What Is The Best Acupressure Pillow?

Note: This page will talk about acupressure pillows in particular. If you’re interested in a complete set of acupressure equipment that includes an acupressure yoga mat and pillow, check out our page about acupressure mat reviews.

Our Favorite Acupressure Pillows

Best standalone acupressure pillow: DG Sports Acupressure Pillow

Best set of acupressure mat + pillow + roller ball: Spoonk Acupressure Mat Set

What Is An Acupressure Pillow & How Does It Work?

Acupressure pillows are specially designed pillows that differ from regular pillows in one important way: instead of being comfortable, they are uncomfortable!

Okay, that sounds weird. But hear me out.

An acupressure pillow is a pillow that is covered in little plastic pokey things. The plastic pokey spikes put pressure into acupressure points on your head, neck, and shoulder areas. This pressure activates the acupressure point and achieves healing and relief similar to regular acupressure.

The whole point of the pillow is to help you stimulate various acupressure points on your body, especially the neck and head areas but really anywhere would be an option. You could put an acupressure pillow under your legs while you lay down and take a nap if you wanted to.

Why Use An Acupressure Pillow?

An acupressure pillow has tons of small spikes that put pressure into dozens of points on your skin at once. Some people believe that stimulating multiple acupressure points at once is more effective than just stimulating one at a time with your fingers.

An acupressure pillow will also help you poke at various points that you may not be able to reach easily with your fingers. For example, it’s quite difficult to apply strong pressure with your fingers to your upper back area without an assistant to massage the points for you. But with an acupressure pillow, you could just lay with your back on the pillow to stimulate those points all at once.

Acupressure Pillow vs Mat vs Roller Ball – What’s Better?

There’s a lot of acupressure-related equipment out there to choose from, and most of it boils down to having a solid object that is coated in small plastic or wooden spikes that will poke into your skin and stimulate your pressure points.

An acupressure pillow will be best if you intend to do acupressure around the back of your neck and head, and maybe your upper shoulders, just where a normal pillow would lay.

But if you need an acupressure tools that will also hit your lower back or other body parts, you may want to consider buying a complete acupressure set that comes with a variety of items. A roller ball is great for getting a deep tissue session in on your back, whereas an acupressure mat is generally good for a light to medium pressure session anywhere else on your body.

If you want a set with a variety of acupressure items, I recommend the Spoonk Acupressure set. It comes with a mat, a pillow, and a roller ball.

Acupressure Pillow Benefits – Relieve Your Neck Pain?

Nobody can guarantee that acupressure will work for you. However, plenty of people out there have told their success stories of how acupressure healed their injuries or provided pain relief from aching muscles.

An acupressure pillow is an option worth considering if you suffer from chronic neck pain or upper back pain. The stimulating pointy parts of the pillow will be able to press deep into your neck and back tissue to strongly massage the muscles of those areas.

Pretty much everyone can benefit from a good deep tissue massage, and having a piece of acupressure equipment like this will allow you to give yourself deep tissue stimulation any time you want.

How To Use An Acupressure Pillow Properly

Acupressure is a laymen-friendly methodology. That means that you are free, as a casual user, to do it the way you want to do it.

When using fingers to stimulate acupressure points, some people prefer to apply hard pressure, while others apply gentle pressure. Some people rub the points briskly, and others gently. Some use deep tissue massage techniques to target the points, whilst others use EFT-style tapping on the points.

Basically what I’m saying is that you can use acupressure in whatever way produces the best feeling for you. Any stimulation of acupressure points at all will generally be effective at improving the flow of meridian energy throughout the acupuncture meridians. Hard pressure on the acupressure points will also be effective at stimulating the muscle tissues themselves.

An acupressure pillow is just a tool that helps you apply pressure in the way you see fit. You can simply try out different levels of pressure and see which one produces the best feelings for your body.