be calm for your health

High blood pressure is not something you’d expect to see in kids, but the incidence has risen dramatically in the last few years along with their obesity rates. And there’s plenty of reason to be alarmed, since the condition can lead to heart disease later in life.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to treat it that doesn’t involve nagging kids to get up and exercise (not that being active is a bad thing, of course). Meditation, a proven blood pressure-reducer for adults, turns out to be useful for hypertensive children as well.

In a recent study at a middle school in Augusta, Georgia, 73 11- and 12-year olds were randomly assigned to either a meditation group or a health class where they learned about exercise and nutrition. After three months, the meditators, who practiced for 20 minutes twice a day, saw a significant drop in their blood pressure. The other group got no such benefit.

“If they keep it up, the meditators could substantially reduce their risk of dying from heart disease or stroke,” says Vernon Barnes, coauthor of the study. Some kids also got relief from headaches and asthma attacks, he adds.

A safe, and free, solution to some serious health problems: What more could you ask for?

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine

Zen Timepiece, a natural sounding timer with bowl/gong

Now & Zen’s Clock and Meditation Timer Store

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meditating may change your brain

Apparently, people who meditate are a bit thickheaded—in a good way of course. A new study led by Massachusetts General Hospital shows that the regular practice of a particular form of meditation appears to thicken areas of the brain associated with attention and sensory processing.

Brain scans of experienced, frequent meditators showed thickening in the insula, an area of the cortex involved in the integration of emotion with thought. Most of the structural changes occurred in the right hemisphere of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex, which regulates memory and attention. This area tends to thin as we age, and yet the thickening was more pronounced in older practitioners. According to Sara Lazar, PhD, the study’s lead author, this evidence suggests that meditation may slow down the atrophy of certain areas of the brain that typically occurs with age.

Perhaps even more interesting, you needn’t don robes and retire to a cave somewhere to achieve these results. Instead of scanning the brains of Buddhist monks who devote their lives to meditation, researchers enrolled 20 people who averaged nine years of experience and about 40 minutes a day meditating. (Fifteen people with no experience in meditation formed the control group.) Those participants who meditated most deeply—as measured by breathing rates—showed the greatest changes in their brains, which suggests that meditation caused the thickening, as opposed to the thickening indicating a predisposition to meditate.

Tibetan Bowel Meditation Timers

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, August 2006 by Megan Keough

Now & Zen’s Meditation Timer Store

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mind-body therapies help your heart

Research shows that the stress-inflammation cycle is as detrimental to your heart as a plate full of the cheesiest fettuccine Alfredo. “Stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, cause the arteries to constrict, which results in a rise in blood pressure and decrease in blood flow,” Moyad explains. Less blood flow means less oxygen circulating through the body to combat free radicals—unstable cells that can damage healthy tissues. “We know now that bad LDL cholesterol only becomes threatening when levels get so high that it binds with free radicals,” Moyad says. When this happens, LDL changes structure and gets absorbed by the arterial walls’ lining, resulting in plaque buildup, or atherosclerosis. Such tissue damage causes the immune system to go into overdrive, triggering inflammation. Reduce your risk with effective mind-body therapies like meditation, yoga, exercise or massage.

The Digital Zen Clock & Meditation Timer 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.”

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, January 2010 by Kate Hanley

bamboo meditation timer and natural alarm clock with gentle chime

Now & Zen’s Clock and Meditation Timer Shop

1638 Pearl Street

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meditation sunrise

Big Sky Mind

After a while, turn your attention from the surface of the lake toward the sky itself. Then imagine shifting your gaze from the reflections, the passing phenomena, to the sky within which they all arise and pass away. The sky is boundless, limitless. It contains everything that arises. The horizon is only a perceptual or conceptual boundary that can never be reached. Even on the cloudiest day, the sky is luminous above the clouds, pervasive, limitless, and free.

