Kitagawa Utamaro, Komuraski of the Tamaya, House After a Bath, 1795

Sure, we all know we’re supposed to get seven or eight hours of sleep a night, but all of us skimp from time to time, getting, say, five hours one night and six hours the next. Those lost hours, though, can add up to a big sleep debt by the end of the week—the reason so many of us feel wiped out by Friday. But here’s a bit of good news: Researchers have found that sleeping in after a few days of missed sleep can help pay back that debt, nearly erasing any lingering sense of fatigue and mental fuzziness, according to a study published in 2010 in the journal Sleep. “The brain has a built-in reflex that helps you sleep deeper and longer when you’re sleep deprived,” says study coauthor David Dinges, chief of the division of sleep and chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “This recovery sleep seems to have a genuine benefit to restoring alertness.”

Think you’re doing fine on only six hours a night? Think again. Although Dinges hears this from folks all the time, he says it’s true for only a small percentage of the population. Most of us actually need seven or eight hours of shut-eye to feel 100 percent the next day. “If you fall asleep watching TV or struggle to stay awake in a meeting,” he says, “you’re sleep deprived.” And it’s not just fatigue you feel but reduced brain function in terms of your memory, alertness, cognitive speed, and reaction time. “Some of us are so used to not getting enough sleep that we’ve forgotten what it feels like to be fully alert,” Dinges adds.

One of the ultimate Zen like experiences is waking-up from a great slumber refreshed and energized. Your mind and body are harmoniously one, both alert and focused. Having a refreshed mind and body are two keys to a natural and Zen lifestyle. Waking up in the morning should not be a loud and abrupt awakening, but rather it should be a peaceful positive experience.  The right natural alarm clock can transition your deep and tranquil sleep into a serene start to consciousness. Imagine a long-resonating Tibetan bell-like chime waking you up to a beautiful morning experience.

Waking up in the morning should be as pleasant as falling asleep at night. The Zen Alarm Clock's gradual, gentle awakening is transformative.

The right alarm clock can be the most beneficial investment for you. With our Now & Zen natural alarm clock you are awakened more gradually and thus more naturally. Now & Zen is focused on creating a naturalistic lifestyle, and our clocks are an example of our philosophy.

By ANGELA HAUPT for US News

Wake up with gradual, beautiful acoustic chimes. The Zen Alarm Clock transforms your mornings and gets you started right, with a progressive awakening

Now & Zen – The Soothing Chime Alarm Clocks Shop

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

orders@now-zen.com

Now

Walking Meditation

As my colleague Rusty wrote last week, youshouldn’t get mad at work. But sometimes it just happens. One minute you’re typing up a memo, and the next, you realize it’s been a good minute since you took a breath. Anger has a devilish way of sneaking up on us—especially at work.

But here’s a cure: walking meditation.

At the onset of anger, the best thing you can do for yourself and your career is get up from your desk and walk away. Implement these steps for a successful walking meditation session, and your quality of life at work will dramatically improve.

The goal is to observe the act of walking while becoming completely aware of your body, your breathing, and your surroundings.

Step One: Schedule walking meditation practice on a daily basis. As with most things in life, practice makes perfect. One of the keys to maintaining equanimity is to incorporate regular meditation into your daily life. By scheduling a daily walk, you will improve your meditation skills, ensure you get up from your desk, and create a routine, which gives you a better shot at achieving success. By practicing regularly, you’ll learn to squash anger quickly when it arises.

Step Two: Choose a walking meditation route. One of the goals of this practice is to quiet our minds. We all spend much of our day multitasking at work, while juggling our personal lives as well. Choose a route with little vehicular or pedestrian traffic. The ideal route will be straight, flat, and outdoors. However, walking meditation can be practiced anywhere; a stairwell, quadrangle, or even the office lobby. Try several different routes until you find one that works for you. The best routes are ones that give you enough to observe, without over-stimulating your mind.

