Developing a 'breathing pillow' that helps huggers reduce stress

Huggers tend to slow their breathing to synchronize with the breathing of the pillow, thus feeling more relaxed.

The team of roboticist Alice Haynes at the University of Bristol (UK) developed five soft pillows that feel like it's breathing. Their goal is to help users reduce anxiety and stress when hugging, New Atlas reported on March 11.

Designed to simulate the feeling of interacting with a pet or other person, these devices reproduce breathing rhythms, cat meows, a combination of breathing and meowing, and heartbeat. The 5th pillow can emit rainbow light.

When conducting experiments with 24 students, the pillow that breathes only gives the most comfortable feeling when hugging. Based on this information, the team of scientists created a larger version. The new device has a soft microfiber outer shell, stuffed with polyester and an airbag in the middle. This airbag inflates and deflates rhythmically thanks to an external pump that cannot be heard or seen by the user.

The pillow that only breathes provides the most comfortable feeling when hugging.

In a follow-up experiment, the experts created anxiety in 129 other volunteers by asking them to solve a series of math problems orally in front of each other. In the eight minutes before the test started, 44 people just sat and did nothing, another 40 were instructed to practice meditative breathing, and the remaining 45 people hugged their pillows to breathe.

Based on a questionnaire used to assess the anxiety levels of the volunteers before and after the test, the expert group found that the group that hugged the pillow and meditated was significantly less anxious than the group that did nothing. Researchers are still trying to understand the exact mechanism by which breathing pillows help people relieve stress.

"Later, we did a study with 21 people hugging pillows and measuring their breathing. The pillows also have different breathing rates," says Haynes.

"We found that the breathing rate of the majority of the participants was partially or fully synchronized with the breathing of the pillow. So we think the reduction in anxiety was mainly due to the students breathing slowing down to match their breathing rate. Hugging pillows. Slow breathing has been shown to affect the nervous system and reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety," she added.

The new study was published in the journal PLOS ONE. The team also intends to continue improving the breathing pillow to test it in households for a longer period of time.