Origami helps improve mental health

The Japanese art-form of origami has been floating around for hundreds of years, but did you know that origami can promote mindfulness and mental peace? 

By regularly folding, you could experience benefits in other areas of life, not just getting crisper folds. Marlynn Wei in a Psychology Today article explores how the practice of origami can impact mental wellbeing.

 First off, there are the physical benefits, ranging from better hand-eye coordination to better special visualization and improved concentration. All of these would be extremely helpful in daily life, whether studying for a test or putting together that new desk you have been avoiding assembling. 

Origami can also help you accept the mistakes you make everyday. When you fold an origami figure, no matter how hard you try, you will never get it quite perfect. And yet, it can still turn into something beautiful. If you apply this concept to daily life, it relives a little of the stress we heap upon ourselves trying to be perfect.

Also, while you can do origami by yourself, there is nothing like sharing the joy of a new skill with someone else. Teaching anyone, whether an adult or a child, how to fold and sharing with them the pleasure of creating a three-dimensional object from a flat sheet of paper is a joy in itself. 

Most people have toyed with origami in one form or another, whether folding simple paper foxes or tearing paper to shreds in frustration after trying for the millionth time to understand those cryptic step-by-step folding instructions. Today however, there is no need to suffer through complex origami manuals; YouTube abounds with tutorials ranging from easy to impossible. The materials you need to start are simple: a piece of paper, scissors (to trim your paper into a perfect square) and patience. And you don’t even have to have a special kind of paper. You can get pre-squared origami paper, but you can also use regular printer paper, the pages of that syllabus you never read, wrapping paper, paper bags and even candy wrappers (you can make the most adorable paper cranes from pink and yellow starburst wrappers). 

You can also start folding at any time, practicing patience and concentration while at the same time creating a beautiful object to decorate your dorm. And, if you want to experience the beauty of origami without folding it yourself, make sure to be looking up at the colorful hanging butterflies in Old Admin.