Holistic therapy through woodworking

Occupational therapy is often misconstrued to be thought of as employment or career-based therapy. Yes, we help our clients establish practical skills needed for future employment and financial independence, and we teach practical budgeting to our clients…we even allow our clients to create and sell different annual projects (bee traps, american flags) to earn cash! 

 But our scope of practice goes far beyond our clients’ financial independence. At Sawdust Occupational Therapy, we value each client and use woodworking to determine and strengthen his or her functional life skills that need improvement for everyday life. We strive to strengthen the abilities of your young adult’s social participation skills, daily routine and functional tasks, and/or coping strategies to use when sensory dysregulation occurs.

 As occupational therapists, we approach each client with use of a holistic perspective all the while allowing the apprentice to create a meaningful woodworking project as a leisure-based activity. Woodworking, arts, and crafts are all interventions we as occupational therapists use as a “means to an end” to help clients that are experiencing difficulties in daily life. Creating projects addresses goals and deficits among a wide range of patient needs and differing diagnoses. 

While fine and gross motor skills are often targeted in many of our clients, research has shown that there are so many holistic benefits of woodworking, including the improvement of cognitive, neurological, or sensory-motor needs. It has been shown that the process of creating projects improves an individual’s right and left hemisphere’s functionality, increases social participation skills, increases attention spans and concentration abilities, and establishes a sense of identity and hope (Leenerts et al., 2016).

 Research also shows that there is often a loss of identity and role loss with an illness or diagnosis; the process of creating projects and crafts has been proven to increase satisfaction in daily life as well as increase one’s self-image (Reynolds et al., 2008). While we teach coping mechanisms to all of our clients, the process of woodworking and crafting serve as a leisure-coping strategy to assist in increasing one’s satisfaction, optimism, relational abilities, and decrease in stress among those who participate (Pollanen, 2015). Anybody can benefit from the process of woodworking. Whether it’s to decrease anxiety, improve attention span, improve psychological well-being, increase fine or gross motor abilities… Whatever your young adult’s needs are, we strive to use holistic, client-centered therapy to further improve his or her needs while creating and completing projects at Sawdust Occupational Therapy.

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References

Leenerts, E., Evetts, C., & Miller, E. (2016). Reclaiming and proclaiming the use of crafts in occupational therapy. The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, 4(4). https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.1194

Pöllänen, S. H. (2015). Crafts as leisure-based coping: Craft makers’ descriptions of their stress-reducing activity. Occupational Therapy in Mental Health, 31(2), 83–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/0164212x.2015.1024377

Reynolds, F., Vivat, B., & Prior, S. (2008). Women's experiences of increasing subjective well-being in CFS/me through leisure-based Arts and Crafts Activities: A qualitative study. Disability and Rehabilitation, 30(17), 1279–1288. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638280701654518