Making bread, sewing, cultivating a small vegetable garden at home ... Isolation is making us rediscover the pleasure of carrying out small manual activities, which gives our brain particular well-being, as it relieves anxiety and stress.
Written and verified by the psychologist GetPersonalGrowth.
Last update: 15 November 2021
Isolation hasn't just changed our lifestyle habits. Somehow, it forced us to make a cognitive effort and rediscover skills that were dormant. The I stay at home movement will be part of this pandemic era in which to cook, do manual work, building and even improvising hairdressers has become routine.
Maybe this means that when we get back to normal we will stop going to the bakery every day, and that we will always do without our hairdresser? The answer is no. When we resume our activities and the rest of our lives we will have to face several changes, no doubt, but we will not stop using those basic services that professionals in every sector offer us.
Despite this, in difficult moments great resources always emerge in the face of shortcomings for which we were unprepared. We have seen it, for example, in this wonderful neighborhood movement, in which men and women have dedicated themselves, in an impulse of solidarity, to sewing masks. Now, some more, some less, also pack them at home to have some made to measure, one that adapts to the tastes and styles of the little ones of the house.
Many have learned to sew, cook and even cultivate a small vegetable garden. Most of the time it is not done out of necessity, because certain products are missing. It is just a matter of filling the days, freeing the imagination and making this passing of days more bearable in which isolation has raised physical and, at times, even mental walls.
I stay at home: more than a need, a pleasure
In recent weeks, social networks have been filled with photos of people posting the results of their experiments in the kitchen. We have seen bread of all kinds. They surprised us with amazing recipes of the most tempting desserts; some already tested and some not. We all tried our hand at preparing pizza and in the coming days of isolation, for sure, another dish or another dessert will be in fashion.
Do not miss the viral effect of the movement I stay at home. What we see on Instagram or other social networks awakens our curiosity and our desire to imitate trends. For this reason, during the first weeks of quarantine the products most often bought in supermarkets were yeast and flour.
Yet, despite these attitudes always arouse a certain curiosity from a psychological point of view, we must underline one aspect.
Of course, we can't go shopping every day and, at times, we might really miss the bread or that sweet of the day. However, if many people are dedicating themselves to cooking, it is not out of necessity, but for pleasure, and to fill their days.
Working with your hands is good if we want to relieve depression
Each of us faces quarantine as we can and as we want. Those who choose a more rested life and make the least effort deserve to be appreciated as much as those who simply do not stop doing one activity after another.
However, the I stay at home movement has an advantage that is important to highlight. Working with your hands, doing manual and creative activities affects our brain health and alleviates depression.
We can mention in this regard a very interesting work: Dr. Kelly Labert, neuroscientist at the University of Richmond, United States, has published a book entitled Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist’s Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain’s Healing Power, parlandoci proprio di questo.
Cooking, sewing, hand embroidering, modeling, painting, drawing, cultivating, etc. they invite us to focus on the present, regulate emotions, reduce stress and even increase our brain plasticity. We could say that these activities have been and are perfect right now.
I stay at home, discovering that we can be enough to ourselves
There are those who started from the balcony of their home, from the veranda or from the vegetable garden. Planting seeds, watching them grow and discovering how a plant sprouts allows us to discover that we could feed ourselves through what we grow.
Making bread, cutting our hair, sewing or even starting a distance learning course help us see that sometimes small goals can be achieved without leaving the house. Suffering ourselves (humbly), providing certain products and services with limits, sure, but it's still a start. This quarantine period could offer us two opportunities:
- Learn to appreciate much more the work of all the staff who ensure our livelihood day after day (of supermarkets, farmers, etc.).
- Discovering that each of us is capable of many more things than we think. And, by the way, we like them.
Manual jobs are very rewarding and the current circumstances will allow us to appreciate them even more. To such an extent that we could also use it in the future, creating an ecological garden or to eat healthily, using home recipes and avoiding the frozen or ready-to-eat department. Let's think about it.