Step Three: Before you get started, take several deep breaths. Stand still. Take air in through your nose and feel your abdomen rise. Make yourself aware of the earth under your feet. Enjoy the miracle of being alive. Forget whatever brought you to get up from your desk and temporarily walk away. Tell yourself that you are about to take a walk and clear your mind because you deserve to feel good—even at work.

Step Four: You are now ready to begin your walk. Take measured steps and get in tune with your body. Notice how your feet feel against the ground, how your legs are gliding you forward, how the air feels against your face. Remember that this is not a race. You are enjoying this walk and the world will be fine even if you check out for a few minutes.

Walking Meditation

Step Five: Keep your mind quiet. As you walk, thoughts will pop into your head. Some of them will be negative thoughts about work. Others might be about how you have 1,000 things to do when you get home tonight. As each thought comes up, acknowledge it, let it go, and concentrate on the walk. This walk is to clear your mind—not clutter it. It is important not to become angry with yourself if this task is difficult for you. Most people are surprised about how difficult it is to shut off their brains for a few minutes! With some practice, it will become easier for you to quiet your mind.

Step Six: Wind down. Ideally you’ll be able to devote 15 minutes a day at work to your walking meditation practice. However, not everyone has that luxury at work. With some practice, a successful walking meditation session can be as short as the walk from your desk to the bathroom. Remember, the goal is to regain your balance and not allow yourself to get angry, upset, or overly emotional at work. Also, don’t end your walking meditation abruptly. Ease yourself back into work life by coming to a planned halt.

Step Seven: Use a mental checklist. When your walk ends, notice how your body feels compared to the beginning of the walk. The good news is that you can’t fail at meditation; there are only varying degrees of success. Don’t have any expectations, other than you know this exercise is good for your body and mind—even if the results aren’t obvious.

Walking meditation has done wonders for my mental clarity at work, and I hope it helps you too! There are many different approaches to this practice. Let us know what works best for you.

It’s exquisite sounds summon your consciousness out of your meditative state with a series of subtle gongs. Once you experience the Zen Timepiece’s progressive tones, you’ll never want to meditate  any other way.  It serves as the perfect meditation timer. Available in 5 wood styles, including bamboo.

Andrew G. Rosen is the founder and editor of Jobacle.com, a career advice blog. He is also the author of How to Quit Your Job.

Use our unique "Zen Clock" which functions as a Yoga & Meditation Timer

Now & Zen – The Singing Bowl Meditation Timer Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

orders@now-zen.com

Eliminate shocking Alarm Clocks, Zen Clocks are Soothing

Eliminate Shocking Alarm Clocks to Extend Your Life

There’s nothing quite like the shock of the alarm going off in the morning. For most, it signals the arrival of yet another dreary day of work. For some, like me, it heralds the tragic end of what was probably a poor night’s sleep: intermittent, anxiety-filled, and barely coaxed with the aid of half an Ambien. Many of us prolong the act of getting up by repeatedly hitting the snooze button until we accidentally turn the damn thing off. Why do so many alarm clocks greet us with sadistic, high-pitched screeches? Is there a better way to wake?

The Bamboo Digital Zen Clock’s long-resonating Tibetan bell-like chime makes waking up a beautiful experience – its progressive chimes begin your day with grace.  There are no gimmicky buttons or sounds. The Digital Zen Alarm Clock doesn’t have a snooze button, instead it has a gradual sequence of chimes to awaken you in the morning.

When the clock’s alarm is triggered, the acoustic chime bar is struck just once … 3-1/2 minutes later it strikes again … chime strikes become more frequent over 10 minutes … eventually striking every 5 seconds until shut off. As they become more frequent, the gentle chimes will always wake you up – your body really doesn’t need to be awakened harshly, with a Zen Clock you’re awakened more gradually and thus more naturally.  Unlike artificial recorded sounds coming out of a tiny speaker in a plastic box, natural acoustic sounds transform your bedroom or office environment.

