Basket of Organic Fruit Ukiyo-e

The luxurious awakening provided by the Zen Alarm Clock is part of the growing preference for things natural—natural foods, natural fibers, and now, natural acoustic sounds.  Like organic tomatoes in your salad, the organic sounds of the Zen Alarm Clock’s sweet acoustic chimes are truly a gourmet experience.

And those who like organic food may also appreciate how the Zen Clock can be used as an aesthetically sophisticated timer for practices such as yoga or meditation.

Organic Sound of the Zen Alarm Clock's Chime is Acoustic

Come by for a visit:

Now & Zen’s Natural Sounds Alarm Clock Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Ukiyo-e Print Woman in Kimono, unknown

Portable Digital Zen Alarm Clock

This one-of-a-kind precision timepiece serves many functions:

The clock wakes you gradually with Tibetan bell-like chimes-it makes waking up a beautiful experience.

As a travel clock it creates an oasis of tranquillity in your hotel room.

The clock is the perfect yoga or meditation timer, the chime enhances the aesthetic aspects of any practice.

Its natural hardwood case and long-resonating acoustic chime makes it the perfect gift for the over 50 million “cultural creative” consumers.

Digital Zen Alarm Clock

Now & Zen’s Clock Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Koi Pond Ukiyo-e print

Now & Zen introduced its original Zen Alarm Clock in 1996, but according to company founder and president, Steve McIntosh, the new bamboo Zen Alarm Clocks are the most beautiful of all their designs.  “I’m really proud of the form, function, and sustainability profile of our new bamboo Zen Alarm Clock, it’s our greenest product yet,” said McIntosh.

The bamboo Zen Clock is available in four different dial face choices, with each dial silkscreened directly on bamboo veneer for an integrated, natural look.   The new bamboo dial faces include one with contemporary numbers, one with simple modern lines, one with the Japanese character for “dream,” and a “bamboo leaf and stalk motif” inspired by Chinese ink painting.

The wood used in all Now & Zen products is sustainably grown on tree farms, and the company operates according to a strict policy of environmental sustainability for all its operations.  However, the introduction of the company’s bamboo line sets a new standard for sustainability.  Bamboo, which is a species of grass, is a very “green” material for making clock bodies. Compared to a hardwood forest the same size, bamboo produces 30% more oxygen and 20 times the biomass yield. Bamboo can be harvested annually after the first 5 to 7 years without replanting, compared to 25 to 50 years for trees, which then need to be replanted in bare soil.  Moreover, Bamboo is the fastest growing woody plant on the planet, and it’s qualities of oxygen production, carbon sequestering, and water and soil retention make it one of the world’s most sustainable commodities as well.

Bamboo canes growing in the wild

Now & Zen’s Bamboo Clock Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Bamboo Zen Clocks

Takaragawa Onsen in Japan

Practice Mindfulness at an Onsen

An onsen is a term for hot springs in the Japanese language, though the term is often used to describe the bathing facilities and inns around the hot springs.  As a volcanically active country, Japan has thousands of onsen scattered along its length and breadth.

Onsen come in many types and shapes, including outdoor and indoor baths. Baths may be either public run by a municipality or private often run as part of a hotel, ryokan or Bed and Breakfast.

Ten Thousand Waves in Santa Fe, NM

Onsen are a central feature of Japanese tourism often found out in the countryside but there are a number of popular establishments still found within major cities.  They are a major tourist attraction drawing Japanese couples, families or company groups who want to get away from the hectic life of the city to relax. Japanese often talk of the virtues of “naked communion”  for breaking down barriers and getting to know people in the relaxed homey atmosphere of a ryokan with an attached onsen.

The presence of an onsen is often indicated on signs and maps by a kanji,  (yu, meaning “hot water”).

One of Now & Zen’s favorite Japanese onsen is called Ten Thousand Waves, located in the mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Taking time to view the Koi fish at Ten Thousand Waves Onsen

In the larger scheme of things, our days on this planet are few and precious, so it seems fitting that we should begin each day with grace and beauty.  Used as an alarm clock, your Zen Clock thus serves as a useful reminder that each day is a new and sacred opportunity to live life to its fullest.  But in addition to its use as an alarm clock, your Zen Timepiece is also an aesthetically-sophisticated timer that enhances practice activities and social gatherings. It can also serve as a “mindfulness bell” that periodically calls you to stillness.

