Retrospec Sedona Zafu vs a Zafu and Zabuton Set

The short answer, before I take two thousand words to get to it: the Retrospec Sedona zafu is what sits on the floor of my quiet room, and after nine months I would buy it again. I did not buy the set. Not because a zafu and zabuton set is a bad idea. Because my quiet room is the smallest bedroom in a 1950s brick ranch, roughly nine feet by eleven, and I wanted one thing to slide under the reading chair, not two. If you have been circling the same listings since January, opening tabs and closing them, telling yourself you will decide after the holidays, this is the comparison I wanted someone to hand me in February. One cushion against a cushion and mat set. What each one is actually for. Which one fits a spare bedroom that already has a chair in it.

Some background so you know what kind of sitter I am. I am 58, retired from a school library in Rockford, and I sit on the floor for ten to fifteen minutes most mornings after coffee. That is the whole practice. I am not a yoga person and I am not going to become one. Before February I sat on a folded bath towel, which is what you do when you have not decided yet. The towel worked about as well as you would guess, which is to say my hips complained and the towel migrated. So I bought the Retrospec cushion in the first week of February with my own money, and it has been on the mat in that room ever since.

	Retrospec Sedona zafu	Zafu and zabuton set
What arrives	One buckwheat filled cushion, 17 by 10.5 by 5.5 inches	A round cushion plus a flat rectangular mat
Knees and ankles	The cushion only, so your knees land on the floor	The mat gives knees and ankles somewhere to land
Changing the firmness	Unzip the inner compartment, add or remove hulls	Whatever the set arrives with
Footprint in a small room	One piece, slides under the reading chair	Two pieces, and the mat is the wide one
Cleaning	Cotton cover, machine wash	Varies by set, mats are often spot clean
Warranty	One year limited	Varies, often not stated
Sits longer than twenty minutes	Firm buckwheat holds up, but the floor is still the floor	The mat spreads the pressure across a wider area
Carrying it to another room	16 ounces, one hand	Two pieces to carry, one of them wide

Read those rows in order and you can see who this is written for. Five favor the cushion. Two favor the set, and they are the two that matter if your knees are fussier than mine or if you sit longer than a quarter of an hour. Nothing in that table is a knock on the set. A mat under a cushion is the older arrangement and there is a reason it survived.

Where the Retrospec Sedona Wins

The reason I bought the cushion and not the set is the least interesting reason on the list. It is one object. My quiet room has a reading chair, a yoga mat, a small shelf and a window, and that is the entire room. Two floor pieces in a space that size start to feel like clutter by the second week, and clutter is the opposite of what the room is for. The cushion is 16 ounces and about 17 by 10.5 by 5.5 inches, so when I am done I pick it up with one hand and slide it under the chair. Dale has never once had to step around it, which he appreciates more than he says out loud.

The second thing is the fill, and this is the part I did not expect to care about. Buckwheat is firm. The listing says so plainly, and firm is what you want for ten minutes, because a soft cushion lets you sink and then you spend the entire sit rearranging yourself instead of sitting. What I did not expect to use is the inner compartment. You unzip it and you can take hulls out or put them back, and I have done both. In March the cushion felt too tall and I took out two handfuls. By August the hulls had settled and I put them back in. That sounds like a small thing until you have owned a cushion you could not adjust, and then it is the only thing. The cotton cover is machine washable and there is a one year limited warranty, neither of which I have needed in nine months.

Where the Zafu and Zabuton Set Wins

Now the honest part. I did not buy the set and I am not going to pretend the mat is decoration. It does work the cushion cannot do, and that work happens at your knees and ankles. When you sit cross legged on a cushion with nothing under it, your knees come down to the floor and after a while they let you know about it. My quiet room has carpet and a thin yoga mat under the cushion, which softens the landing, and I still notice by minute twelve. On bare hardwood I would have bought the set. If knee pressure is the reason you stopped sitting on the floor in the first place, the mat is the part that fixes it, not the cushion.

