The letters Betsan Corkhill read at her magazine job poured in. One 14-year-old hospital patient wrote that she’d discovered a drug-free alternative to pain medication. Another reader wrote about how the same strategy helped her find purpose after attempting suicide. Many others wrote about how the method reduced stress.

“I realized I stumbled on something really important, something that could change the way we view long-term health problems; could change the way we view well-being,” says Corkhill, a physiotherapist by training who’s now a personal well-being coach in Bath, England.

What was it? Knitting. Yes, that scarf- and blanket-yielding craft that’s more often perceived as a grandmother’s hobby than a powerful therapy. In fact, Corkhill even used to call it “a bilateral rhythmic psychosocial intervention” to appeal to skeptical clinicians, scientists and researchers she works with as founder of Stitchlinks, a nonprofit that aims to unite therapeutic knitters, support research on the craft’s health effects and serve as a resource for clinicians and other professionals interested in implementing knitting therapeutically.

“When I said, ‘We’re treating pain with a bilateral rhythmic psychosocial intervention,’ they’d say, ‘Well, that’s very interesting,'” recalls Corkhill, who wrote the book “Knit for Health & Wellness: How to knit for a flexible mind and more…” “Whereas if I said, ‘knitting,’ they’d laugh.”

But Corkhill gets the last laugh. Her work and other research and anecdotes suggest “the K-word” can reduce chronic pain, boost mood, reduce stress, treat panic attacks, combat loneliness, boost confidence, curtail caregiver burnout and more. “The science is starting to catch up with what crafters already know,” says Michelle Maynard, executive director of Project Knitwell, a District of Columbia-based nonprofit that implements therapeutic knitting programs in hospitals, schools and other community sites. “When you use your hands … there’s something that happens with the brain.”

The Knitting Difference

Are the benefits of knitting any different than other types of creative therapies, such as painting, journaling or gardening? Therapeutic knitters say yes. The craft’s two-handed, repetitive movements paired with its tactile, visual and emotional stimulation are among the aspects that make it especially effective, pros say. Knitting also offers a rare sense of control, in part because knitters can easily undo any mistakes and use that same yarn to try again. And, unlike many other crafts that require a stretch of dedicated attention, knitting can easily be picked up and put down again just a few minutes later. “There aren’t many things you can take on a bus or do in bed and not disturb anyone else,” says Corkhill. “That gives people a really powerful tool that they can carry around with them and use it any time they want to.”

That was one benefit Lyndsay Anderson, a nurse practitioner in California, noticed when implementing a knitting intervention among oncology nurses. Her research found that the program reduced burnout most in those who felt most overwhelmed by their jobs.”It’s not a huge investment and it can be a great outcome — all at your own pace,” she says.

[See: 14 Ways Caregivers Can Care for Themselves.]

Still need a reason to try your hand at the craft? Therapeutic knitters say you might especially benefit if:

1. You feel helpless.

One of the first things Maynard did when her husband was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer was to visit the yarn shop. The hobby saw her through many hours in hospital waiting rooms. “It helped me feel productive at times when I otherwise didn’t feel productive because I was ‘sitting around,'” she says. Her organization, Project Knitwell, has helped facilitate that feeling among parents of sick children, too.

2. You’re stressed.

Meditation can be hard — especially if you’re dealing with health problems. “Your brain doesn’t feel like learning anything new when it’s highly stressed or in pain or when it’s depressed,” Corkhill says. Knitting, by contrast, is easy. “It seems a meditative-like state seems to happen as a natural side effect of the rhythmic movements of knitting,” she says. A survey she conducted in partnership with Cardiff University in Wales of more than 3,500 knitters worldwide found that the more frequently they knit, the calmer and happier they felt.

3. You’re anxious.

The way knitters must arrange their arms — in a sort of protective arch in front of their bodies — creates a safe zone that can be particularly comforting for people who have anxiety problems, Corkhill says. She’s even helped people cure panic attacks by teaching them to take out their knitting whenever they start to feel anxiety rising. “If you combine that instantaneous sense of calm with portability, then you’ve actually got a really powerful tool,” she says. Eventually, anxiety-prone folks can learn to merely visualize themselves knitting to achieve the same effects.

[See: 8 Ways to Relax Now.]

4. You’re down in the dumps.

If your aim is happiness — not, say, to create a Christmas gift — make sure you pick yarn that feels good to the touch and, ideally, that’s one of your favorite colors. “Touch elicits an emotional response, and touching something good makes you feel good,” says Corkhill, whose survey also found that the yarn’s texture matters twice as much as color when it comes to improving mood.

5. You’re lonely.

In addition to helping her feel productive, Maynard, whose husband died a couple of years ago, appreciated how knitting in hospital waiting rooms served as a social lubricant among patients’ loved ones and hospital staff alike. “If I pulled out my knitting, people would actually make eye contact and begin to talk,” she says. Social knitting groups also seem to facilitate more meaningful conversation than, say, sitting around for tea, since the mental energy it takes to knit reduces knitters’ tendency to self-monitor, Corkhill says.

6. You have chronic pain.

Corkhill wasn’t surprised to read that first letter about knitting’s pain-relieving effects; qualitative research has supported it. Since the brain causes the experience of pain when it perceives fear, knitting can help reduce that sense of fear and increase the sense of safety, Corkhill says. The sense of success can also release feel-good chemicals in the brain that dull or inhibit the sense of pain, she says.

[See: 11 Ways to Cope With Back Pain.]

7. You need a confidence boost.

Save for people with medical limitations, almost anyone who dedicates a little time and effort to it can learn how to knit — an achievement that, like learning any new skill, can fire off the brain’s reward circuit and inspire people to take on other challenges, Corkhill says. “[Knitting] instills confidence, it reduces fear, it reduces worry,” she says. “It makes people feel worthwhile again.”

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7 Health Reasons to Take Up Knitting originally appeared on usnews.com