On a therapist’s shelf, a four-sided wooden top doesn’t seem like much. However, if you walk into the correct office in December, you’ll find it sitting next to the breathing charts and fidget spinners, performing a task for which it was never intended.
The Dreidel was never intended to be a wellness tool. It originates from a Hanukkah game with chocolate coins and a Hebrew letter-stamped top. However, some therapists, especially those who work with anxious children and overstimulated adults, have begun giving it to their clients in between sessions, using the spin as a sort of pressure valve.
The waiting seems to be the source of the appeal. Nothing is decided for two or three seconds after you flick the dreidel. Where it lands is beyond your control. The result cannot be rushed. Strangely, that brief window of uncertainty is similar to what mindfulness instructors have been asking students to experience for years: the discomfort of not knowing, held momentarily and calmly.
It’s important to note that no one asserts that a spinning top can treat anxiety. That would be a hollow and exaggerated statement. A physical anchor, something to do with restless hands while a challenging emotion passes through, is what therapists describe as smaller and more plausible. For a long time, fidget toys have been used for that purpose. A simple spinner lacks the sense of occasion and ritual that the dreidel just so happens to add.
Additionally, there is the issue of rhythm. It requires little effort to divert attention from racing thoughts by watching the top wobble, slow, and eventually tip onto one of its four legs. No app to launch, no breathing count to keep track of. Watch it fall, please. Since asking a seven-year-old to close her eyes and breathe for sixty seconds rarely works and asking her to spin something almost always does, therapists who work with children seem particularly drawn to this.
Here, too, cultural context is important. Jewish mindfulness writers have pointed out for years that rituals like Havdalah, lighting candles, or pausing for a blessing already function as built-in moments of presence, full of scent and sound and small physical gestures. That same pattern applies to the dreidel. It may have been practicing mindfulness long before the term was coined, but without the branding.
There’s also a philosophical component, similar to what a professor at UC Riverside once wrote about in a lighthearted way: dreidel makes you make tiny, repeated decisions about patience, fairness, and how to deal with a result you didn’t choose. That is not insignificant. The game subtly teaches what worksheets frequently don’t, according to therapists who treat younger clients’ frustration tolerance.
It’s difficult to predict whether this will become a permanent fixture in therapy rooms or revert to a seasonal curiosity. The majority of fidget items eventually lose their appeal once the novelty wears off, and mindfulness trends come and go. Nonetheless, it makes sense for a toy that is based on uncertainty to serve as a brief lesson in accepting it. That swaying top merits its place on the shelf for the time being, at least until December.