The set also wins on how the corner looks, and I say that as someone who does not spend much time thinking about how things look. A mat under a cushion reads as a place. A cushion alone reads as a cushion on the floor. If your quiet corner sits in a living room where guests see it every day, the set does the arranging for you. It also gives a second person somewhere to sit when a friend wants to join you for ten minutes. I think about that more than I expected to, because my sister Joan sits on the floor at her own house and there is nowhere comfortable for her here.

What Nine Months on a Buckwheat Cushion Felt Like

The first week was not comfortable, and I want to be clear about that because reviews that skip the first week are not much use. The cushion was taller than a folded towel, so my hips sat higher and the whole angle of my back changed. The hulls made a soft crunching sound every time I shifted. I remember thinking I had spent money to be less comfortable than I was on the towel. By the fourth morning I had stopped hearing the sound. By the end of the first week my hips had stopped complaining, mostly because I had stopped sliding off the thing every two minutes.

By March the routine had settled. Coffee, then twelve minutes on the cushion, then I get up and start the day. Some mornings it is eight minutes and some mornings it is fifteen, and I have stopped keeping score. The change I actually noticed was not in my body. It was that I stopped fidgeting. On the towel I was shifting, straightening, tugging at the corners, checking the clock. On the cushion I sit still, and sitting still for twelve minutes turns out to be the harder and more useful half of it.

What it did not do is fix anything. It is a cushion. I am not going to tell you it changed my back or my sleep or my mood, because I do not know that and neither does anyone else. It gave me a place to sit that was not a bath towel, and having a real place to sit turned out to be the difference between a habit that lasts and a habit that quietly stops happening.

The towel moved every time I did. The cushion does not. That turned out to be the difference between sitting for two minutes and sitting for twelve.

The Height and Fill Question

Five and a half inches sounds like a number on a listing until you sit on something two inches shorter. The height is what puts your hips above your knees when you cross your legs, and once your hips are higher than your knees you can let your spine do what it wants to do instead of fighting it. My folded towel was maybe an inch and a half. That inch and a half was the entire problem, and I did not understand it until I sat on something that had the height right.

The buckwheat settles. That is the trade you make for fill you can adjust. Hulls compress over weeks, the cushion gets a little flatter, and the fix is to unzip the inner compartment and top it back up or shake what is in there toward the middle. I do that on the first Sunday of the month when I wipe down the shelf and the windowsill, and it takes about a minute. If you want a cushion that never changes shape, buckwheat is not it. If you want one that can be made to fit you again, it is.

Living With It: Washing, Moving, and the Vacuum

The care is easier than I expected. The cover is cotton and the instructions say machine wash, so once a season I unzip it, lift the filled inner compartment out, and wash the cover on cold. Then I lay it flat to dry, because cotton that goes in a hot dryer comes out smaller than it went in. The hulls themselves never see water. The whole job takes a few minutes of actual attention and a morning of waiting, and the cover goes back on while still slightly damp, which is easier than fighting it when it is bone dry.

The rest of living with it is unremarkable, which is a compliment. It vacuums like any fabric. It does not need a special spot. When Dale had his knee replaced in the spring and the house filled up with people for two weeks, the cushion went into the hall closet and came back out afterward without any ceremony. Two pieces would have needed a corner of their own for those two weeks. One piece fit on a shelf.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Retrospec Sedona zafu if your quiet corner is a small room, if you sit for ten or fifteen minutes rather than half an hour, and if you want one object you can pick up with one hand and put away. Buy it if you like the idea of adjusting the fill yourself instead of deciding on day one that a cushion is the wrong height and living with it. Buy it if the floor under you is carpet, or if you already have a yoga mat you can put down. That is my situation almost exactly, and nine months in I have no complaints worth writing down.

Buy the set if your floor is bare hardwood, if your knees complain within five minutes of sitting cross legged, or if you sit for twenty minutes or longer and want the pressure spread out. Buy it if the corner is in a room guests see, because the mat makes the space look arranged in a way a single cushion does not. And buy it if you expect company on the floor. If you are somewhere in the middle, the cushion now and a mat later is a perfectly reasonable order to do this in, and it is the order I would take if I were starting over on hardwood.