, and I don't feel like that's a craft, but obviously it is.

I think about it and I cook and I make little jars of things and I try new stuff and I cook a lot and I'm very passionate about it and we make everything from scratch and we do it in new locations all the time, so I have to come up with new, because I can't get the same resources to work with whenever we move and you know all these things, and we also have a lot of allergies. I have to work around, and so I do that and sometimes I just love it. It's amazing and everything is shining and I have a little jazz music going on and and sometimes I'm like fuck, I spent four hours in the kitchen today and it's all greasy and I just wanted to read my book. And why am I doing this? Yeah, yeah, so it becomes a chore, because I also have a family to feed and I'm just thinking that and many other things we fool ourselves to think that we have to do, if we could get back to the passion about, because most likely didn't we start the idea of doing these things.

Yeah, because we loved it. Yeah, we start the idea of doing these things. Yeah, because we loved it. Yeah, are you a professional chef or are you just cooking for your family? Or is courses, or why do you cook for four hours? Is that, is it something you think you have to? Or do you put up, you know? Do you personally? Yeah, yeah, I'm just why, I'm just because I can't really go into the question if I don't really so what I'm trying to say is more like can we take what is?

I thought it was very interesting when you talked about how you can pollute your passion. Yeah, so if you're passionate about something, you can pollute that. That makes sense. I like knitting socks, but if I open a sock shop, I would have to knit only socks all the time as fast as I could and it would become boring. Obviously that makes sense, and learn from that and put it into other areas of life that are maybe not considered hobbies.

Yeah, yeah, I mean everything that I found out about the health promoting effect also apply to the professional craft person the one, the carpenter, the chef, whatever. Professional craft person, the one, the carpenter, the chef, whatever. But the thing is, the reason why I asked you was that very often people can actually get into flow and they can have all these amazing effects, even if it's paid for, even if they are professional chef or they are professional carpenter, whatever. It's not like it's the like in oppositions to each other. It's not like it's in oppositions to each other. It's just very often, if you have to do something on a deadline, or you have to do it with other people's needs at first, or you have to do something that's too little demanding and you're actually well-rested and you find yourself having a sense of tension, so your mind will start to wander, wander. You're not in flow because it's not completely absorbing to you. So, so there's lots of things that might be not so health promoting if it's a task that you're paid for and you can't really choose yourself and you can't just make an extremely fantastic dish where you have experimented, because if you are like a chef, you just have to make this, uh, whatever, something like for the 15 000 times, so it becomes boring. It's when it falls out of flow or it falls out of something where you can create and you are in that zone where it's interesting for you, where it falls out of some of the health promoting effects, but there's no it's.

I can just see that very many craft professional craft people they are doing something where they are creating, not to someone else, but just as the experiment itself and just because they love it and just because they think, oh, I just want to see what happens if I do this or I do this or I create this, or what happens if I put banana into this dish and you know, and you start to having the real creation going for you again. That is, for most people, what sets them in that zone where everything is the most meaningful in life. And yeah, it's also another thing that very many people have this tendency of thinking I have started something and now I have to finish it, because crafts somehow have this I don't know from the beginning of mankind that if you started a sweater or you started to carve something, of course you have to finish it, and if you hate it or it's not interesting or you know, it's so difficult for people to stop in the middle of a project because no, I don't like this green color, it's not turning out the way I want, I'm just going to unravel it, I'm going to burn it, I'm going to give it away. So very many people tend to start a craft project that maybe actually had started out as a passion project and then they force themselves to finish it because they think they should.

And maybe at that point of time, a Friday evening, where you were very tired and you think, oh, I have to finish this sweater and I'm actually, I have to count 400 stitches and divide it by seven, but I have to finish it because I can't start a new thing before I finish this.

To finish it because I can't start a new thing before I finish this. And then, actually, the level of structure it's way too loose, maybe, or too high, or it's too difficult. And then it is not giving you what it could be giving you, namely all of these health promoting effects. And then you are on a small scale. Actually, it's not like you are being unhealthy or you are making yourself stressed, but you are definitely not gaining what could have been gained, namely stress reduction and a sense of achieving something that is meaningful and everything else. So my advice for people who are not professional craft persons is you should always have at least 10 things going on at the same time, because one thing can never, ever give you the same effects, ever give you the same effects.

so if you only have one thing going and you have on a an average day or on an average week, are you?

listening. No, it's so important because if you are, if you only have one thing and you have different energy levels all the time I mean from when you start the morning till the evening, or in a week maybe you were just in a very stressed period of your life and if you only have one thing, it's very unlikely that that one thing has the difficulty level that fits you. So of course, you need to have 20 or 30. I have 30 things.

