The Face Cloud
An Early Experiment in Sensory Support
During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, I began experiencing insomnia and anxiety on a nightly basis. One night, after my usual 3 a.m. sojourn to the bathroom, I grabbed two throw pillows from the couch on my way back to bed.
I placed one on either side of my face, leaving a space between them to breathe.
Something unexpected happened.
Instead of tossing and turning, I fell asleep.
I began doing the same thing night after night. There was something remarkably comforting about the sensation. The pillows softened the world around me. They reduced what I could see, created gentle pressure along the sides of my face, and gave me the peculiar but welcome feeling of being enclosed without being confined.
Eventually I wondered:
Could I make one pillow that did the same thing?
That question became The Face Cloud™.
The Evolution of The Face Cloud™
I had no background in product design and very little sewing experience. I simply began experimenting.
Over the course of many prototypes, I developed a weighted pillow shaped to rest across the face and upper chest, with an opening in the center for breathing. Inside were small weighted sections arranged so that the pillow could settle around the contours of the forehead, temples, cheekbones, jaw, and upper chest.
At first, I thought I had made a sleep aid.
But as I continued using it, I became interested in something else entirely.
What exactly was the pillow doing?
Part of the answer seemed to be pressure. As a massage and bodywork therapist, I was already familiar with the calming effects that steady, intentional pressure can sometimes have on the body.
But pressure wasn't the whole experience.
The Face Cloud also changed my sensory environment.
With the pillow covering much of my face, the visual world disappeared. The room receded. There was less incoming information to attend to. At the same time, sensations that might otherwise have remained in the background—the weight of the pillow, my breathing, the contact between my body and the bed—became more noticeable.
My attention shifted.
The outside world became quieter, and the inside world became easier to perceive.
An Experiment in Attention
I began deliberately experimenting with The Face Cloud while I was awake.
I would lie down in a quiet room, place the pillow over my face, and simply notice what happened.
At first, being still wasn't particularly easy. Thoughts about things I needed to do continued appearing. My attention wanted to return to the world outside the room.
But the physical sensation of the pillow gave me something concrete to return to: its weight, the contact around my face, the movement of my breath beneath it.
The pillow became, in a sense, a soft, fluffy boundary between myself and the external world.
And that boundary created an interesting perceptual shift. Rather than trying to make myself relax, I could create conditions in which settling became easier.
I began to see The Face Cloud not simply as something comforting, but as a possible tool for self-regulation.
That distinction would become increasingly important in my work.
Different Bodies, Different Uses
As I continued experimenting, I began adapting The Face Cloud for different people. I made a smaller, lighter version for children, using playful fabrics like dinosaurs and unicorns. What had begun as a solution to my own sleepless nights was becoming something I could imagine adapting for different bodies and different kinds of sensory comfort.
I also discovered that the unusual shape made the pillow surprisingly versatile. When I turned onto my side, I could simply slide it along with me; the center opening gave my ear somewhere to rest while the pillow continued to contour around my head. I could use it beneath my head like a small pillow, where the opening created a natural hollow, or rest it across my chest for warmth and gentle weight. Folded, it could even provide a little support behind the lower back.
Other people discovered their own uses as well. One family member who uses a CPAP found that the center opening conveniently accommodated her mask.
The Face Cloud was becoming less like an object with one prescribed purpose and more like an adaptable form of sensory support.
Creating the Conditions
Over time, I began to understand The Face Cloud less as something that caused relaxation and more as something that helped create the conditions in which relaxation might occur.
The distinction mattered.
The pillow altered several aspects of the sensory environment at once. It reduced visual input. It provided gentle, distributed pressure. It created a physical boundary between the body and the surrounding world. And because attention was no longer being pulled outward quite so strongly, quieter internal sensations became easier to notice.
None of these things required me to make myself relax.
Instead, I was changing the conditions around the experience and allowing my nervous system to respond in its own way.
This idea—creating supportive conditions rather than trying to force a particular state—would eventually become central to much of my work.
From Experiment to The Sensory Lab
Looking back, I can see The Face Cloud as one of my earliest experiments in what I now think of as sensory support.
At the time, I didn't have that language for it. I was simply paying attention to an experience: what happened when I changed the sensory conditions around my body? What happened when I reduced some kinds of input and made other sensations more noticeable?
Those questions stayed with me.
They eventually became part of a much broader inquiry into attention, perception, embodiment, environment, and the ways we might create conditions that support settling, awareness, and connection.
The Face Cloud did have a small life as a handmade product, and I made and sold a number of them. These days, because each one is so labor-intensive to construct, I mostly make them for friends and loved ones when I can.
But the experiment itself didn't end.
The Face Cloud left me wondering whether sensory support could become smaller, simpler, and more specific to the body.
Could I create something less elaborate—something that offered weight, contact, or support to one particular area of the body, while still allowing the person using it to discover what felt useful?
That question eventually led to another experiment: the Pause Pillows.