We often bring our Digital Zen Timer with us as a ‘Travel Alarm Clock’ when we go on a journey so that we can use it to meditate in a lovely hot spring like Ten Thousand Waves.

Meditation Timer with Singing Bowl

However, our Zen Timepiece’s acoustic 6-inch brass bowl-gong clock is the world’s ultimate alarm clock, practice timer, and “mindfulness bell.”

Now & Zen’s Meditation Timer Store

1638 Pearl St.

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Timer in Bamboo by Now & Zen, Boulder, CO

Flower of Life

The Zen Timepiece can also be more actively incorporated into your meditation practice as a form of “mantra” or “yantra.”  Mantra is a sanskrit word which means “mental protection.”  In Eastern meditation traditions, a mantra takes the form of a word or sound which is chanted to occupy the mind and keep disturbing thoughts from distracting the meditator.  A yantra is used in Eastern meditation traditions as an image upon which the meditator concentrates until it “disappears.”

Zen Timepiece by Now & Zen, Boulder, CO

The Zen Timepiece’s bowl strikes can be used as a sort of external mantra or sonic yantra.  The clock’s countdown mode repeat function (the interval timer) allows the bowl to be struck repeatedly at any set period, so that as the strikes repeat, they serve to bring you back to the focal point of concentration.

Now & Zen's Meditation Timers and Alarm Clocks

Now & Zen’ s Meditation Timer Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

can meditation reduce stress?

Dhyana heyah tad vrttayah.

Meditation removes disturbances of the mind. (Yoga Sutra II.11)

Research shows that meditation can help people with anxiety disorders. Philippe Goldin, director of the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience project in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, uses mindfulness meditation in his studies. The general practice is to become aware of the present moment—by paying attention to sounds, your breath, sensations in your body, or thoughts or feelings—and to observe without judgment and without trying to change what you notice.

Like most of us, the participants in Goldin’s studies suffer from all sorts of disturbances of the mind—worries, self-doubt, stress, and even panic. But people with anxiety disorders feel unable to escape from such thoughts and emotions, and find their lives overtaken by them. Goldin’s research shows that mindfulness meditation offers freedom for people with anxiety, in part by changing the way the brain responds to negative thoughts.

In his studies, participants take an eight-week mindfulness-based course in stress reduction. They meet once weekly for a class and practice on their own for up to an hour a day. The training includes mindfulness meditation, walking meditation, gentle yoga, and relaxation with body awareness as well as discussions about mindfulness in everyday life.

Before and after the intervention, participants have their brains scanned inside an fMRI (or functional MRI) machine, which looks at brain activity rather than the structure of the brain, while completing what Goldin calls “self-referential processing”—that is, thinking about themselves. An fMRI scanner tracks which brain areas consume more energy during meditation and, therefore, which regions are more active.

Ironically, the brain-scanning sessions could provoke anxiety even in the calmest of people. Participants must lie immobilized on their back with their head held in the brain scanner. They rest their teeth on dental wax to prevent any head movement or talking. They are then asked to reflect on different statements about themselves that appear on a screen in front of their face. Some of the statements are positive, but many of them are not, such as “I’m not OK the way I am,” or “Something’s wrong with me.” These are exactly the kinds of thoughts that plague people with anxiety.

The brain scans in Goldin’s studies show a surprising pattern. After the mindfulness intervention, participants have greater activity in a brain network associated with processing information when they reflect on negative self-statements. In other words, they pay more attention to the negative statements than they did before the intervention. And yet, they also show decreased activation in the amygdala—a region associated with stress and anxiety. Most important, the participants suffered less. “They reported less anxiety and worrying,” Goldin says. “They put themselves down less, and their self-esteem improved.”

