Wild Basketmaking Workshops: How Nature-Based Basketweaving Supports Wellbeing and Mental Health
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Remembering Ourselves Home: Basketmaking as Belonging
When people gather in the woods—dappled sunlight on their faces, fire crackling, woodsmoke curling through the air, birdsong overhead, hands quietly working, something begins to stir. Something ancient. Something mostly lost and forgotten in these modern times.
It is more than the learning or sharing of practical skills. It is a deeper kind of practice—one that shapes the soul, nurtures belonging, and reconnects us to our human-ness.
Toko-pa Turner writes in her beautiful book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home,
“But what if belonging isn't a place at all, but a skill: a set of competencies that we, in modern life, have lost or forgotten? Like the living bridge, these competencies are the ways in which we can coax, weave, and tend to the roots of our separation - and in so doing, restore our membership to belonging."
Perhaps weaving baskets, in community, in nature, is one of the ways we begin to remember: one of the ways we remember how to belong.
A Return to Natural Craft
In a digital culture that prizes productivity and constantly bombards us with demands and stressors, making with our hands offers something rare: focus, rhythm, and simplicity. In this state—what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow—we are completely immersed. Negative thoughts fade into the background, and our nervous system begins to regulate. We shift from doing to being. We become one with the task, and in doing so, we experience a kind of peace that is rarely found in our modern lives.
The process of basketmaking is not just about learning a skill, it is a rhythmic practice that brings people fully into presence. Each movement of the hands - each bend of willow or stitch of rush - calls us back into our bodies, and grounds us in the moment. It calls for presence, attention, and care. It is embodying. It gives us something to do with our hands while allowing our hearts and minds much-needed space to rest.
The Therapeutic Nature of Basketmaking
Basketmaking is widely understood to offer therapeutic benefits. It was offered to rehabilitating servicemen who returned from World War I traumatised and injured. Modern neuroscience is beginning to catch up with what our bodies have always known; that using our hands in this way is healing. Practical, hands-on tasks like weaving activate multiple areas of the brain—those responsible for motor coordination, sensory processing, problem-solving, and attention. This kind of brain activity supports focus, stress reduction, and emotional regulation. Repetitive, tactile movement helps settle the nervous system—encouraging a state of calm alertness, similar to mindfulness or meditation.
There is also so much meaning and metaphor in the making of a basket. When we make a basket we are making a container, a vessel. A basket holds. I found this beautiful quote from Ursula K. Le Guin in Ruby Taylor’s Wild Basketry—it captures perfectly some of the metaphor that may be found in the making of a basket:
“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people... then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.”
The Science of Wellbeing and Nature
Spending time in natural settings is restorative to our minds and bodies. There is an ever-growing body of evidence demonstrating the positive impact that spending time in nature can have on our physical and mental health. Forest environments reduce cortisol and adrenaline, calming our fight-or-flight nervous system. Participants in Japanese forest-bathing studies show lower blood pressure and salivary cortisol after as little as 30 minutes. Woodland air contains phytoncides - aromatic plant compounds that increase natural killer cell activity and bolster immunity. Hearing birdsong or the sounds of water flowing is restorative to our nervous system.
According to Attention Restoration Theory spending time in nature can help restore mental resources and improve focus. Engaging with nature allows individuals to recover from mental fatigue and enhances overall well-being. When we weave in the woods we usually begin the day with a short nature-based mindfulness practice, spending time listening to the birds and the creaking of the trees, feeling the cold breeze on our skin, and noticing the scents of the morning. This allows us to tune into these restorative aspects of the setting, before we begin learning a new skill.
Weaving in the Woods: A recipe for feeling good?
During a recent walk with a friend they spoke to me about a book they had been reading - T.J. Power’s The DOSE Effect—which explores how to optimise so-called “happy-hormones”. From what they described I realised weaving in the woods fits into this framework and is a perfect way to boost all four of these feel-good hormones.
After a little research I discovered that dopamine is released when we learn a new skill, particularly when we focus on completing tasks that at first require effort, then gradually become easier, creating a feeling of progress. Making a basket unfolds precisely in this way. Being outside in the sunshine and practising mindfulness both support the production of serotonin, and being physically active (and laughing) stimulates endorphins. Oxytocin, the ‘connection hormone’ is triggered through social engagement and meaningful contact. So, a day spent learning a new skill in the woods with other people, is essentially a recipe for feeling good.
The Transformative Potential of Basketmaking
Although modern neuroscience helps to explain how basketmaking in the woods supports our well-being, the practice itself is ancient. Humans have been doing this for thousands of years. Part of the beauty of making with plant materials is the knowledge that the vessel will one day decompose and return to the earth, leaving no trace, but there is archaeological evidence of advanced basketry technologies from at least around 30,000 years ago.
We have spent most of our human story sat by the fire, absorbed in the steady repetition of making, surrounded by community. This is our natural state. Often, when I'm with a group in the woods, held by the trees, listening to the warm laughter of strangers-turned-companions, I feel as though I am no longer of this time: I am ancient. I lose myself and return to human, to animal. I return home.
Many participants on my courses speak of this feeling, and profound conversations emerge by the fire. For many, the day is medicine for the soul—a deeply-longed-for space where we remember that we are part of a story, part of a place and part of a community, rather than isolated individuals. It is simple, and yet people say it feels radical. It feels like an act of resistance, and of reverence.
In one of my favourite books, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:
“The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands and back to wholeness again as a basket… Strands once separated are rewoven into a new whole. The journey of a basket is also the journey of a people.”
In this way, basketmaking is more than a craft—it is a metaphor for healing and transformation, for remembering that there is potential for us as individuals, as a culture, to transform and return to wholeness.
People leave the woods with a basket, but what we weave is more than that. We weave connection: to the land, to each other, and to ourselves. And our beautiful little container of grass, of reedmace, of bramble, of ivy, holds within it the memory and feeling of our day.
Join a Basketmaking Workshop
If you’ve felt a pull reading this - whether curiosity, a longing for calm, or a desire to connect- you’re warmly invited to join us in the woods.
Our woodland basketmaking workshops are open to everyone, no experience needed. You don’t have to be “crafty” or “outdoorsy”. You are welcome exactly as you are. Come sit by the fire and learn to weave with willow and bramble and other forged materials. Experience the quiet restoration that happens when hands work, minds settle, and hearts open.
Spaces are limited to keep the experience intimate and supportive. If you’d like to find out about upcoming workshops or book a place, sign up to my occasional newsletter, or take a look at upcoming events.
I'm looking forward to weaving with you.
Hermione