Use our unique "Zen Clock" which functions as a Yoga Timer. It features a long-resonating acoustic chime that brings your meditation or yoga session to a gradual close, preserving the environment of stillness while also acting as an effective time signal.
Following up on previous research showing that people who have practiced meditation for a long time have more gray matter in their brains, a small new study finds that their brains also shrink less as they age and they have stronger connections in the brain itself.
This means that brain cells may better relay electrical signals, researchers said.
“Our results suggest that long-term meditators have white-matter fibers that are either more numerous, more dense or more insulated throughout the brain,” study co-author Eileen Luders, a visiting assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, said in a university news release.
“We also found that the normal age-related decline of white-matter tissue is considerably reduced in active meditation practitioners,” she added.
The beauty and functionality of the Zen Clock/Timer makes it a meditation tool that can actually help you "make time" for meditation in your life. Bring yourself back to balance.
The researchers used technology known as diffusion tensor imaging to scan the brains of study participants and uncover differences in structural connectivity. The study included 27 people who practiced meditation styles such as Shamatha, Vipassana and Zazen for between 5 to 46 years, and 27 other people of the same age and gender who did not meditate.
The investigators found that the two groups had pronounced differences in structural connectivity throughout the brain, not just in one area.
“Meditation . . . might not only cause changes in brain anatomy by inducing growth, but also by preventing reduction,” Luders said. “That is, if practiced regularly and over years, meditation may slow down aging-related brain atrophy, perhaps by positively affecting the immune system.”
However, “it’s possible that meditators might have brains that are fundamentally different to begin with,” Luders pointed out.
“For example, a particular brain anatomy may have drawn an individual to meditation or helped maintain an ongoing practice — meaning that the enhanced fiber connectivity in meditators constitutes a predisposition towards meditation, rather than being the consequence of the practice,” Luders said.
The study findings were released online in advance of publication in the Aug. 15 print edition of the journal NeuroImage.
Use our unique "Zen Clock" which functions as a Yoga Timer. It features a long-resonating acoustic chime that brings your meditation or yoga session to a gradual close, preserving the environment of stillness while also acting as an effective time signal.
Although meditation can be done in almost any context, practitioners usually employ a quiet, tranquil space, a meditation cushion or bench, and some kind of timing device to time the meditation session. Ideally, the more these accoutrements can be integrated the better. Thus, it is conducive to a satisfying meditation practice to have a timer or clock that is tranquil and beautiful. Using a kitchen timer or beeper watch is less than ideal.
And it was with these considerations in mind that we designed our digital Zen Alarm Clock and practice timer. This unique “Zen Clock” features a long-resonating acoustic chime that brings the meditation session to a gradual close, preserving the environment of stillness while also acting as an effective time signal. The Digital Zen Clock can be programmed to chime at the end of the meditation session or periodically throughout the session as a kind of sonic yantra. The beauty and functionality of the Zen Clock/Timer makes it a meditation tool that can actually help you “make time” for meditation in your life.
More information
The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has more about meditation.
– Randy Dotinga
SOURCE: University of California, Los Angeles Health Sciences, news release, July 14, 2011
Our Yoga Timer & Clock can be programmed to chime at the end of the meditation or yoga session or periodically throughout the session as a kind of sonic yantra.
Now & Zen – The Meditation Timer Shop
1638 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO 80302
(800) 779-6383
orders@now-zen.com
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