Goldin’s interpretation of the findings is that mindfulness meditation teaches people with anxiety how to handle distressing thoughts and emotions without being overpowered by them. Most people either push away unpleasant thoughts or obsess over them—both of which give anxiety more power. “The goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts or emotions. The goal is to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions and learn how to move through them without getting stuck.” The brain scans suggest that the anxiety sufferers were learning to witness negative thoughts without going into a full-blown anxiety response. Research from other laboratories is confirming that mindfulness meditation can lead to lasting positive changes in the brain. For example, a recent study by Massachusetts General -Hospital and Harvard University put 26 highly stressed adults through an eight-week mindfulness-based course in stress reduction that followed the same basic format as Goldin’s study. Brain scans were taken before and after the intervention, along with participants’ own reports of stress. The participants who reported decreased stress also showed decreases in gray -matter density in the amygdala. Previous research had revealed that trauma and chronic stress can enlarge the amygdala and make it more reactive and more connected to other areas of the brain, leading to greater stress and anxiety. This study is one of the first documented cases showing change ocurring in the opposite direction—with the brain instead becoming less reactive and more resilient.

Together, these studies provide exciting evidence that small doses of mental training, such as an eight-week mindfulness course, can create important changes in one’s mental well-being.

Zen Meditation Timers and Clocks - Boulder, CO

adapted from Yoga Journal, by Kelly McGonigal

meditation tools and gentle alarm clocks

Now & Zen’s Meditation Timer & Alarm Clock Shop

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

wake up naturally

I recently taught my students about chronobiology—the study of cycles in organisms. We talked about the importance of a good night’s sleep, which is greatly aided by allowing sunlight and moonlight to synchronize our internal cycles. This means gradually awakening to morning sunlight and allowing our bodies to relax before bedtime by avoiding bright light.

Taylor had been troubled by insomnia. After this class, she was ready for a change. A few hours before bedtime, she turned off bright lights around the house and wrapped up her computer use for the day (the light from a monitor can throw off your biological clock). An hour before bedtime, she lit candles and turned off all electric lights. By candlelight, she bathed, got into her night clothes and meditated before falling into a deep, peaceful sleep. In the morning, she was awakened by the gradually increasing sunlight and her chime alarm clock with progressively increasing natural acoustic sound by Now & Zen. She came to class glowing with refreshment and a new sense of empowerment. Now Taylor understands that her body needs a relationship with natural cycles of light and dark. “I’m not nearly as groggy as I used to be,” she says. “Light really is stimulating!”

adapted from Natural Home Magazine, September/October 2009 by Carol Venolia

If you don’t have the luxury to gently wake up to by light — try the next best alternative…waking gently to soothing chimes.  Out Soothing Digital Chime Clock’s long-resonating Tibetan bell-like chime makes waking up a beautiful experience – its progressive chimes begin your day with grace.

Carol Venolia is an eco-architect and co-author of Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House (Lark Books, 2006). She teaches in the Sustainable Communities program at Dominican University of California.

Gentle Chime Clock to help you Naturally Wake-Up

Now & Zen’s Natural Chime Alarm Clock Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

stop stressing

Convinced it will rain on the party you’re planning this weekend—and it’s only Monday? Turns out, those six days of unnecessary, perceived stress quite literally can make you “worried sick,” according to a new study.

Perceived stress versus actual stress: “Actual stress is something you experience in the moment, like a giving a presentation at work, or fighting with your spouse,” says Jim Claussen, a chiropractor from Chicago. On the other hand, if you’re worried about the economy crashing or your 401(k), then you’re stressing over something you have no control over, and your stress is perceived, he says. Your body can recover from actual stress, but long-term perceived stress puts you in constant fight-or-flight mode, fatigues your adrenals, and compromises your immune system. “It’s as if you were to prop your car up on blocks, weigh the gas pedal down, and let it run all night,” says Claussen. “You can’t expect to walk into the garage the next morning and have any gas left.” The study found that people with the highest perceived stress had 80 percent fewer protective antibodies in their blood than those who were actually stressed out. Try these tips to help you chill out:

Put stress on a shelf. “It’s definitely an art,” says Claussen, “but if you can find an off button for your stressor, you’ll waste a lot less time and effort worrying about something you can’t control.” Remember that party you’re fretting about? Put your worries about the weather “on the shelf,” and come Saturday when it’s time to deal, “pull it off the shelf.”

