Are you bored of your usual workout? Do you want to include meditation in your fitness routine? Yes, that’s possible. You can further reduce your everyday stress and recharge by adding meditation to your exercise and using a meditation pillow to help attain your fitness goals.
Meditation involves different techniques to activate heightened internal (self) and external (environment) awareness and focused attention. It helps improve a person’s physical and psychological well-being.
Meditation is a great activity that you can enjoy alone or with friends and family. When you incorporate this mental exercise into your daily routine, it also helps boost your overall health and well-being as it makes it more holistic.
It’s important to meditate in a quiet place and prepare what you need for the session, such as a meditation pillow. Including a meditation pillow in your must-have kit can make a significant difference in your meditation experience.
What Is A Meditation Pillow?
A meditation pillow is made from cotton, polyester, wool, kapok, or buckwheat hulls. Buckwheat hulls are outer shells that house buckwheat grains. They are aromatic and durable. They won’t crack or break down, even after many years of repeated use. And because of their size and odd shape, it will make moving around easy.
You can use a buckwheat-filled meditation cushion during a workout. This pillow provides many benefits during meditation and exercise, allowing you to focus your mind and body on total relaxation.
A meditation pillow may come in different sizes, designs, and colors. Choosing one that’ll be best suited for you will depend on your body build or size and personal preference. More than the advantages you can enjoy from using it for meditation, the cushion can provide more health and fitness benefits than you can imagine.
How then can a meditation pillow improve your fitness routine?
7 Ways A Meditation Pillow Can Improve Your Fitness Routine
As previously mentioned, combining exercise and meditation can provide you with optimal health and fitness gains. Meditation improves the body’s homeostasis and maximizes physical endurance and stamina to get the most from workouts.
Check out the different ways a meditation pillow can improve your fitness routine below.
- Provides Comfort
A meditation cushion keeps the spine’s natural curve intact, rolling the hips slightly forward for optimal and ergonomic comfort.
When you’re comfortable meditating, it wouldn’t be so difficult for you to practice yoga. Yoga dates back to ancient times, involving deep breathing, physical poses, and intense concentration or meditation. Aside from a durable yoga mat, adding a meditation cushion can help improve your comfort and optimize your yoga performance to increase your flexibility and strength.
Sitting in a meditation pillow causes minimal strain on the joints while stretching the knees and keeping the hips open. Use a meditation pillow also prevents rounding out your back by keeping proper spine alignment for more comfortable and longer meditation sessions.
- Provides Stability And Support
Stability is a critical consideration when meditating and exercising. When your body isn’t stable, you might feel discomfort and pain, affecting your focus.
Most meditation pillows that have buckwheat hulls filling can help your body attain stability. Unlike other cushion materials that can be too firm or fluffy, buckwheat-filled pillows maintain stability and provide support when the body shifts, following the movement you’re making during meditation.
For instance, a kneeling position during meditation can cause pain in the ankles and knees. This position may lose your stability and interrupt your meditation session. Use a meditation pillow while kneeling to avoid these problems. It removes the pressure on your knee joints and promotes proper blood flow in your legs. It also raises your hips so you can sit comfortably. This can more likely help you finish longer meditation periods.
Sleep and rest are important components of a great fitness routine. You can also use a buckwheat-filled pillow in between your legs when sleeping to keep your pelvis neutral and prevent spine rotation. Good spinal alignment enhances your performance in carrying out your routine exercises and other activities the next day.
- Helps Regulate Body Temperature
During exercise and meditation, it’s important to regulate temperature to avoid discomfort, excessive sweating, and improve performance. When you feel uncomfortable and hot, you may lose concentration and decide to quit easily.
It’s a good thing that buckwheat-filled meditation pillows allow air to penetrate through without restraint to maintain a steady neutral temperature. These cushions are breathable, deeply conforming to the head, neck, and shoulders for added comfort. The buckwheat hulls allow small air volume to pass through, preventing you from soaking in sweat during rest, sleep or exercise.
- Improves Endurance And Stamina
Aside from boosting your psychological well-being, meditation and exercise can help improve your endurance, stamina, and immune defense system.
With the aid of a meditation pillow, you can sustain the challenges of doing yoga poses, lifts, sit-ups, and other forms of stamina strengthening and endurance training. You can perform different pillow exercises to attain your fitness goals (as discussed below).
If you don’t have any home gym equipment, you can use a meditation pillow to perform pillow exercises to improve your stamina and endurance. For instance, sitting on a buckwheat-filled meditation pillow engages the muscles from your back to your hips and legs, enhancing your balance. You’ll develop more flexible arms and legs and form a stronger core.
- Helps You Easily Target Specific Areas of your Body
Can you imagine yourself exercising using a meditation pillow? You can grab a meditation pillow and use it as a great tool to get moving. Below are some exercise routines you can do with a pillow that you can help improve your fitness routine:
- Pillow Hop Overs: This exercise increases your heart rate. Place the meditation cushion on the floor. Stand on one side of the meditation pillow with your feet together. Laterally step over the meditation and hop twice. Hop from side to side for 30 to 45 seconds with 15 seconds rest periods.
- Meditation Cushion Squat Jacks: Using a meditation pillow, you can lighten up the glutes and quads. Hold the meditation pillow in front of you while you stand. Jump your feet out wide (like in sumo wrestlers’ pose) and place the meditation pillow on the floor. Keep your weight in your heels and your buttocks down as you land lightly on your feet. Jump with your feet back together and your core engaged. Repeat the exercise, then pick up the meditation pillow and return to your starting position. You can repeat the action for 30 to 45 seconds, pausing for 15 seconds between repetitions.
