Hold my Heart and Breathe with Me: Tangible Somaesthetic Designs

We present two tangible somaesthetic designs. The first design resembles a real heart, which allows users to experience their own heart's behavior by providing haptic feedback. Thus, users holding the heart design are able to feel their heartbeat in their hands. The second design is a stuffed animal, which is capable to breathe in synchrony with a user. Both designs were used as probes in a workshop with two experts practicing and teaching a meditation technique referred to as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). We conclude that tangible designs may guide users' attention away from themselves towards something outside their bodies (i.e., the artifact). Despite this possibly undesired effect, we argue that there is some potential to exploit tangible designs as mediating tools to address wellbeing for challenging user groups, such as children.