By Dan Crane from Slate.com

Digital Zen Alarm Clocks Eliminate Shocking Wake Ups

Now & Zen’s Shop – Alarm Clocks for Your Well-being

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Try a Listen Meditation as a Mindfulness Practice

Listening Meditation
Instructor Sally Kempton is a spiritual guide who teaches yoga and meditation at her Carmel, Calif.-based Awakened Heart Meditation (sallykempton.com). She authored The Heart of Meditation under her monastic name Swami Durgananda.

What is it? While many meditation techniques require solitude and silence, this one has you engage with the sounds all around you; it invites you to work with and use the noise instead of fighting it. Listening meditation also encourages you to harmonize with your surroundings, and, by extension, the universe. The intent is to experience sound as vibration, rather than information. The listening practice is a way of interacting with the environment that allows you to take in the whole energy of the present moment, says Kempton.

What’s it good for? Especially adaptable and portable, listening meditation can be practiced in crowded, noisy situationson a bus, at the office that would be hard on other styles. (Kempton once led a listening meditation workshop in the middle of a busy Whole Foods store!) People with particularly chattering minds may need to couple this practice with a mantra or breathing meditation. However, many people welcome the chance to focus outward rather than inward and find that listening meditation is one of the easier techniques to undertake. You’ll come away from it feeling refreshed, expanded, and at ease with your environment, declares Kempton.

How long does it take? Try for five minutes at first, then add a minute or two until you can do it for 15 or 20 minutes at a time.  Set your Chime Meditation Timer by Now & Zen for five minutes and then increase as you get better at this practice.

How Do I Do It?
1. Set your Meditation Chime Timer for 5 minutes (increase the minutes as you improve). Sit in a comfortable position and close (or half close) your eyes.

2. To get centered and quiet the mind, first bring your awareness to your breath, noticing but not trying to change it.

3. Now open your ears and bring your awareness to the sounds around you. The goal is to listen to the whole range of sounds, without favoring one over another and without identifying them. Hear the quiet sounds and the silences as well as the dominant sounds.

4. When you find yourself identifying sounds (there’s a fire engine; thats the cat scratching the rug), gently redirect your attention from listening to a specific noise back to hearing the whole spectrum of sounds.

5. To end, slowly open your eyes, stand, and carry this heightened awareness with you for as long as you can.

Tip: Do a one-minute mini-listening meditation while standing in line or sitting at your desk, or anytime you feel frazzled: Close your eyes, breathe, and listen to the sounds around you. Like the practice of counting to 10 when you’re in the heat of an argument, this will help you pause, center, and regroup.

Zen Meditation Timers, The Digital Zen Alarm Clock in Solid Walnut

adapted from Natural Health Magazine

Now & Zen’s Chime Time Store

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Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Zen Timepiece Black with Long-resonating Singing Bowl

THE TRADITION OF BELLS, GONGS, AND SINGING BOWLS

Singing Bowl Alarm Clocks and Chime Alarm Clocks

Now & Zen Headquarter Store

1638 Pearl St.

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(800) 779-6383

Singing Bowl Alarm Clocks are Made of Five Metals

The bowl that comes with our Zen Timepiece is made from the following five metals: copper, zinc, lead, iron, and tin.  It has been formed using the same forging techniques that have been used in Asia for two thousand years.  Unlike hand-hammered Himalayan-style bowls, your Zen Timepiece’s rin gong bowl is made using methods which first appeared in Japan in the first century.  Following these traditions, your bowl’s long-resonating tone has been carefully selected to bring beauty and harmony to your environment.

The bowl that comes with our Zen Timepiece is made from the following five metals: copper, zinc, lead, iron, and tin.  It has been formed using the same forging techniques that have been used in Asia for two thousand years.  Unlike hand-hammered Himalayan-style bowls, your Zen Timepiece’s rin gong bowl is made using methods which first appeared in Japan in the first century.  Following these traditions, your bowl’s long-resonating tone has been carefully selected to bring beauty and harmony to your environment.