- Meditation Pillow Pass V-Ups: With this enjoyable pillow exercise, you can strengthen your abdominal muscles. Holding a meditation pillow above your head, begin in a hollow body. Lie face-up on the floor, arms and legs straight, slightly lifted off the floor. For a hollow body hold, do a pillow pass v-up from overhead between your feet and lower back, bypassing the buckwheat-filled cushion. Bring the meditation cushion back above your head by grabbing it between your feet. You can repeat the action for 30 to 45 seconds, pausing for 15 seconds between repetitions.
- Pillow Heel Taps: Target your lower abdomen with pillow heel taps. Lie down on the floor. Place your hands on your sides, your knees bent, and your feet lifted into table-top position. Keep your feet in a flexed position after placing the meditation pillow on your leg’s lower part. Slowly lower your feet forward and squeeze your abdomen, raising your feet back up to the table-top position.
- Prevent Musculoskeletal System Problems
Musculoskeletal system issues can restrict you from performing at your maximum potential during exercise. Using a meditation pillow can help reduce your risks of developing the following musculoskeletal health problems related to exercise:
- Knee Injury: Rest your knees in a meditation cushion after exercise and avoid activities that can worsen an already painful knee, such as running, lunging, squatting, and standing and sitting for prolonged periods. Knee pillows made from buckwheat hulls increase comfort while sleeping. A knee pillow also promotes good spinal alignment and relieves pressure.
- Sciatica: Some exercises can only aggravate sciatica, and a meditation pillow can help reduce or prevent sciatica by aligning your spine. An excellent spinal alignment helps relieve some of the tension of the back muscles, potentially reducing pain caused by sciatica or herniated disc. So, the next time you perform gentle stretching, low-impact aerobics, and core-strengthening exercises, use a meditation cushion for added support, stability, and comfort.
- Shoulder Injury: Sprains and strains may occur from partial tearing or over-stretching of a ligament or tendons in the shoulders, causing pain with any movement. Back and side sleepers with shoulder pain can relieve their discomfort by using a buckwheat-filled pillow with medium or high loft. Thicker meditation pillows can provide more cushioning for your head and neck to alleviate soreness in your shoulders.
- Improves Workout Concentration
A meditation cushion can help improve your fitness level because you can focus more on your routines with less worry about the status of your joints. As mentioned, meditation cushions support the joints, preventing joint pain and discomfort during yoga and other forms of exercise.
Keeping your workout concentration offers the following benefits:
- Relax Your Mind And Body: Sitting on a meditation pillow can help you attain a calmer body and mind than sitting directly on the floor. It will help improve comfort and boost the production of good hormones in the body, such as endorphins and serotonin. In this way, you can perform range-of-motion (ROM) exercises, meditation, and other routines pain-free. And nothing can stop you from enjoying and benefiting from your meditation and exercise sessions.
- Attain Your Workout Goals Even At Home: Even if you don’t have any home gym equipment, you can still stick with your workout regimen by using a meditation pillow as an alternative. In this way, you won’t lose focus, and you can track your progress without interruption. Having a meditation pillow at home or even in the office gives you no excuse not to exercise.
Factors To Consider When Choosing A Meditation Cushion
Meditation is one of the most relaxing activities you can try after a busy day. So, take the time to meditate and combine it with exercise to improve your fitness routine. But of course, don’t forget to include a buckwheat-filled meditation cushion to your fitness essentials.
When choosing a meditation pillow, you might want to consider the following important factors:
- Materials
As stated previously, buckwheat hulls come from seed-like grains called buckwheat, which is native to Asia. Farmers commonly use buckwheat to feed animals. It’s also a staple food suitable for human consumption. Buckwheat grows within tiny hulls or a shell-like case protecting the seeds as they mature. Today, buckwheat hulls are a natural alternative filling material for pillows.
Buckwheat hulls are a popular alternative to other common types of pillow fillings that can trigger allergies. If you also have some type of allergy, this could be a good option for you.
- Quality
Check the stitches of the meditation cushion. They should be uniform in length all throughout. Ensure that the cover is intact without holes, gaps, and damages.
If you’re buying a meditation pillow online, read customer ratings to determine the quality of uploaded photos and comments or testimonials. Better yet, ask a yogi or yoga enthusiasts for recommended brands that boast quality to get the bang for your buck.
- Size
Meditation pillows are available in different colors, designs, and sizes. It’s vital to consider the size of the buckwheat-filled meditation pillow to ensure you won’t be overwhelmed or unsatisfied using it, especially when performing pillow exercises. Choose one that you’re comfortable handling and using. Check the product dimensions and compare them with the cushions you already have at home to have an idea.
- Seller Or Manufacturer
It’s also crucial to only buy meditation pillows from a reputable seller or manufacturer. Check the pillow company’s website to learn more about their pillow products by reading the listings. Some information you may need to check on includes the origin of the raw material, dimension, special features, and other helpful information to guide your purchasing decision.
By doing so, you can get the best value for your money when buying a new meditation cushion.
Conclusion
A meditation pillow can help improve your comfort and performance while meditating and exercising. Using this pillow enables you to concentrate on your breathing, posture, and the different movements, positions, and techniques that yoga or any other exercise demands.
Including a meditation pillow in your essential health and fitness toolkit can optimize your workout performance, enhancing your endurance, stamina, and concentration. In addition, using a meditation pillow eliminates pain issues, allowing you to enjoy meditating and exercising without distractions.
