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Full video: How a Psychiatrist Uses Knitting to Heal
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Full video: How a Psychiatrist Uses Knitting to Heal
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English subtitles
0:00
[Music]
0:03
When I knit, I feel calm. I
0:08
tell myself, all of you, all the energy goes into the
0:13
ground, the stagnant energy, and I
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relax and feel good. My name
0:27
is Dominique Keller Schweitzer. I
0:30
'm known as an artist, like
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Adam Tricot. I'm a doctor, a
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psychiatrist, and my secondary profession, let's
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say, is knitting. I've
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combined everything, and I do
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psychiatry, knitting, and so on.
0:47
[Music]
0:53
So, I discovered knitting as a
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child around the age of 7 or 8. My
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grandmother taught me the basics.
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All my life I've knitted, but I've
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knitted in a classic way, unraveling
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shawls, sweaters, things
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like that, until 2011 when I suddenly
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decided to make
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things in three dimensions. The first
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thing I knitted was a
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fish.
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I showed it to her. "My fish!" she
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said. "But now you see, you can
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make a chicken." So I had to, well,
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I'm going to make a chicken and I continued
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[Music]
1:32
I've been practicing psychiatry since 2001.
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Before that, I was a general practitioner and I
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specialized in traumatology. That's where
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I realized that
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knitting could help in
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psychiatry
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because when you've had a trauma,
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you disconnect the two parts of the
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brain, and to re-establish connections,
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you need repetitive movements on
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both sides to coordinate
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with knitting. You have two needles
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and you always make the same
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repetitive movement, and it's as
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if you're removing the side between the two
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hemispheres,
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and it's very effective for treating
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trauma.
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[Music] I've
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already collected everything. I've knitted a
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butcher shop, a delicatessen, a pastry shop,
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a cheese shop. I've knitted
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human heads, anatomical pieces for the
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winner, a heart that was
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anatomically correct. In Switzerland, I'm at the
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blues or the horse jump, Thomas
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Zurich,
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these two museums of modern art and
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technology and design where I have a fridge
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full of food, especially
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pork products and leftover meat and rice,
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sausages, things that are very nice to
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look at.
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In general, the reactions are very
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positive; people smile, there's a hint of
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humor. I say yes, why do I do this?
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The answer is because it gives me
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pleasure. I like it, I
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love it. [
3:09
Music]
Full video: How a Psychiatrist Uses Knitting to Heal
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