Awareness has the qualities of luminosity and limitlessness. It is present always, behind, between, and beyond all the ever-changing phenomena. Whenever you catch yourself identifying with the mental “clouds,” simply shift your identification from the clouds to the sky itself. Realize that what you’ve been seeking is what you already are and have always been! Big Sky Mind opens us to seeing that our true nature is this awareness within which all experience arises and passes away.

adapted from Yoga Journal, by Frank Jude Boccio

Zen Timepiece with brass singing bowl, a meditation timer

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Compassionate Listening Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh

When we speak of listening with compassion, we usually think of listening to someone else. But we must also listen to the wounded child inside of us. The wounded child in us is here in the present moment. And we can heal him or her right now.

Practice:

“My dear little wounded child, I’m here for you, ready to listen to you. Please tell me all your suffering, all your pain. I am here, really listening.” If you know how to go back to her, to him, and listen like that every day for five or 10 minutes, healing will take place. … Do that for a few weeks or a few months, the wounded child in you will be healed. Mindfulness is the energy that can help us do this. —Thich Nhat Hanh, from Anger: Wisdom to Cool the Flames

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

Singing Bowl Mindfulness Gong and Timer

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, January 2008

Zen Timepiece with brass bowl, a perfect meditation timer with gentle gong

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Timers

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meditating on a rock

According to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the heart is the emperor of the body—it feeds all systems and rules the mind. The connection between the mind and the heart is more than just metaphysical: In a 2008 study conducted by researchers at the Medical College of Georgia, adolescents who practiced simple breath-awareness meditation for 20 minutes a day—10 minutes in school and 10 minutes at home—for three months experienced significant reductions in blood pressure and resting heart rate. Laurie Steelsmith, ND, a specialist in TCM and author of Natural Choices for Women’s Health (Three Rivers Press, 2005), recommends meditating 20 minutes a day at least four times a week to reap the full benefits of the practice. Or give your heart a mini-vacation by settling in with your favorite soothing CD. Research shows the heart synchronizes its beating to increases and decreases in music tempo. “We often use classical music to help our patients’ heart rate slow to 60 to 70 beats per minute,” says Michelle Cameron, director of healing solutions at the Cleveland Clinic.

The Digital Zen Clock & Chime Timer 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.”

Digital Zen Clocks feature a “high” and “low” chime strike volume control, which allows you to adjust the sound of the chime to suit your needs. The Digital Zen Clock runs on 2 AA batteries (not included) and can also be plugged in with the included AC jack. The clock includes a lighted digital display (which can be set to be lit full-time when plugged in).

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, January 2010 by Kate Hanley

Natural Chime Meditation Timers in Solid Maple

Now & Zen’s Natural Chime Timer Shop

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calm your mind with a mindfulness practice

Calm Your Mind
Most stress-reduction techniques will help relieve moderate anxiety, says Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D., a psychologist practicing in Hawaii and California and the author of Natural Relief for Anxiety (New Harbinger Publications, 2004). This can include abdominal breathing, yoga, tai chi, guided visualizations, or even just taking a break two or three times every day to relax, take a walk, or imagine yourself in a peaceful place.  Set your Zen Meditation Timer anyplace or anytime for just 5 minutes a day so that you can calm your mind.

Mindfulness-based meditation, which has proved especially helpful in reducing anxiety, is now being taught in many hospitals and health centers across the country. Studies have found that, among other benefits, it can lower breathing rate, reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and increase activity in the left frontal area of the brain, which is associated with a positive mental state and lowered anxiety levels. In fact, a recent Canadian study of cancer patients who participated in a mindfulness-based stress-reduction program found that levels of cortisol and pro-inflammatory chemicals continued to drop for six months to a year afterward.

Mindfulness practice also helps you notice your thoughts and feelings without judging them. “Mindfulness means accepting whatever you may notice around you and not trying to analyze it,” Duke University’s Brantley says.

After she left New York for North Carolina, Miller discovered the Duke Mindfulness program and found it to be invaluable. She attended group sessions and learned how to practice the meditations. The time she spent paying attention to her breathing or visualizing something peaceful improved her concentration at work and allowed her to reduce her dose of anti-anxiety medication.