And it almost sounds like you have given a lot of people excuses for just hanging out and doing a lot of projects here.

Why do you say that as?

a bad thing as bad yeah.

You somehow hear your contentment that you are an excuse for people to pursue whatever they love doing. Instead of polluting, what should give be giving them a meaningful hour of sensing, cultivating positive emotions and giving them flow and having a relaxation response and achieving something meaningful and really, you know, feedback to their sense of passion and therefore undermining or filling up their psychological needs. And that is why we need to have a hobby. So if having a hobby suddenly feels like just another task I have to get over and done with, because I have started this and it looks like a mess if I don't finish it, and I'm a messy person because someone like you, jesper, said that oh, you have way too many projects, but aren't you going to finish them? I once actually my mother once said that to me. I have a whole wall. I have a wall with 30 different projects. So and it's? I have made a system of high and low structure and I have made systems of what and where and how I can use them.

So I'm always, I can always pick something that will suit me and once my mom, you know, said like you did, like aren't you going to finish all this? And I just took out the sweater and I just cut it in two half. It's finished now, because it's not what it's about. I mean, I have maybe 30 sweaters. It's not like I'm knitting sweaters because I am cold. I'm not cold anymore. I have enough sweaters and I'm. It's just not. I'm not in. I'm not in the game because I miss a sweater.

It's not the functionality that is the purpose.

I also sometimes say to people if you are sitting a Friday evening and you're drinking a bottle of wine let's say it costs I don't know 70 euro or whatever and you're not sitting there drinking it and thinking about, oh, what a waste, I have to go to the toilet and pee in a minute, I mean you're enjoying the process even though it costs seven pounds. Or if you go to a restaurant and you eat and you enjoy it and you are paying I don't know $100, £100 or whatever and you don't sit there and being, you know, pondering about oh, I have to go to the toilet and you know, get rid of all this it's just a waste of money.

No, and in the same sense we could just carve a spoon, knit a sweater or do whatever we like and just be in the process and actually, in a very radical thing, we could just burn it, but that would feel stupid. But of course we shouldn't burn it. But if we are in it because when I experiment with a new pattern or I also make a lot of woodwork, I love to learn new things and I build houses and I love it and of course I'm not burning down the house afterwards, but it's just amazing just to learn new things. And sometimes I'm just doing new techniques because when I have to count and I have to learn something new and I have to really get intensely focused, that is where the amygdala is 100% not spiraling up all the adrenaline and everything else.

We have zero stress response in our body when we are creating things. So it's also my medicine. I have a lot of tendency to be stressed because I'm a very yeah, my mind drives very fast. I'm better now, but I used to. And whenever our hands, whenever we are creating something, it doesn't have to be intensely difficult. But then we use a completely different area than our anxiety spiral. Our amygdala is seated, so that is why, mainly, I'm in the game.

It's to promote stress. I've noticed you use the concept of flow a lot during this conversation and, as we have both read mikhaili, wonderful book, difficult name I rehearsed saying his name whenever I need to say it.

I read the book when it came out, when I was a teenager, and I recently read it again and so I'm very familiar with his work. But I and I hear that you're using the flow. Yeah, it's one of the foundations, but maybe for the listeners should we talk a little bit about what flow is, how it works, why we study it.

