Designer: Yury Gitman
Product: My Beating Heart Pillows
Link: www.mybeatingheart.com
Heal thyself with this pillow. Last week, at our 6th Meetup, we met Yury Gitman and his remarkable creation: pillows with simulated heartbeats inside. Drawing from his own experience with meditation and his education at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), the pillows are designed to delight and calm you when you hold them. This was an easy crowd favorite...
- My Beating Heart
- $120 (price going down with smaller styles coming)
- Made by hand with the highest quality UltraSuede. Computer chip with battery inside runs a device used in cell phones to create the "heartbeat".

My Beating Heart is a soft huggable heart with a soothing heartbeat you can actually feel. When hugging the heart, the tactile heartbeat reminds you of holding a pet or a loved-one. Hold the heart a moment and you'll begin to sense your own heartbeat slowly syncing with My Beating Heart's carefully designed rhythm. My Beating Heart is designed to help you relax, daydream, meditate, and nap.

Feel the Beat
Our hearts naturally begin to dance and sync with the hearts of others' we hug or hold. Heartbeats have a powerful effect on us and produce an array of emotions within. This is a phenomenon humans and animals have observed for ages. Because this effect can be so powerful, we've worked - and literally meditated on -- producing a physical heartbeat in My Beating Heart that provides solace and relaxation.

Haptics for the Heart and the Physics of a Heartbeat
Many have described the physical sensation of hugging My Beating Heart as similar to holding a purring kitty-cat. This physical beating is created with technology similar to that in rumble-pack video-game controllers. In geek-speak, this technology is called haptics. But this haptic aspect is designed and engineered to soothe and comfort. In essence, Hugging My Beating Heart is like hugging a person who is meditating.
In fact, everytime you turn it on, an entirely unique heartbeat rhythm is created. The heartbeat rhythm itself changes subtly and gradually over time, replicating the heartbeat of a human in a meditative state. This is all made possible by a 8 MHZ computer inside each Beating Heart that uses our "secret sauce" algorithm. It's like yoga in a pillow.
Reminds me of "The Tell-Tale Heart."
view Downeast Suzy's profile
Ha! I remember that story from high school. What a great story. Love Poe.
view Vanessa in New York's profile
My baby boy is a chest sleeper. I swear he needs to hear a heartbeat to relax enough to sleep. I think this pillow would be perfect for him!
view hwtm's profile
When I was a kid, toy bears with beating hearts were popular -- I think that they were called "heart to heart bears" -- and I really wanted one. One day, I stumbled across an unboxed one at a toy store. I immediately picked it up & hugged it -- big mistake. For some reason, the simulated heartbeat made me instantly nauseated, and I almost threw up in the store.
The idea of paying $120 to feel queasy? Not really happening.
view ami's profile