Long-resonating Singing Bowl Alarm Clocks

Now & Zen

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Harunobu Suzuki, Beauty at the Veranda - Choose a gentle chime meditation timer by Now & Zen

You’re aiming for stimulated and focused—but not frazzled

Raleigh, N.C., businessman Buddy Howard used to feel his heart race and dread set in every time he thought about driving up profits at his equity research firm or was faced with an unwieldy project that seemed impossible to complete. Then his 11-year-old daughter developed anorexia—and he suddenly learned the difference between stress and stress. “Nothing comes close to the stress you feel as a parent when you’re afraid that your child is going to die,” says the 50-year-old father of two, who, seven years later, gets energized by the same deadline crunches that used to paralyze him. He now breaks large projects into discrete tasks that provide daily victories—the same bite-by-bite, pound-by-pound process his daughter used to overcome her eating disorder. And he’s altered his perspective on bigger earnings, focusing on the rush of the challenge and blotting out the fear of failure.

Stress has certainly earned its bad reputation, given the wreckage it causes: headaches, stomach pain, high blood pressure, insomnia, and mind freeze reminiscent of a crashing laptop. But it also has an unheralded upside. In normal doses, adrenaline and other “fight or flight” hormones improve performance and seem to even protect health. They increase alertness and motivate you to get things done by quickening your heartbeat, improving blood flow to the brain, and enhancing vision and hearing. And in small amounts, studies suggest, they boost the immune system and may protect against age-related memory loss by keeping brain cells active. University of Texas researchers recently found that those engaged in challenging and creative work enjoy better health—an advantage equivalent to being nearly seven years younger. “Your goal shouldn’t be to get rid of stress,” contends Esther Sternberg, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health and author of The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions. Rather, she says, you should aim for “the appropriate stress response.”

Extremely agitated. Getting the calibration just right can be tough, but it’s achievable: As Howard discovered, it’s often a matter of changing one’s perception of a challenge. Plenty of Americans have yet to figure out how. According to a recent survey by the American Psychological Association, nearly half say their level of stress has increased over the past five years, and fully one third routinely experience extreme agitation.

The problem with overwhelming stress? In the short term, the rush of stress hormones can make people less productive, even mentally paralyzed. Think writer’s block. When the overload becomes chronic, heart disease, depression, and an impaired immune system can result. An estimated 50 to 80 percent of people who develop depression have faced a major stressful life event, like a divorce or job firing, during the preceding three to six months and most likely have produced an excessive amount of the stress hormone cortisol. An October study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that heart patients battling chronic job strain were twice as likely as their more relaxed peers to have another heart attack. And researchers have been aware for some time that overanxious folks exposed to cold viruses are more apt to end up sick than those who aren’t.

“We think the system stops working appropriately when it’s constantly turned on,” says Sheldon Cohen, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University who first discovered the link between colds and stress. Chronically elevated cortisol levels lead to more colds and infections; depleted levels can cause an overactive immune system—and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

It's exquisite sounds summon your consciousness out of your meditative state with a series of subtle gongs.

The ultimate goal is to hit a stress response appropriate for a given situation: You want to be in low gear when you’re, say, watching TV, medium when you’re doing car pool, and high—but not overdrive—when you’re under a deadline crunch. High gear is what Sternberg calls the peak of the “stress response rainbow,” or the point where you’re at your most productive, able to focus on the task at hand with minimal distractions. Most likely, you’re sent into this zone by an optimal level of adrenaline, cortisol, and other hormones that increase your pulse, reduce peripheral vision, and improve blood flow to the brain.