Flow is the psychology of optimal experiences and it's not directly you know it's not been studied because of craft. It's optimal experiences and it's not directly you know it's not been studied because of craft. It's optimal experiences and it feels in the body, when you are in flow, as meaningful self-forgetfulness. That's how it feels in the body, that it's meaningful, and you forget yourself, you forget time, you forget everything, get everything and it's um, it's a theory that describes how, if you have a perfect sense of that, your skill equals the task. If you have a task, if you are, if some kind of yeah, task is giving to you, whatever it can be, and you have the perfect amount of skill to match it, so there's a balance between your skill and the task ahead of you Then it's not too difficult. So you will start to feel that you feel, oh, I'm stupid, I'm not good enough, I can't do this, this is way too difficult for me. Or, the other hand, it can be boring where your skill level are much bigger than the task. So then you would be bored and if you are bored, you will have what I call access attention. We all know that if you're sitting somewhere and the conversation or whatever the meeting we are in is boring, then we will start to zoom out. Our excess attention will have you know, yeah, we will always do that. That's what we do as human beings Our left side of the brain will start to construct things and we will start to what I'm going to do tonight and have I bought these, whatever? And that is where we can start to produce what is called an internal stress response. It's actually where you can imagine very negative things. So, even being bored, people would think that being bored is relaxing, but it's not, because very often we tend to use our excess attention to create anxiety or create something that we are worried about, because that is our negativity bias going. We will probably do that.

So the only place which is not very instinctively understandable it's not intuitively something that people understand is whenever there is a balance between skill and challenge. Then there is no need for the body to produce any stress hormones. That's actually the only place where we don't have any stress going on in our body. So that's why I also say it's the world's most shitty advice Lorde Råd in Danish, shitty advice to say to someone oh, go home and take care of yourself and do nothing. And that is maybe where this pseudo work guy sometimes I can be this promoting or somehow saying doing nothing is good or not working is good. Of course, not working doesn't mean that you are inactive, but not working could mean that you're not doing something that is meaningless or feels pseudo. So I would say that if we are not working and we get the advice, go home, take care of yourself and do nothing, I would say instead, the good advice would be go home and do something that is perfectly balanced.

So do something that you like doing that has the perfect fit between skill and challenges and flow. Also. There's actually three things that keeps people in flow. The one thing is this balance between skill and challenge and the other thing is that there need to be proximal goals, meaning that everything that you do needs to lead to the next logical thing, like and that is why craft has built in it so many things that keeps us in flow.

Because if you are carving, it's so proximal goal ahead of you always, because you can always see what you should do. And if you're knitting or you are doing whatever food or something, it's so the goal is just lying there, very meaningful ahead of you. You can see where you're going. It's not something that you have. Oh, what should I? Now it's there, it's just presenting itself. And the third thing is that you need to have feedback, either from someone or, preferably, from the material itself. You can see am I on the right track? Is it's going okay?

So whenever you have a perfect balance between skill and challenge and have proximal goals and have feedback, then the game continues, because it's always leading you on to. Whenever it's beginning to get a little bit too boring, then you can just up the game. You can just do faster, you can experiment, you can put a new color in, you can chop it a little bit different, or you can I have to flavor this differently, or whatever. So that is the funny thing is that at the end of the challenge, the end of why people want to become better, why learning is not something that is horrible we love to learn because at the end of the game is freedom. When we have experienced a lot of, when we have overcome a lot of challenge and our skill level are extremely high, then suddenly you can just see a dish, or you can see a spoon, or you can see a sweater, and you just know instantly at that moment how it's done, and that's freedom.

So yeah, learning to do and keep going gives you freedom learning to do and keep going gives you freedom, oh, but to not drown in ambition. I think this it's just very healthy to to line this um mechanism, aiming for the ultimate uh skill level and my freedom and becoming so proficient. Sometimes I'm just knitting another pair of socks because I am while while we're driving or or watching a movie, or you know, sometimes we just take it down to the. I'm just doing this because it's nice to do.

Oh yeah, I mean you should have all range of difficulty and I have something that I call high and low structure, and low structure and high structure is I mean it's equally health promoting and high structure. Or recreating something it could be a Lego kit or it could be a sweater from Petit Knit or something. It's a step-by-step instructions. If you take out a recipe and you just follow it completely step-by-step. That's high structure and that's very calming for people and that's what you need on a very worn out Friday evening. And then there's low structure. Low structure is what you call a real creative task. It's open-ended and it doesn't have any step-by-step. That tends to keep people more in a flow state.

But if you are very tired and you are very stressed and actually if you are prescribing low structure projects for people who are highly stressed, they actually have the opposite of they feel more stressed.