Breathe with your belly. Lie down on the floor with a book on your belly. Inhale through your nose, feel the book rise, and hold for four seconds. Exhale all the air out through your mouth, letting the book lower. Repeat four times. Deep inhales stimulate your lungs and trigger the parasympathetic nervous system to put you in a calming state while deep exhales help drain the lymphatic system.

Meditate. Set your Zen Timer with chime for 30 minutes. Take these 30 minutes out of your day to meditate, do yoga, or t’ai chi to help reduce stress hormones, slow down your heart rate and blood pressure, and balance your system.

adapted from Natural Solutuons, by Nicole Duncan, February 2009

The Walnut Digital Zen Clock’s long-resonating Tibetan bell-like chime makes waking up and meditating a beautiful experience – its progressive chimes begin your day with grace. 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.

The Digital Zen Timer & Clock also serves as a countdown and interval timer for yoga, meditation, bodywork, etc.; and it can also be set to chime on the hour as a tool for “mindfulness.”

Yoga Timers with gentle chimes

Now & Zen’s Meditation Timer Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

walking in waves, a mindfulness meditation

There is nothing more soul-renewing than a very long, meandering, aimless walk. And I do mean aimless — as in, “I’m heading out! I have no idea how long I’ll be or where I’m going!”

I started walking this way quite by accident, in the midst of recovering from the heartache and confusion of losing my job. I had been slothful through winter, alternating between insomnia and sleeps so deep I wasn’t sure what day it was when I woke. But with the changing light of spring, I was beckoned out of doors.

Finding Peace Amidst the Chaos
I was in Manhattan, and cities are excellent places for meditative walks. They’re full of interruptions and distractions, but there is always a bus stop or a person with directions within easy distance. So you can suspend the anxiety about getting lost or getting home.

And all that noise does for humans what shape does for bats: Even if we aren’t tuning into it, it guides our steps and signals danger or direction.

A city walk also delivers the pleasure of unexpected architectural discoveries: trolls clinging to the corners of buildings, swags of flowers carved into stone friezes.

These days I’m walking in the country, in coastal Rhode Island, where the blackbirds and foxes keep me company.

“Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind,” writes Rebecca Solnit in “Wanderlust: A History of Walking.” The mind eventually begins to follow the feet, and a logjam of anxiety starts to come loose.

Soul-Renewing Walking Meditation

From Type A to Point Be
Long walks are the cure for writer’s block, lover’s block, mother’s block, friendship block, and any other kind of obstacle that we try to deliberately gnaw our way through, worrying over the problem and getting nowhere.

Better to let yourself really go nowhere and experience the delicious paradox of losing yourself to find yourself.

Walking with indirection has, at heart, a paradoxical benefit. When you stop making decisions for a little while, before you know it, you are filled with purpose, and the goals and paths of your life take on a new clarity.

It is by such grace that life unfolds; how lovely to suspend disbelief (I will never feel good again) and arrive at conviction: Life is wonderful! What a joy to be moving!

How-To: Walking as Meditation

1. Focus on your breathing. Paul Smith, walking-meditation instructor at Lake Austin Spa Resort in Austin, Texas, recommends inhaling slowly through your nose for 4 steps, keeping your breath in for 2 steps, exhaling for 4 steps, then waiting 2 steps before inhaling again.

2. Gently corral your wandering mind. Try repeating an affirmation in time with your breathing and steps. Smith recommends phrases such as “My life is a pleasure,” “I speak the truth and listen without judging,” or “I see all things in clarity.” Another trick: Visualize putting your worrisome thoughts in a balloon and letting go of the string.

3. Hold one hand behind your back. This will help slow you down. “Don’t let yourself get into race-walking mode,” Smith says.

4. Pay attention to your senses. Focus on vision first, which is easiest. Notice a plane overhead, leaves in the trees. Then notice sounds around you, the sun on your face, the smell of cut grass. Smith says, “These are ways to stay in the present.”