Biology undoubtedly plays a role in how easily you hit the target: A study published last year in the journal Cell found that mice that adapted poorly after being put in a cage with bigger, more aggressive mice produced larger amounts of stress-related brain chemicals than those that adapted well. But modifiable beliefs and expectations factor in, too. Expecting that your life will be unchanging, for example, is bound to make you react badly to dropping house values and a child’s academic reversals, says psychologist Robert Rosen, author of Just Enough Anxiety, a new book that explains how anxiety can be a key to success in the workplace. “Buddhists have this idea that every time we breathe, the world changes,” Rosen says. A philosophy of acceptance allows them to make peace with what they can’t control—like an earthquake, inflation, or an oppressive political regime.

Once you experience the Zen Timepiece's progressive tones, you'll never want to meditate any other way. It serves as the perfect meditation timer.

Playing tricks. Sometimes, Sternberg says, the trick “is to fool your brain into thinking that you have some degree of control.” Researchers have shown that people produce more healthful levels of stress hormones when they’re told they have control over a stressor, whether or not they actually act—they have the ability to press a button to stop a loud, irritating noise, say, even if they don’t stop the noise. It’s all about being proactive rather than placing blame—as much as we’d like to put it on our parents—or sitting back and feeling helpless.

You might find a way, for example, to limit your exposure to a stressor. Duke University stress researcher Redford Williams says he reduced his tension over having to deal with endless E-mail messages by simply deciding to stop constantly checking his PDA after hours. (Bonus: Ignoring the pesky E-mail eased a bit of stress in his marriage, too, he says, since he could tell from his wife’s body language that “it wasn’t good for our relationship.”)

Or you might take a break to exert your mastery in other areas. Daniel Lobring, a 29-year-old public relations manager from Chicago, restores his “I can deal” feelings by picking up his drumsticks. He finds that drumming helps relieve stress headaches triggered by the pressures of organizing high-profile events for athletes and clients like ESPN. “I can only send out so many press releases and photos,” he says, “and it’s stressful, waiting and hoping that whatever I did will get some media coverage.” With music, he explains, he knows his performance rests completely in his hands. Even in times of crushing catastrophes, people can find relief by doing something purposeful: donating blood or cash after 9/11 or the Chinese earthquake; buying energy-efficient light bulbs or a hybrid car to ease distress over global warming and rising gas prices.

Unless you’re a natural-born optimist, of course, you may really have to work at seeing possibilities when times are tough. “The way to become more resilient is to live in the world, challenging yourself socially, psychologically, and intellectually,” contends stress and resilience researcher Mary Steinhardt, a therapist and professor of health education at the University of Texas-Austin. In a study published in the January Journal of American College Health, she found that stressed-out college students who were given four weekly therapy sessions—focusing on coping strategies, self-esteem building, and making interpersonal connections—increased their “stress resilience,” a measure of how quickly they bounce back after feeling stressed, far more than peers who didn’t get the counseling.

Steinhardt suggests pausing when stress hits to simply recognize its source, whether it’s an unrealistic deadline, a family reunion, or an inflating mortgage. Focusing your attention on the problem is key to identifying what you can control and accepting what you can’t and topreventing a panicked reaction from developing unchecked. If you’re not in a panic, you can offer yourself some coaching: Is anger going to be productive? Are you really (choose one): a bad employee, the black sheep of the family, someone completely incapable of handling personal finances?

Once you experience the Zen Timepiece's progressive tones, you'll never want to meditate any other way. It serves as the perfect meditation timer.

Be Happy Without Being Perfect, argues that we need to retrain our brains to think realistically. She recommends keeping a journal detailing any perfectionist tendencies, what’s gained from them (a spotless house, perhaps), and what’s lost (the novel waiting on your nightstand).

