Abstract

Did you manage to sleep well when you were in trouble? Our lives are filled with emotions that we learn to handle, but sometimes we cannot control them and become sick. It is well known that emotional stress and mental disorders can interfere with good sleep which can lead to illness. Therefore, healing the mind is the first step to getting a good night's sleep. This inspiration stems from my experience with insomnia in the past. Since then, I've experienced different activities, and I've noticed a dramatic change in my sleeping pattern, especially when I'm alone. However, I find my mother's warm touch and tapping comforts me the most, which makes me think of a hammock as a way to simulate motherly care. The hammocks are similar to cocoons or mothers' wombs, which require warmth, sound, and touch at various stages of their development for distraction, which led me to research sound, touch, and temperature therapy. It is through the fact that a child who was almost going to die survived when mother and child clung together that I gained an understanding of the correlation between health and touch including heat and sound.

Research

How could these therapies help? Sometimes, we simply need a gentle touch. Studies have shown that physical contact and cuddling increase the hormone oxytocin, which reduces the stress hormone cortisol and promotes feelings of warmth and relaxation. In this part, I'm intending to use tapping because I've learned that it can lower cortisol by 43% as it stimulates the nervous system, causing the body to release helpful chemicals. In sound therapy, the sound component will be a heartbeat sound as the main part, which I find interesting. I learn that it has a significant impact on emotional responses to affective stimuli When you listen to someone's heartbeat, you feel calmer because it gives the impression that someone else is lying next to you. There are also options, including singing bowls, which are very common in sound therapy, just in case the person is feeling anxious or nervous about their heartbeat. With thermal therapy, I will apply a heating pad that can be effective for alleviating depression, anorexia, and injury to relieve pain and improve sleep patterns. Heat activates and releases serotonin in the brain when it is applied to the skin.

Technical Details

Three components are hidden in this project: touch, heat, and sound. "Heat" can be created by applying a heating pad with a power switch tail at the bottom of the hammock. With bare conductive touch board, any tracks can be inserted and connected to conductive threads and fabric with alligator clips for the user to just touch along with the hammock to create a "sound". With the "touch" part, the stretch sensor is used to control the weight of the user to provide haptic tapping utilizing vibration motors placed on the bottom where the user can feel it on the back. An explanation of how to use, When the fabric is closed to hide the lights after sitting on the hammock, the user selects either a heartbeat or singing bowl sound. Listening to the selected sound, the user would feel tapped under the back and warm, just like he or she was in the womb or hatching egg awaiting for revival. Relaxing for more than five minutes is recommended.