Rocking Chair | Rocking Chairs, Hidden Power

As I mentioned in the last article, the rocking chair was made largely popular by American manufacturers in the early 1700s. It’s history it vague but for the most part it is believed to have originated in England at the Windsor castle, which had chairs in the gardens that sat on bands of wood that curved so that they rocked when you say in them. Its namesake coming from this area, the Philadelphia-made American Windsor Rocking chair gained worldwide popularity in a short amount of time.

Over time rocking chairs gained popularity indoors and out it was born the Boston rocker which is the most often passed down piece of furniture in generational families. They took on many functions beyond just relaxing on the porch. Parents used a kind of nursery rocking chair to assuage fussy children and put them to sleep. Other times it was used to soothe an ailing child or to console emotional stress. For the most part a child’s rocking chair was used as a bonding mechanism between mother and child, the two of them rocking together in unison.

Nursery Rocking Chair

Rocking a baby offers the baby a sense of security when the mother is with it, creating a rhythm with her breathing that the baby was used to during pregnancy. The rocking pattern strengthens the neural network in the child’s brain and ensures that all signals are being reached and operate normally. This bond doesn’t always exist between mother and child as many new mothers simply give their child a pacifier, put them in a crib and expect the child to fall to sleep content. But the fact is the baby needs that connection while it is still in its infancy. Otherwise, emotional trauma sets in.

Even in adults the beneficial use of wooden rocking chairs is becoming evident in psychological evaluations. It is now being used in conjunction to aiding relief for a wide assortment of health issues. Studies at the Center for Clinical Research on Aging have shown that even the gentlest rocking motion releases endorphins in the elderly. Therapeutic rocking has been proven to increase the lifespan for individuals suffering from Dementia and other memory loss disabilities, like Alzheimer’s. The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center found that rocking chairs and gliders both produce calming movements which can increase the rate of healing in severely ill individuals. They have become standard instruments in post surgery recovery.

Glider Rocking Chairs

Increased heart attack recuperation as well as quicker stroke recovery have been recorded in hospitals in Germany where patients were found to have no permanent damage as a direct result of rocking as part of their recovery plan. Many patients who have had severe arthritis have been recorded getting up and moving around more freely after using glider rocking chairs in their therapeutic sessions. The rocking chair is fast moving away from being simply a piece of furniture that your grandparents used to own. It’s finding its way into medical practice.

That being said, the following conditions have become optimal targets for applying therapy with rocking chairs.

• Dementia
• Alzheimer’s
• Autism
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Stuttering
• Diabetes
• Arthritis
• Heart Disease
• Surgical Recovery
• Mental Illness

The history of the rocking chair helping people get through tough times outside of disabilities has been recorded over the centuries including Benjamin Franklin, John F. Kennedy, who made famous his own Kennedy rocking chair, a simple wooden rocking chair that he used extensively during his presidency. There are many other famous Americans who are connected to the rocking chair in some form or another, Mark Twain and Dwight D Eisenhower, to name a few more; and the tradition keeps growing.