If you have trouble sleeping, you may have tried using a weighted blanket. My kids have them and really enjoy the sensation of the extra pressure, but what about in the summer when it gets warm? Enter the Quiet Mind weighted pillow.
I spoke with Mikey Goldman, the inventor of the Quiet Mind weighted pillows, about the idea behind them. Goldman has ADHD and liked the way that deep pressure stimulation worked to calm his mind, but weighted blankets weren’t quite working for him, in part because they were just too warm and he felt too confined when he tried them. He had the idea of getting a weighted pillow instead and was surprised that there wasn’t a lot out there, so he designed one himself.
The Quiet Mind weighted pillow is a square memory foam pillow with recycled glass beads inside for the weight, and it comes in three sizes weighing 6, 9, and 12 pounds. The pillow is meant to achieve a similar effect to weighted blankets, but with a few differences: aside from being cooler to use than a blanket, it also feels less confining (another issue Goldman had with blankets), and it’s a little more portable and easier to travel with than a weighted blanket. (I can confirm this last part because my kids all use weighted blankets and have occasionally packed them for weekend trips… they’re a pain to move around!) Also, when you use a weighted pillow, all of its weight is on you rather than partly spread out on the bed, so you get the full effect of the pressure. (That does mean you may need to use a lower weight than you would typically get with a weighted blanket, though.)
I was sent a pillow in the large (12-pound) size to try out, and my family has taken some turns testing it out. It didn’t actually get very warm in Portland until more recently, so I’d tried it on top of our (unweighted) blanket for sleeping but that didn’t work so well. Once it got warmer, I tried the pillow in its place. I also prefer to have a cover while sleeping, though I haven’t used a weighted blanket myself. The 12-pound pillow was a bit much on my chest, though putting it on my legs felt a bit like having a pet sitting in my lap. I also tried having it next to me and just partially leaning on me, though it’s big enough that it starts crowding into my wife’s half of the bed, and that ended up feeling more like my kid decided to crawl into bed with us (but with less kicking!).
Quiet Mind also introduced a new “Mini Squeeze” pillow this year: it weighs 1.5 pounds and is about a 6-inch square. It’s used less for the weight on you and more like a fidget tool or a stress ball, albeit a pretty big one. I found that it was a little too big to easily hold with just one hand, and Goldman said he likes to hold it with both hands kind of like a sandwich, and it’s something he keeps at his desk and uses during video calls, among other things. The glass beads in the Mini Squeeze are also made so that you can feel them a bit more, giving it an interesting texture to knead and squeeze. The full-sized pillows have the glass beads embedded in a way that you can’t really feel the individual beads at all and it distributes the weight nicely and evenly.
My wife used the large pillow for a nap and said she enjoyed the feeling of hugging it during her nap, though she did wish it were more of an oval shape instead of square. The small one she finds is nice to use just for a little calming moment, resting it against her chest. My teenager enjoyed having the large pillow in his lap while playing video games. My college-age daughter discovered a new use case for the Mini Squeeze this summer: she was having frequent stomach pains (an ulcer, as it turns out), and found that the small pillow was just the right weight to put a small amount of pressure on her abdomen, alleviating some of the pain at least temporarily. (She’s doing better now, thanks to some meds and a careful diet, but the pillow did offer some relief.)
Overall, based on our experiences with the pillows, I think if I were to purchase one myself I would try the medium size instead—the large is just a little too big and heavy, at least as a starting point. The Quiet Mind pillows are an investment: the Mini Squeeze is $64, and the full-sized pillows range from $179 to $199. That’s a little more than a lot of the weighted blankets I’ve seen online, so the value really depends on whether you have similar complaints about weighted blankets as Goldman. If you like the pressure but not getting tangled up in a blanket, then the Quiet Mind may be a worthwhile alternative.
Disclosure: I was provided with a large pillow and Mini Squeeze for review purposes.