finding balance

Myth: You must be in control.
Truth: Real balance means being in flux.

At the circus, all eyes are on the tightrope walker. Why? Because where there’s balance, there’s also tension and risk. The tightrope walker’s talent and skill resides not in her ability to defy gravity, but in making the hundreds of subtle, incremental readjustments to account for imbalance. In the same way, our ability to achieve balance is in learning to reestablish it when forces put it to the test.

This is why stability alone is not balance. The more we cling to things (circumstances, people, possessions) to hold us in balance, the less we rely on our internal strength and flexibility to adapt. And because balance is not a fixed point, but always moving forward, we need to move forward, too. This can mean embracing change and allowing ourselves to evolve.

Moving to a new city, letting go of an old relationship, or losing a job are potential triggers for imbalance, and any one of them has the potential to throw you off your axis, causing stress, exhaustion, or anxiety. Balance comes when we adapt to change, rather than try to resist it. But you can start small: Encourage and practice smaller-scale changes in your life so that you’re better prepared to handle the bigger ones.

zen chime clocks, tools for well-being

seated forward bend

A harmonizing practice for people in recovery

As you practice the following sequence, remember to honor your limitations, going to your edge with love and acceptance rather than judgment and discouragement. If you are unable to move into a posture at this time, focus on breath-ing deeply as you think about the affirmation—that in itself is healing. At the end of the routine, take some time to write down your thoughts.

Benefits Helps stretch the hamstrings and lower back. It also fosters a sense of calm and letting go, while gently stretching the spine.

Affirmation I move forward with patience.

Sit on the floor with your legs extended in front of you. Sit up straight and rotate your ankles, flexing and stretching them. Keeping your feet flexed, inhale and lift your arms above your head. As you exhale, bend at the hips and lower your chest toward your knees. Keep your spine straight as you do this. Place your hands on your calves, ankles, or feet, wherever you can comfortably reach. Hold the pose for 10 breaths.

adapted from Yoga Journal, by Annalisa Cunningham, author of Healing Addiction with Yoga

Zen Alarm Clock with Gentle Chime for Stress Reduction

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yoga stretch

What it does:

Stretches the chest and upper-back muscles, improves posture.

How to do it: Sit tall in a chair. Bend elbows and interlace your hands behind your head. Tilt your head back slightly and let the weight of your head rest in your hands. Lift your spine and chest up toward the ceiling. If it’s comfortable, arch the uppermost portion of your spine slightly back, but keep your focus on lifting up the chest. Stay for up to one minute, breathing deeply and exhaling with an “s” sound.

adapted from Body + Soul Magazine

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. 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.

Yoga timers and gentle wake up clocks with chimes

Kids yoga

There’s never a dull—or quiet—moment in Kate Roades’s yoga classes for kids. “Oh, it’s never silent,” she says, adding that chatting, laughter, and audible groans are the norm. Just recently a little student quipped midpose, “I am not a cobra, Teacher Kate, I am a seal.” Roades’s enthusiasm and accepting attitude during moments like these make her a great teacher—giggling is OK in her classes, as is saying a pose feels funny. She’s learned plenty of tricks teaching at It’s Yoga Kids, the San Francisco studio she opened with partner Michelle Wing in early 2006.

How can parents who want to practice with their kids follow her lead? First, says Roades, know that your child might not be hooked right away. Like adults, kids want to be good at things, and yoga can seem strange at first. “By the third time it’s usually not so foreign,” Roades says. She also encourages incorporating positions that your child already knows (like sitting cross-legged) into each session to build confidence. Once they are in a pose, tell them how many breaths they will stay in it, to help them feel safe. Finally, limit practices to 30 minutes or less and use language they’ll enjoy and understand.

Most of all, says Roades, make it fun, and your children will begin to feel stronger and calmer in their daily life. “Giving children the tools to feel confident is priceless,” Roades says. “Teaching kids how to relax and deal with their emotions is incredible.”

adapted from Yoga Jounal

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. 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.

Bamboo Yoga Timer for Kids

Now & Zen – The Yoga Timer Store

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meditation under tree

A good example of body-mind-body medicine is the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of the bestsellers Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are. His Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) approach, which combines gentle hatha yoga with mindfulness meditation, has garnered impressive results in scientific studies and is now taught at hundreds of hospitals and clinics worldwide.

In his work with patients with a wide variety of medical conditions, including chronic pain, cancer, arthritis, anxiety, and depression, Kabat-Zinn has observed that particular patients seem to respond better to some elements of the MBSR program. He has found that those with primarily physical complaints, such as joint pain, often do best when they use meditation to go through what he calls the “mind door.” Others, particularly those with mental problems such as anxiety or panic attacks, may do better with “body door” approaches like asana.

adapted from Yoga Journal by Timothy McCall, M.D.

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. 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.

Gentle wake up alarm clock by Now & Zen

Now & Zen – The Zen Alarm Clock & Timer Store

1638 Pearl Street

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(800) 779-6383

When less is more

Make more time for doing the things you love by simplifying your life.

Judy Davis never buys anything new if she can help it. A 58-year-old freelance marketing consultant who lives in Red Bluff, California, she favors thrift store clothing and secondhand furniture. Instead of buying gifts, she gives plants from her garden or bags she has sewn from cut-up vintage gowns. Judy is part of a Bay Area group called the Compact. The Compacters have vowed not to buy anything new for a year except bare essentials: food, medicine, cleaning products, and underwear (although not, of course, lingerie from Paris). Although few people take frugality quite as seriously as the Compacters do, more and more of us are voluntarily cutting back on buying and consumption. Many individuals choosing this lifestyle happen to be yogis. The seminal work of yoga philosophy, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, frowns on materialism, and some yogis find that their asana practice alone helps them be happier with less.

The pursuit of the simple life is nothing new, of course. From Quakers to Transcendentalists, America has always had its share of those who associate simplicity with spiritual growth. Back-to-the-land hippies of the ’60s and ’70s found simplicity appealing for more secular reasons, such as ecological sustainability. But those who practice pared-down living today are not necessarily spiritual ascetics or off-the-grid granola types. Most are ordinary people modifying their everyday behavior-trying to be conscious about what they eat, drive, and buy.

In the past 15 years, “voluntary simplicity,” as it is called, has gained thousands of converts. Many books on the subject have been published, such as Janet Luhrs’s The Simple Living Guide, Cecile Andrews’s Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life, and Linda Breen Pierce’s Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World. Dozens of websites have sprung up, and nonprofits like Seeds of Simplicity and Simple Living America champion the cause. When the Compacters publicized their manifesto in January 2006, their Yahoo group swelled from about 50 in February to 1,225 in July, with members across America.

Most spiritual traditions encourage simple living, and yoga is no exception. In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali laid out the yamas (moral restraints) and niyamas (observances), a set of 10 principles that are crucial to one’s progress along the yogic path. One of the yamas is aparigraha, often translated as “greedlessness.” But it means more than just taking only what you need, explains David Frawley, founder and director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and author of Yoga and the Sacred Fire. Aparigraha also means “not having a lot of unnecessary things around yourself and not hankering after what other people have,” Frawley says. In other words, aparigraha also means keeping only what you need and wanting only what you need.

Aparigraha leads naturally to one of the niyamas: santosha, or “contentment,” being satisfied with the resources at hand and not desiring more. Ultimately, Frawley says, “Yoga is about transcending the desire for external things, which is the cause of suffering, and finding peace and happiness within.”

adapted from Yoga Journal, by Helena Echlin

Zen Alarm Clocks

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