It's not very good and that is something that I'm teaching people that if you are a well-rested, extremely capable craft therapist and you are thinking, oh, I have 12 stressed, long-term negative stressed women and let's get them into this craft activity course and let's just take all the colors in the whole world and just high music and just, oh, just knit, paint whatever your feelings like, and the most people will say that it's so low structure that most people just kind of feel I'm just going to say, no, thank you, Give me a kit of something that I can know how to do.

And then, of course, step by step, you can loosen the structure. But often, if people have high stress, just attending a course, just being around with other people, will make them feel that it's a bit overwhelming and lose structure, have the tendency to make people feel overwhelmed and feel like, oh, was this good enough or did I do this right? So, high and low structure. I recommend that you have these 10 projects ranging from high and low structure and easy and difficult, because there's also have another thing.

I always have something completely high structure, easy when I sit and knit because making was young, as I mentioned, books, movies, different kind of things, and in my work I'm creating all from campaigns to websites, to you name it. But that is mostly mind creating and I'm using my mind. But have you, in your research, dived into why is it with the hands? What is it that it gives back? Is it the textile feedback through the hands? What is it that makes the difference between me creating something on my computer versus sitting with the hands, feeling the wood and these kind of things?

yeah, I mean there's absolutely no difference. But it's just no one ever defined the area of craft psychology. And if you take computer games or I mean I know that it's not computer games you're talking about but if you are creating a website or you're creating something else, it could be equally flow generating, it could be equally health beneficial for someone who's creating that. The thing is that I have the effects, the five effects that I have found. One of the effects with craft is that it makes this relaxation response and that is something where you are making a repetitive movement, like when you are handed a kid no, a very upset kid, a small baby. You don't have to be taught to do like this, because repetitive movements creates this relaxation response in our body. And and creating on a computer sometimes, very often they don't have the same kind of materiality, but it's also creating and you will also, you know, diminishing your amygdala. Creation of you cannot create something, whether it is on a computer or it's with your hands and having high anxiety. It's not possible.

So so in that sense it's fine, it's just um but I just feel the, when I, when I can feel the feedback on on the wood with my hands, something different happens it is, and that is why about 25 30 percent of our cortex, our motoric cortex use, is used to control our hands.

So there's a very high feedback from our hands and that stimulates a high arousal in our brain. So it's easier for people to have enough arousal or have enough sense of the excess attention is used whenever you're using your hands. So that's one thing, is it's it's easier for people to come into flow if you have a sensoric motoric activation of your hands, because they're such a large area of your cortex that uses hands, motoric skills. And it's also the other thing about seeing and carving a spoon or sweater or something else. It's this feedback and the feedback from the material is also an important thing for people to feel that they had created something meaningful. And that's the fifth effect that all these micro-success experiences that people can see that one carve or one, what's it called? Uh, whenever you do it or whenever you knit one stitch repetition.

you can actually see from the beginning to the end how well you're doing. It's an obvious and it's a tangible objects where you can see your progress and there's not that many things where you can actually see how well am I doing. I can see from the beginning it looked like shit and then half an hour later I can see there's a spoon, there's a row and all these micro success experiences. That produces a lot of these dopamine hormones that we can wow. I did this, I did this and so it's tangible in a way that very few other things are in our lives. You can see the progress, you can have micro success experiences and that is what builds self-esteem.

I was curious to the list. You said you have found five effects. You said one and now I'm ready for two.

yeah, yeah, I have this in my book, I have this model and I don't know maybe we can present it yeah, if you send a pdf we can.

Yeah, because that is, um, you know, kind of everything that I did combined in a model so it's easy for people to see. And one of the effects is, or the biggest effect is, flow. And the other big effect is calmness. This where these repetitive movements and everything that might be high structure, easy, where you are using your excess attention and you can use it as a mean to be with others and so on. That is the other big effect. And the third big effect is positive emotions Having this cultivation of positive emotions, which are quite difficult, meaning joy and hope and interest and all the other positive emotions. And since we have a negativity bias, we need to pay attention to do things every day that cultivates positive emotions. And since we have a negativity bias, we need to pay attention to do things every day that cultivates positive emotions. And the fourth big effect are this achievement, this sense of creating something, as I said before, that's tangible and has this sense of that. It feels meaningful to create something where you can see all your micro success experiences, not that you have to produce something in order to, you know, have other people to admire, to admire you. It's not then, actually, if you're only doing things because you hate it, so you can post it on instagram. Then it's not longer, then it's not an intrinsic motivated activity, then it's not longer, then it's not an intrinsic motivated activity, then it's no longer a passion. And then you are slowly by slowly yeah, polluting your passion. So you shouldn't do something just to get it over and done with and just so you can have likes. Then stop doing it, stop yourself because it's a pity.

