Top 10 Health Benefits of Pottery

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The art of pottery is oftentimes described as therapeutic and relaxing. While spinning clay, your mind, and body are in natural synergy, wrapped around your creative ambitions and goals. This thoughtful, artistic activity can open up the mind and relieve you of outside worries.

  • Creative outlet – There are both physical and mental benefits from expressing yourself by creating something. Art offers an outlet and a release from all of that. With pottery, you can produce something and express yourself in some way.
  • Increase optimistic outlook – Pottery enables for improvements in flow and spontaneity, provides an outlet for grief, and helps you with self-identification and self-expression, bolstering confidence and self-esteem.
  • Improve focus – Pottery allows you to escape the worries of life and shift your focus toward your creation. During the process, outside influences don’t affect your work so you dedicate your time to your creation. Being able to fully focus something helps the mind relax and expand, which will help you focus on other tasks in your daily life as well.
  • Exploring and experimentation – Pottery helps you to express your creativity, which is essential to expand who we are and how we connect to ourselves and our environment. It’s a good way for people of all ages to explore the things they can do. You may be more creative than you think, besides there’s no right or wrong way to participate in pottery.
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  • Reduces stress – Our hands are an outlet for creativity and the sense of touch is of high importance. A lot of focus is required while you’re making pottery, therefore outside distractions are reduced and no longer stress you out.
  • Can help reduce pain and discomfort from arthritis – The movement of making pottery is gentle yet strengthening to the hands, wrists, and arms. This can be beneficial to those prone to arthritis in the hands, as it promotes joint movement and dexterity.
  • Encourage sociability – Pottery rouses mental activity as much as physical and is often the perfect hobby for those who prefer to expend their energy internally. While partaking in group pottery, however, one can socialize confidently with other potters while still allowing for silence. The usually casual atmosphere helps relax any socially anxious woes and can help start a conversation. Plus, you can even do pottery at home with your family! There’s nothing better than doing something you love with the people you love.
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  • A natural pain killer – Stress can oftentimes lead to feeling sensations of pain and discomfort. Since pottery is a hobby known for reducing stress and boosting self-esteem, pain caused by stress may be alleviated while taking part in pottery.
  • Captures memories – Archaeological digs are known for recovering ancient artifacts from civilizations long past. Some of the most well-preserved artifacts, often surviving thousands of years, are creations of pottery. As such, your artwork has the potential to last forever. No matter if you hope future civilizations to discover it and have it immortalized in a museum or if you would rather have it sitting in your home’s foyer, seeing the creation in its final form will serve as a reminder of your accomplishments.
  • Improve quality of life – Art is an important hobby for self-expression. It is a good way to connect with yourself by expanding your body and mind. Embarking on new creations, learning new techniques and finishing your creations can contribute to a lifetime commitment of learning and maintaining a productive hobby.

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13 COMMENTS

  1. While I agree with a lot of the points mentioned above, I take issue with your claim that pottery is good for the joints. I’ve been a potter for 40 years and there are several hazards associated with working on the wheel. Tendonitis, and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome are real threats. Most potters I know have complaints about their joints and backs. Some have had to quit because the pain is impossible to endure. While you are young you can get away without a lot of pain but it comes to some people sooner than others. There is also a lot of heavy lifting and preparation of clay alone can be exhausting. The studio environment must also be constantly ventilated to reduce or eliminate dust which is an inherent hazard. All I’m saying is its not a piece of cake and there is a considerable amount of hard work.

  2. Jack ~ I think you are right in the hazards of being a potter by trade and not as a hobbyist. I agree it is not a meditative profession without the pressures of a regular business. It can however, become a meditative hobby providing some of each of those benefits.

  3. Yes I have to disagree about the exercise of joints as I fear I’m getting arthritis in my thumb and fingers. I have another potter friend who stopped throwing owing to arthritic pain and she just does form building now. The other points you mention I find to be true. It is very fulfilling!

  4. Pottery is a wonderful outlet for relieving stress. Upon retiring from the field of education, I found pottery to be my therapy to decompress from my career. I loved the surprises I found when opening the kiln!!

  5. I also agree with the great benefits of pottery, especially for the mind, but also agree with Jack that it is important to take care of the body, wearing dust masks and gloves when handling potentially dangerous chemicals. We are taught to be efficient when throwing; keeping everything within easy reach, but it’s actually better to make sure you have to get up and move around and not sit still at the wheel or handbuillding table for hours. If the movement is a natural part of the work process you won’t lose focus and concentration.

  6. You can add spinal stenosis as well! When I was a young and healthy potter, men would fall over themselves to carry clay for me which I was perfectly capable of doing myself. Now I am a lot older and a lot less pretty, suddenly all the delivery men have bad backs and dump the clay at the door, not bothering to help me move it to the rightful spot in my studio.

  7. You have just insulted all the professional potters of the world.
    It is meditative but repetitious good for some joints bad for others. Hard on the back, and not necessarily social. I suppose you are talking as a hobby. It is great, but once you are bitten by the bug and you decide to become a potter, then it is like any other career minus financial lucrativity compensated by passion for the work and a lot of room for self reliance.

  8. It’s great that you pointed out how pottery could let you produce something and express yourself in some way. My friends and I are planning to do an activity that we haven’t done before and we are thinking of doing pottery. From what I heard, there are even shops that offer pottery painting activities, so I think it is going to be fun.

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