The guilt has to go along with the outsize expectations. Feeling overwhelmed by the needs of her husband and two kids and the demands of her employee relations job at computer maker Dell, Tonja Eaton of Round Rock, Texas, says she learned to put her wants (free time on Sundays, family evenings at home, belly-dancing classes) over her shoulds (visits with relatives, birthday parties for her children’s acquaintances, serving on a charity board) after joining a monthly “personal renewal group” focusing on work-life balance issues. More than 150 of these groups, based on The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal by Renée Trudeau, have formed around the country. “I’ve discovered a lot of creative ways to say no,” says Eaton, 36. “I’ve learned to make it a rule that a minimum of 50 percent of weekends be spent at home. We’re much more connected as a family when we do that.”

Understressed. While the health hazards of too much stress have been well established, too little isn’t good for you either, according to Monika Fleshner, an associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado-Boulder who has conducted numerous studies on the stress response. It could be that if the stress system isn’t activated often enough, she theorizes, it produces higher levels of stress hormones when it does get turned on. Like a muscle, it may need to be used regularly in order to stay in peak working condition. This could explain why some people fall apart when hit by a serious crisis while others rise to the occasion. If your body isn’t used to having challenges, Fleshner speculates, “perhaps when the stress response finally does get turned on, it’s hard to turn off.”

More established are the daily psychological consequences that stem from a lack of challenge: boredom, low energy, and a reduced sense of accomplishment. Teresa Walden, 44, grew all too familiar with these feelings in the years after quitting her in-house-attorney position in Austin to raise her two sons. She assumed that going back to her position once her sons started school would restore her mojo, but instead she felt stymied by the same old work. Ultimately, Walden decided to become a life coach. “I definitely feel more energized, more alive with purpose and intention,” she says. “It makes me a better mom.”

Whether you’re bored or overwhelmed, reaching the optimal stress zone requires bridging the gap “between your current reality and your desired future,” says psychologist Rosen. “There’s the voice inside you that says take a leap, go forward, but there’s also the voice that holds you back, warning that it’s too risky.” His five-step plan for getting through the gap: Identify what you want to change; imagine your desired outcome; assess your current situation; analyze what it will take to get you to your future goal; and take action to get there, setting one small goal at a time.

Yoga Stretch

Try the cure-all. Beyond using your mental processes to manage your response to stress, there’s that terrific physiological tool: exercise. Regular physical activity is the single best thing you can do to gain energy if you’re understressed and to relax if you’re frazzled, say experts. A 2007 study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine found that people who exercise at least two or three times a week have smaller increases in blood pressure, heart rate, and inflammatory chemicals when given stressful word-naming tasks than those who never exercise.

Researchers now think that exercise triggers the release of “feel good” endorphins in the brain, one of which, enkephalin, is believed to prevent the release of excessively high levels of adrenaline and cortisol. A session of exercise also triggers the stress response—a plus for those who are underchallenged. If you’re having either a stressful or a low-energy day, head for the gym or squeeze in a 20-minute ultrabrisk walk, recommends Mark Hamer, an exercise physiologist at University College in London. You’ll get the biggest benefits within an hour after you work out.

Any treat that activates your brain’s pleasure centers—a massage, a piece of rich chocolate, a funny movie—can similarly dampen your stress levels. Novelty is what you’re shooting for if your stress levels are too low: Head to an amusement park, sign up for a challenging art class, or take a rafting trip down some rapids. With practice, you can get good at avoiding that “most useless place…for people just waiting…for a better break…another chance,” in the words of Dr. Seuss in Oh, the Places You‘ll Go! His advice: “When things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.”

By DEBORAH KOTZ for US News

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.

Once you experience the Zen Timepiece's progressive tones, you'll never want to meditate any other way. It serves as the perfect meditation timer.

It serves as the perfect meditation timer.

Once you experience the Zen Timepiece's progressive tones, you'll never want to meditate any other way.

There’s nothing like economic calamity to focus the mind. But instead of obsessing over your job security or declining 401(k) balance, try diminishing your stress with a new assist from a very old tool: meditation.