And the fifth effect is capacity, and it's only a theoretical effect actually, because you cannot. But it's where it's how the brain works, that every time you learn something new, the synaptic connections are built. So the brain works, works like with. You know, use it or lose it. So if you have a deep passion to learn something new, it's also like through science you can just see that people who keep learning and keep learning new things, new difficult things, have a later onset dementia. It doesn't have to be craft, it can also be academic work, but whenever you have something that you love doing, you're more likely to learn something new and keep learning something new and go on to courses and keep meeting with people, and social meetings are quite complex for the brain as well.

And that's all this research that I found from the Finnish. They are making a lot of really interesting science about the brain and craft and making. If you have an image of, let's say, a sweater you saw on the streets or you saw a very complex carved spoon at a market and you just saw it a glimpse and then you just saw this image in your brain and then you go home and creating an internal image into a 3d thing in your hands is maybe the most complex thing our brain can do, because it's both all the limbic system you have to what did it feel like, what was it and all theic motoric movements with your hands and you have to really use all the association cortex and your memory. So it creates what the Finnish people are after, these meta skills called an ability to make complex problem solving, called an ability to make complex problem solving. So if you are after making people more able to create or to make problem solving, then doing that having people to do an internal picture into something tangible, 3d that's how you create people who are highly skilled in complex problem solving.

So that's also, yeah, an effect of making. Craft is capacity, and then there's this dome of passion and making, where the activity making a passion, work, doing your passion for one hour it's the direct link into psychological well-being and that is the three basic psychological needs autonomy, competence and social relatedness and they are always, by some magical thing, just met whenever you're doing your passion. So it's um, yeah, and of course, craft making is not better than exercise or singing or music, everything. But there's so much science about that. The thing is that no one ever created a model for or a psychology for making crafts. So I'm not trying to say this is better than anything, it's just there's so much science about why it's healthy to sleep together or why it's healthy to read or why it's healthy to exercise.

So but it also feels like an. It also feels like an overlooked area where there is this kind of uh, as I, for fun, like said oh, aren't you just giving people excuses it is. It is almost like I would presume there's some prejudice around uh doing crafts, as it's just a hobby yeah, it's nothing, yeah, it's nothing. So so, um, have you met this in the professional uh area, where, where the scientist and when you have done your research, that there can be a prejudice and like this is not really research, it's just people?

not not that my work is not really research, but because I think it really helps that I'm a doctor in psychology and because, because, if I was before, if I'm educated as a craft person Hohnerbeidslehrer and craft person before that and I think if I had made the research or tried to say the same thing as I do now, as if I were a craft person, I think sometimes when I go in to talk to the ministry, or in a few weeks I'm going to talk about health promoting, kraft as health promoting. On the pension, nordea pension, they have all the CEOs of all the biggest Fortune 500 and how to promote health, fortune 500 and how to promote health. And then craft is something that, oh, we need to look at. How can we use craft? Maybe to diminish stress or to monitor people's well-being, because we know that psychological well-being is a driver of physical well-being.

So suddenly they have invited me in to talk about why is it healthy to make craft? And I think suddenly it's because I'm not just saying, oh, it feels so good to sit and knit. No, I say if you are doing some repetitive movements, you are activating your parasympathetic nervous system and then you are leveling out your serotonin level as well. If you're having all these micro doses of dopamine and when you are sitting and having a perfect balance between skill and challenge and you are actually no stress responses in your body, and because I say all this and because there is science behind it and because I am a doctor in psychology, then they are.

Oh, okay, okay, that's really it's really something and, yes, sometimes I in the beginning people thought are you really making a psychology of craft? I mean, is that a thing? And Now, nine years later, the book is out in the whole world and I have educated 31 foundation programs in craft psychology and people are using the word craft psychology and it's yeah, are we men opening up for it?

My prejudice is that it's more women who are naturally inclined to do craft work. Yeah, you don't know that it's under the radar.