5. On a practical note: If you’re walking for distance, carry a little “mad money” in case you tucker out miles away. But no cell phone — or turn it off if you must have it on you.

adapted from Wholeliving.com, September 2010 by Dominique Browning

Singing Bowl Meditation Timer & Alarm Clock

Our Zen Timepiece’s – (a Singing Bowl Meditation Timer) acoustic 6-inch brass bowl-gong clock is the world’s ultimate alarm clock, practice timer, and “mindfulness bell.”

Hokusai Wave Zen Meditation Timer and Alarm Clock

Now & Zen – The Meditation Timer Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Insomnia Suggestions

You’ve tried it all—chamomile tea, hot baths, aromatherapy, melatonin—and nothing works. Your insomnia obviously calls for something a little stronger than a glass of warm milk. In fact, you need something that packs a bit more punch, but you don’t want to resort to sleep medications. Good news: Sleep researcher Roger Cole, PhD, from Del Mar, California, recommends two powerful, natural sleep therapies that have helped many insomniacs drift off peacefully to dreamland.

Resetting your body clock
If you have difficulty falling asleep at night and waking up in the morning, try dawn/dusk simulation, a form of sleep therapy that resets your body clock. Your body uses natural signals, including sunlight and darkness, to trigger hormones that make you active in the morning and sleepy at night. Bright light, particularly morning sunlight, provides the strongest signal the body uses to regulate this hormonal cycle, called your circadian rhythm. So if you typically awaken before sunrise or work in artificially lit environments, your circadian rhythm may have gotten out of sync. Using a light box may help you reset it.

Here’s how to do it: Spend the first half hour of each morning in simulated “dawn,” by sitting in front of a light box. You can do this while you eat your breakfast, read the paper, or go about your morning routine. Before bed, spend time in simulated “dusk” by closing the curtains and keeping lights dim. This combination should reset your clock within a few days.

If sleep problems continue, wake up and use your light box a half hour earlier for a few days. Cole says eventually you’ll hit a “magic sleep spot.” Once you do, you should be able to discontinue the therapy. But people who are true night owls may need to keep using both dawn and dusk simulation indefinitely to stay on their new schedules.

Cole recommends a light box that delivers 10,000 lux at a distance of at least 20 inches. A large field of view (at least 18” wide) is a plus, and a box that gives white light with an extra boost of blue or blue-green may be more effective than a plain white box.

sleepless nights call for solutions

Sleep restriction
If you have trouble falling and staying asleep, and spend time tossing and turning, sleep restriction therapy may be the ticket. This therapy is based on the theory that although your body may have learned to get along without sleep, it’s actually possible for you to retrain it.

Start by estimating how much sleep you typically get each night, as opposed to how many hours you stay awake in bed hoping for sleep (say five hours of sleep for seven in bed). Stay in bed only for the amount of time you usually sleep (the five hours), scheduling your bedtime and wake-up time appropriately (say, 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.). Meanwhile, use your bedroom for sleeping only (and for, well, you know). And no fair taking mid-day naps.

If you do wake up during the night, lie awake in bed no more than 15 minutes. Then leave the bedroom, stay warm, and engage in a peaceful activity in a dimly lit room, returning to bed when you feel ready to sleep. And now—here’s the hard part—get up at your scheduled wake-up time (6 a.m., in our example), no matter what.

By the third or fourth night, you’ll be so exhausted that you’ll probably sleep through the night. Once you sleep well two or three nights in a row, increase your time in bed by 15 minutes—five hours and 15 minutes in our example. The extra minutes may cause some wakefulness again, so keep repeating your new schedule until you sleep soundly again for a couple of days. Then, you can add another 15 minutes, so you’re up to five hours and 30 minutes. Gradually work yourself up to seven hours of sleep (eight or nine may be unrealistic).

Obviously, sleep restriction requires self-discipline. But Cole reports that this therapy has been “experimentally proven to be as powerful as sleeping pills for helping insomniacs sleep, and is probably more powerful for the long term.” He does caution that sleep disorders can mask depression; if you notice other symptoms of depression, talk to your health practitioner before you try this therapy.

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, April 2006 by Nina Zolotow

Gentle Awakening Alarm Clocks with Peaceful Chime

Now & Zen – The Zen Alarm Clock Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383