Stretching back thousands of years to ancient spiritual traditions, meditation has been attracting a growing following of secular practitioners in recent years. While it’s still not exactly mainstream, data released in December by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, an arm of the National Institutes of Health, show that 9.4 percent of adults surveyed in 2007 had tried meditation at least once during the previous 12 months, a significant increase from 7.6 percent in 2002. And 1 percent of children had zoned in, too.

Your choices are extensive—mindfulness meditation, transcendental meditation, and the latest trend, compassion meditation, are three of many approaches, each with a slightly different intent. Compassion meditation aims to foster a feeling of lovingkindness toward others, for example, while mindfulness meditation focuses on awareness and acceptance of the present moment.

Whatever the variation, certain basic elements are common to all forms of meditation. Comfortably seated, lying down, or even walking around, you focus your mind on your breath, a word, a mantra, an object—something specific—possibly for a few minutes but perhaps much longer, gently pushing away distracting thoughts. As you learn to stay focused, you experience a sense of calm. Your body relaxes. Your breathing slows. Your heart rate drops.

Many of those who practice meditation turn to it to help them deal with emotional stumbling blocks like stress and anxiety. It can also be used to change unhealthful eating habits or to battle substance abuse. And studies continue to add to the ways in which meditation might be able to play a therapeutic role—for example, it has been shown to bolster HIV patients’ immune systems, ease chronic pain, and reduce blood pressure.

Gene control. New research has been taking these discoveries to a deeper level, revealing how meditation and other relaxation techniques work in cells, turning on and off genes that are associated with inflammation, cell aging, and free radicals, all of which are associated with damage to cells and tissues. French philosopher René Descartes famously believed that the mind and body were separate entities, but emerging evidence is proving him wrong.

Once you experience the Zen Timepiece's progressive tones, you'll never want to meditate any other way.

“What this shows is that you can actually change the brain with the mind,” says Herbert Benson, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a coauthor of a study demonstrating such genetic changes that was published in July in the online journal PLoS One.

Meditation’s psychological and physical effects both are tied to the “fight or flight” response. When we are under stress, the brain sends hormones and other substances racing through our system to ready us for action. We become hyperalert, our heart rate and breathing speed up, our muscles tense, and our digestive processes shut down. While modern Americans are less likely to face physical danger than were our prehistoric, mastodon-hunting ancestors, there’s no shortage of other sources of stress. High-pressure, overbusy lives, coupled with the unrelenting economic uncertainty of much of the past year, can put the body in a constant state of hypervigilance. That’s not good. An ongoing state of revved-up alertness can damage tissues and organs, suppress the immune system, and cause anxiety and depression.

Mental workout. The calm that meditation engenders produces physical and emotional changes that represent the flip side of fight-or-flight. For those with overtaxed lives, a bonus of meditation is that a little of it apparently goes a long way. One study of individuals who were new to meditating showed measurable brain and behavior differences after just two weeks of daily 30-minute sessions, says Richard Davidson, director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But meditation is like any other workout: To reap the benefits, don’t stop. “This is mental exercise,” says Davidson. “If one wants [benefits] to continue, you have to continue.”

Experts and practice centers that can serve as sources ofmeditation training are becoming easier to find. One of the best known and most studied programs is the Mindfulness-Based StressReduction Program, which started at the University of Massachusetts Medical School nearly 30 years ago and is now offered by certified instructors at centers around the world. (You can see if there is one in your area atumassmed.edu/cfm/mbsr.) The program brings together a group of people once a week for eight weeks to learn sitting and walking meditation practices and gentle yoga stretches. For those who would rather learn on their own, books, tapes, and CDs are available from Jon Kabat-Zinn, founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts and creator of the MBSR program, at mindfulnesstapes.com. They can help do-it-yourselfers learn the ropes.

It serves as the perfect meditation timer. Available in 5 wood styles, including bamboo.