I very often when I talk to men and I say, well, whenever you are, you might think that you are doing sports and exercises. Men like maybe to you know, bicycle, that they are preparing, mending, they are greasing and that's a craft. And very many men like to cook and they maybe grill. Or if they are fishing, maybe, yes, fishing is maybe not a craft, but then they are preparing the food they are fishing and then they are maybe cooking the fish or they are preparing and making all these kind of things that they are fishing with. And there's so many things that goes under the radar that men might think, oh, I'm not a craft person. But if we look closely, it's also cooking, it's also doing all kinds of repairs in the home and it's just.

Men often think that, oh, craft is knitting, and it's also because 70% of everyone who would say I have a passion for something would knit. It's by far the biggest hobby of everything. So of course I very often come out to give speeches and I'm very often interviewed about why is it healthy to knit, and I always start by saying it's not a knitting psychology, it's a craft psychology. Because there's so many knitters, it just becomes, oh, knitting. But men are equally, and I'm also having this cooperation with bushcraft Jesper Hilde, who is a bushcrafter, and bushcraft people who are out in the wild and preparing food, making bonfires, making wildlife is also a craft by large. It's a craft activity. So there's so many craft activities that people might not think of as craft activities, but it is of ass craft activities, but it is so.

I've been thinking about your, the way you see yourself, yeah, as someone who just found out, because now you're whittling yeah but I've known you for most of my life and we met when we were teenagers so actually, I have known you for most of my life and you've also been drawing a lot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you enjoy that, and you've been very passionate about cutting the hedge when we had a house.

Oh, I was the best.

And the grass on the garden and the way that you had the angles right and when there was snow, you would be the happiest person on the planet. Yeah, the funny thing is and I hope that this could be a takeaway for you and maybe for many other people who are doing craft activities exactly and if you're doing crafts that looks like chores, like the garden or cleaning the house or cooking the food, and you really enjoy doing it and you enjoy putting in a lot of quote-unquote, unnecessary hours because you like doing it in a perfect way or with this special tool, or I mean, I have never seen a street that clear of snow ever in my life but in a beautiful compared to ours when we had a house and there was a you know, a pride in the, no salt and whatever, yeah, um, then just, you know, own it, enjoy.

Own that, you enjoy it because we had a lot of conversations. You were very this is necessary and everyone else are irresponsible, but in a way, just own that, you love it, just do it with. How great is it? That's something that needs to be done that you can love doing it it is very basic instinct.

All these kind of dry, warm, fit and everything that we do in our home and in our houses are, of course, if we love doing them and shoveling snow or moving the lawn or cutting the hench, whatever it is so basic craft activity. And everyone would say that suddenly, oh, four hours have passed. Oh, four hours have passed, and just bit by bit, you can just get into this movement of making the same perfect movement. That just feels the same sense. I would guess that people playing golf would think they just know the perfect shovel where you can have the perfect amount and you can. It's just basic.

All the effects that I have described, it's, it's there and yeah but I think we have that christian moral kind of layer coming on top of things and maybe the whole confusion with the monetarization that was a hard word of things that we have.

We have this we have to be busy and productive and do hard work in order to be good people. So you, we can all have a tendency to fall into the trap of explaining oh, I need socks because my kids, they have very sensitive feet and they can't wear normal socks, and so I have to do it. Or but it's very important for the hedge to be cut in this specific way because otherwise it will not bounce back next spring whatever and you know you can always come up with these explanations that has to do with necessity and has to do with with with money. But maybe we could peel that layer off and go back to the meaning of life and the whole meaningfulness. Are we allowed to be? Is it okay to be happy? Just be happy, to be happy with no other reason than I want to be happy? Yeah, but that's also.

I mean, oh, I'm very I really try to make everything that I have as a chore, to be mindful about it and to own it and to be not longing to get it over and done with. So if I have to move the lawn, I have to do so, or chop woods or something and just go into it and just this is just a wonderful activity and it's quite, it's, it's, it's, it's. It's not very healthy for people to long for this. I don't know what's that English, you know, where you have no maintenance, yeah, no maintenance. Houses where you don't have to do anything.