The basics of the meditation (listening to your breath or paying specific attention to various parts of your body) are simple and can be learned from books—such as Full Catastrophe Living (Delta, 1990) and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Hyperion, 2005), both by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. “The important thing is to make mindful practice a part of your life so you’ll be prepared when a stressful situation arises,” Brantley says.

Our Zen Timepiece’s acoustic 6-inch brass bowl-gong Meditation Timer & Clock is the world’s ultimate alarm clock, practice timer, and “mindfulness bell.”

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine by Ben Kallen

Zen Timepiece with Brass Singing Bowl, a Meditation timer to Calm your Mind

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meditating makes you happier

A few years back, the notion that meditation could bring bliss was something only a swami might swallow. Today it’s an idea that rings true to the ever-increasing numbers of people—from Madonna and Tiger Woods to thousands of ordinary Janes and Joes—who are making meditation a part of their everyday lives.

For years, studies have suggested that meditating can ease chronic pain, lower blood pressure, and reduce anxiety. But University of Wisconsin researchers recently broke new ground, uncovering physical evidence that it may actually make us happier.

A group of stressed-out employees at a biotech company was taught mindfulness meditation and was asked to meditate at home for an hour a day, six days a week, for eight weeks. The researchers measured electrical activity in the volunteers’ brains at the beginning and end of the experiment, and again four months later.

Those who meditated had more activity in the area of their brains linked to positive emotions. “These people weren’t meditating for thousands of hours like monks do,” says Saki Santorelli, executive director of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and one of the study’s coauthors. “The study suggests that everyday people are capable of altering their brain function in a positive direction.”

The next step on the research agenda, says Santorelli, is to better define and measure just what mindfulness is, so as to understand more about how it affects the mind and body. Scientists are also looking at how meditation might help some serious conditions, including prostate cancer, asthma, and menopausal symptoms.

What you can do: All it takes to reset your stress-o-meter is ten minutes a day of quiet. To start, set a chime timer (Now & Zen $199.95), sit comfortably, and soften your gaze. Since your breath is always with you, it’s a natural place to focus your attention. Don’t get wrapped up in controlling it; instead, just observe it. Each time your attention wanders, gently bring it back to the steady flow of air in and out of your lungs. If it helps to count the breaths, go for it. If not, just focus on breathing. Believe us—you’ll be healthier and happier.

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, January 2005 by Catherine Guthrie

Chime Alarm Clock & Meditation Timers - Progressive Wake-Up Clock with Natural Acoustic Chime

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how to begin a meditation practice

One effective stress-relief strategy is meditation: It’s free, it can be done almost anywhere at any time, and you don’t need any special equipment to practice. “Meditation teaches us focused concentration — and the more you do it, the easier it gets,” says Frank Lipman, M.D., holistic physician and creator of our Stress Relief Action Plan. The exercise below is adapted from Lipman’s book “Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again” (Fireside; 2009).

If taking up meditation seems daunting, however, start with devoting just 15 minutes a day to this beginner-friendly technique. Once you’ve made it a habit, deepen your practice with the additional technique below.

1.  Set your Singing Bowl Gong Timer (Now & Zen, $199.95)  for 15 minutes.  Sit in a chair and allow your body to settle.

2.  Slowly scan your body from toe to head, noticing where you feel tight.

3.  Bring your attention to your breathing, inhaling and exhaling through the nose but never forcing your breath. Keep your mouth softly closed, your jaw relaxed.

4.  Become more and more sensitive to your breath, in tune with where your body moves (and doesn’t move) on the inhale and exhale.

5.  Allow your awareness of your breath to bring ease to your entire body. Imagine your body moving toward the earth, fully supported.

6.  Continue observing your breath moving in and out of your body.

7.  At the end of the 15 minutes when you hear the gentle chime from your Zen Timer, breathe deeply three times, allowing the inhale to move down to your toes and the exhale to move up and out of the tops of your shoulders. Pause and then open your eyes.

adapted from Body + Soul, January/February 2010

Singing Bowl Gong Meditation Timer and Alarm Clock

Now & Zen’s Singing Bowl Gong Timer Store

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(800) 779-6383