When you lie, stand or sit on the mat you're meant to feel pain, initially, then heat, then a general sense of wellness should start to spread. Photo / Supplied
When you lie, stand or sit on the mat you're meant to feel pain, initially, then heat, then a general sense of wellness should start to spread. Photo / Supplied
Can a modern-day bed of nails alleviate back pain? Megan Wood puts her body on the spikes to find out.
Megan Wood had been limping around, grimacing for more than a week when a friend suggested she try a Shakti mat. Photo / Supplied
The promise:
A shakti mat arrived at my house with a huge promise: to relieve some of my back pain using 1000-year-old acupressure techniques. There was also some talk of improved sleep, increased relaxation and some overall fuzzy good feels. I am always down for a spot of relaxation - my life tends to be on the hectic side most of the time - but the main appeal was the prospect of pain relief. An old back injury had flared up and I'd been limping around, grimacing for more than a week. I was desperate, and when a friend mentioned the mat, I thought, why not?
An entire historical text could be (and has been, I am sure) written around the use of acupuncture and accupressure in Chinese medicine. Acupressure uses the same principles as acupuncture but applies pressure through sharp points, rather than piercing the skin with needles. The Chinese are thought to have started practising acupressure around 7000 years ago. Somewhere between 1000 and 2000 years ago, yogis in the Himalayan region of what is now India started using the infamous bed of nails. Rather than a torture device or pain tolerance test, the bed of nails was used by the yogis to achieve a greater sense of enlightenment during meditation.
Fast forward to 2007 and you'll find Swedish Yogi Om Mokshananda. Once a long-haired young juggler by the name of Jonathan Hellbom, he found peace in the Himalayas, became a monk, changed his name and invented the shakti mat.
I tried standing on the mat. I lasted about two seconds and swore like a sailor. Photo / Supplied
The science:
Though there is next to no scientific data to support the efficacy of the shakti mat, it's based on historic principles and is often referred to as a modern-day bed of nails. In place of nails though the mat features 230 hard plastic buttons dotted with a total of 6210 tiny spikes. When you lie, stand or sit on the mat you're meant to feel pain, initially, then heat, then a general sense of wellness should start to spread.
Where scientific evidence lacks, reviews are plentiful: if you scroll through online testamonies you will see that this thorny treatment has an almost cult-like following. Can it possibly be all it's cracked up to be when no one can tell me why it works?
The reality:
I unrolled my shakti mat and immediately recoiled from the feeling of the sharp plastic spikes against my hand. I tried standing on them instead. I lasted about two seconds and swore like a sailor. The next step was to try lying on it. I spread the mat on my bed and carefully lowered myself down. Surprisingly, I didn't find lying on the spikes painful. My clothes provided a bit of protection (no way was I ready to go in bare-skinned) and the sensation was weirdly satisfying, a bit like scratching an itch. I put some soothing whale sounds on, closed my eyes and waited for the magic. After about 10 minutes I really did start to feel warm and my body felt lighter. The warm and fuzzy feeling continued to spread and I thought maybe my painkillers were kicking in. Then I remembered I hadn't taken any. It was the closest to pain-free I had felt in over a week. I stayed in my warm, fuzzy, pain-free bubble for another 10 minutes, before reality intervened and I had to get up.
The shakti mat really worked for me but this might not be the case for everyone. As someone with chronic pain, it was bliss. But others have described it as virtual torture. I still use the mat daily, although to some extent I feel like I am chasing the dragon a little now. I haven't quite managed to recreate that perfect, warm, pain-free buzz from my first try. For me, 20 minutes before bed each night makes the aches, pains and stresses of my day drift away.