You are 75, 70, 85, and you are, oh, I just have to sell my house, so I don't have anything to maintain, and then you would sit in front of the television and you would have a depression and almost 40% of all people in Denmark over 75 have antidepressant pills, because if you're too inactive it is impossible for people not to have a very high anxiety spiral upwards. So whenever, even though you don't like actually moving the lawn, you would still find yourself maybe in this sense of self-forgetfulness, because the movements, the thing, the constant feedback from the lawn, the constant feedback from whatever you're doing, will still produce micro dopamine expression, it will still have health beneficial effects and you will still feel proud and interested. So it's easier for people to maintain and to keep doing things. If it comes from a passion, of course it's easier, but it's still. Even though you don't really like to remove all the snow from the wave, it still will have the same effects.

So, if people are as you say, just I actually like it. And yes, maybe it's not fun fun, maybe I'm not like wanting to move all the other people's lawn, but I actually like doing it. So owning it and be mindful whenever we, when we are doing it and not getting into the game and always looking at when can I be finished? So how can I get this over and done with? But just, yes, this is perfect.

And I'm trying to find a way to round up because we try to keep our episodes around an hour. But I have one more question. It is what surprised you the most in your research, where I'm curious about was it like aha moments or what? Or something like oh, I hadn't thought about that?

well, there was, um, maybe the biggest aha moment was that I structured, or I found out that there are equally health benefits from what I call this recreational and creative, meaning the high and low structure, because there are so many people who admire people who are designing themselves and oh, it's so much finer and oh, I'm just knitting after a pattern or I am just doing lego, but that's actually to find out that it's equally health beneficial. So there's no need to be sorry about to say that, oh, I'm just knitting socks and they are very, very difficult. I'm knitting them with lots and lots of things, I have to count all the time and put new colors, and then they feel kind of, oh, I should do something finer, I should be a designer. No, I think that was something that has deliberated very many people in that sense. And the last thing I would say, the big thing was it was so obvious and it's what.

I have a PhD in motivation and enterprising behavior, and so it shouldn't have been a comma really. But what I found was that all the things that people would talk to me about having a passion I never actually quite thought of. People have a hobby, a passion, because it's a shortcut to psychological well-being. I never actually I knew that being intrinsic motivated is where you have fulfilled your basic psychological needs, but I never actually made the connection of oh, yes, that is why people have a hobby, because they feel autonomous, they have completely sense of freedom and voluntarily freedom and they feel completely competent and they have this very easy way to feel connected with other people and to do something for other people so they would feel connected and wow, it's just. That is why people have a hobby, to have psychological well-being, and yeah, that's maybe a very weird thing to have an epiphany about. Oh, that is why people have a hobby. It's because they feel psychological, they have psychological well-being.

But we're back in that uh danish little poem, the cook thing. You know, we study the things we already knew and and I, I think I I get it in a way. Why is that a surprise?

but in a way it is a surprise yeah, and it's so important for us to do it and not and to do it when we are the most energetic. And I always say that you should do your hobby the hour after you come home or maybe the first hour in the day, so you don't wait to do your hobbies when you think you have done all your chores and then after nine o'clock or ten o'clock in the evening you think I'm going to do my hobby, but then you're too worn out and then you don't do it at the level that could actually spark all the health beneficial effects. So do it, because it's equally important as physical exercise. It's the way to spark psychological wellbeing and it's so important for our physiological wellbeing to have a high psychological wellbeing-being.

Absolutely. And for people who want to get to know more about craft psychology, or maybe even want to work inside the field, where can they find you? How can they dive deeper into it? Can you mention a little about that?

Yeah, of course I have written a book and the book is out everywhere in English, also in Danish, and I've just made an audio book in English as well. I also have an audio book in Danish, and on my webpage, craftpsychologycom, you can find much more about things, things, and we are coming out with lots of short videos of how to make craft activities to maybe dampen stress, so it's become a little bit more therapeutic how you can use craft exercises in specific areas. Yeah, so that's also coming, but that will be on my webpage, craftpsychologycom.

So that seems easy let's put it in the show notes in case.

But yeah, not hard to know remember I I could keep on talking, but let's, let's, uh, let's close down. So I would say, anna, it has been a really a big pleasure talking to you and, uh, it has given me some more peace of mind doing my things and I will walk away very inspired from this. Thanks a lot for your time.

Thank you so much for having me here. Thank you, it's been a pleasure.