No amount of meditating can magically erase the stress of losing a job or a loved one. But it can help people cope. “It can transform the emotional brain in ways that promote higher levels of resilience [and] less vulnerability and affect the body in ways that can improve health,” says Davidson. All that for just minutes a day? Even a shellshocked investor would have to admit: That sounds like a good deal.

By MICHELLE ANDREWS for US News

Use our unique “Zen Clock” which functions as a Yoga & Meditation 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. 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. 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.

It serves as the perfect meditation timer. Available in 5 wood styles, including bamboo.

Now & Zen – The Acoustic Chime Meditation Timer Shop

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

orders@now-zen.com

Carved Wooden Thai Buddha with Singing Bowl

The Himalayan peoples have been using metal bowls in their rituals and as offerings to Deities since at least 560 B.C.  These hand-hammered Himalayan alloy bowls have come to be known as “Tibetan Singing Bowls”

The Himalayan peoples have been using metal bowls in their rituals and as offerings to Deities since at least 560 B.C.  These hand-hammered Himalayan alloy bowls have come to be known as “Tibetan Singing Bowls”  because of the unique way they are sounded by rubbing a mallet over the rim so as to produce harmonic resonances and overtones.  Although the bowl that comes with your Zen Timepiece is not technically a Tibetan Singing Bowl, it will produce harmonic effects if a mallet or striking stick is rubbed around its edge in a circular motion.

Singing Bowl Alarm Clocks for a Gentle Awakening

Now & Zen

1638 Pearl St.

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Once you experience the Zen Timepiece's progressive tones, you'll never want to meditate any other way. UTAMARO, Kitagawa, A Mother Dozing While Her Child Topples a Fish Bowl

Pay close attention to each feeling, and let it be

Let’s say you slam into the back of a car that cuts you off or your boss moves your deadline up a week. How do you react? Perhaps your pulse quickens as you berate yourself for not foreseeing the circumstance. Maybe your breathing shortens as you feel anger or panic—or both. Most people, though, don’t notice such details; they react with an “Aargh!” and distract themselves with a run or a beer or a gallon of ice cream.

But researchers say one of the best ways of soothing stress is to be “mindful,” to pause and actually tune in to what’s going on at the moment. Being acutely aware of what you’re experiencing—the racing heart, the tumbling thoughts—and accepting it without judgment, observing as it changes, has a strong calming effect, experts say. “You might have a thought like ‘I’m a failure,’ but you know that it’s just a thought,” explains researcher Elissa Epel, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine. That will prevent you from turning those thoughts into a self-fulfilling prophecy by, say, quitting the gym or a challenging job.

Wandering thoughts. How do you get to a mindful state in the midst of a panic? Most people need to practice a form of meditation that focuses on their breathing and sensations in each body part. If your mind wanders (and it will), you just acknowledge the errant thoughts, let them go, and bring your attention back to the breath. Check out a mindfulness tape at mindfulnesstapes.com, or take a free virtual-mindfulness class on YouTube with Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts and author of several books on mindfulness. “You are training your mind to be less reactive and more stable,” he writes in Full Catastrophe Living. A 2007 study found that mindfulness classes gave students an improved sense of well-being—and that practicing the technique for about 30 minutes a day helped induce a mindful response when people would normally feel stress.

It's exquisite sounds summon your consciousness out of your meditative state with a series of subtle gongs.

The practice may also help alleviate some of the physiological damage caused by chronic stress, like the tendency to store fat around abdominal organs. Epel and her colleagues are currently studying whether 50 overweight women who describe themselves as “stress eaters” can curb food cravings by practicing mindfulness—by noticing a raisin’s color, texture, and smell, say, before eating it. If stress reduction practices lower cortisol levels, the body’s storage of fat should shift from the abdomen to the hips and thighs, where it won’t cause insulin resistance, Epel speculates. A bonus: It might get easier to stop at one Oreo.

By DEBORAH KOTZ for US News

It's exquisite sounds summon your consciousness out of your meditative state with a series of subtle gongs.