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Do people choose what would make them happier? Would more money but with less sleep make you happier? A group of economists found that research participants chose what they thought would make them happier 83 percent of the time, with the majority choosing less sleep for a higher salary.

The group from Cornell University and the University of Michigan posed 13 scenarios to 2,699 people, including this question:

Say you have to decide between two new jobs. The jobs are exactly the same in almost every way, but have different work hours and pay different amounts.

Option 1: A job paying $80,000 per year. The hours for this job are reasonable, and you would be able to get about 7.5 hours of sleep on the average work night.

Option 2: A job paying $140,000 per year. However, this job requires you to go to work at unusual hours, and you would only be able to sleep around 6 hours on the average work night.

The paper, first reported by the Washington Post, studied three groups of people: 1,066 patients at a doctor’s waiting room in Denver, 1,000 adults across the country by telephone and 633 Cornell students. The American Economic Review will publish the paper.

Ori Heffetz, a Cornell economics professor who presents the paper at UCLA on Tuesday, said the most surprising finding for him was that “people’s choices seemed to coincide with their happiness predictions least frequently for what they thought were important life decisions.”

Among the respondents in Denver, 58 percent chose option one and also thought more sleep would make them happier, while 29 percent chose option two and said the higher salary would make them happier. However, 12 percent ranked option one (sleep) above option two (income) when asked what would make them happier; but they said they would most likely choose option two. Only one percent said they would choose sleep but thought they’d be happier with income.

Daniel Benjamin,  economics professor at Cornell, said one of the most interesting study findings is there are systematic differences between what people think would make them happiest and what they would choose. Many researchers had believed it was obvious that people would choose what they think would make them happiest.

When asked which options they would choose, Heffetz said he would choose the higher salary because he typically needs less than six hours of sleep a night. Benjamin said it was a “tough” question, but he would choose the job that afforded more sleep.

“I don’t think I could survive on 6 hours of sleep at unusual hours,” he wrote in an email. “I need at least 8, preferably more.”

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

The Digital Zen Clock’s long-resonating Tibetan bell-like chime makes waking up 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.

adapted from abcnews.go.com by Suzanna Kim

The Zen Alarm Clock transforms mornings, awakening you gradually with a series of gentle acoustic chimes Once you use a Zen Clock nothing else will do

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How to Zazen - Stillness of Being

As the name Zen implies, Zen sitting meditation is the core of Zen practice and is called zazen in Japanese. The posture of zazen is seated, with folded legs and hands, and an erect but settled spine.

The legs are folded in one of the standard sitting styles.   In many practices, one breathes from the hara (the center of gravity in the belly) and the eyelids are half-lowered, the eyes being neither fully open nor shut so that the practitioner is not distracted by outside objects but at the same time is kept awake.

How to Zazen, a Sitting Mindfulness Practice adapted from wikipedia.org

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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.

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“Waste not life,” wrote Benjamin Franklin, patron saint of American entrepreneurs. “In the grave will be sleeping enough.”

Centuries later, the attitude toward sleep in America – and in American business, in particular – has scarcely changed. Corporate culture reveres the e-mail sent at 3 a.m., the executive who rushes directly into a meeting from a red-eye flight. Bumper stickers offer an updated version of Franklin’s dictum: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“There is a cultural bias against sleep that sees it as akin to shutting down, or even to death,” explains Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and director of the Sleep Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Most people, Ellenbogen says, think of the sleeping brain as similar to a computer that has “gone to sleep” – it does nothing productive. Wrong. Sleep enhances performance, learning and memory. Most unappreciated of all, sleep improves creative ability to generate “aha” moments and to uncover novel connections among seemingly unrelated ideas.

Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, once defined creativity as “just connecting things.” Sleep assists the brain in flagging unrelated ideas and memories, forging connections among them that increase the odds that a creative idea or insight will surface.

While traditional stories about sleep and creativity emphasize vivid dreams hastily transcribed upon waking, recent research highlights the importance of letting ideas marinate and percolate.

“Sleep makes a unique contribution,” explains Mark Jung-Beeman, a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies the neural bases of insight and creative cognition.

Some sort of incubation period, in which a person leaves an idea for a while, is crucial to creativity. During the incubation period, sleep may help the brain process a problem.

“When you think you’re not thinking about something, you probably are,” says Jung-Beeman, who has a doctorate in experimental psychology.

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Another theory is that typical approaches to problem-solving may decay or weaken during sleep, enabling the brain to switch to more innovative alternatives. A classic switching story, recounted in “A Popular History of American Invention” in 1924, involves Elias Howe’s invention of the automated sewing machine: After much frustration with his original model, which used a needle with an eye in the middle, Howe dreamed that he was being attacked by painted warriors brandishing spears with holes in the sharp end. He patented a new design based on the dream spears; by the time the patent expired in 1867, he had earned more than $2 million in royalties.

Spear-wielding savages make for compelling stories, but creative insights directly induced by dreams are rare. In general, people are unaware of sleep’s effects on their performance.

Ellenbogen’s research at Harvard indicates that if an incubation period includes sleep, people are 33 percent more likely to infer connections among distantly related ideas, and yet, as he puts it, these performance enhancements exist “completely beneath the radar screen.”

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In other words, people are more creative after sleep, but they don’t know it.

This lack of awareness makes it hard to identify specific “aha” insights that have been prompted by sleep.

“It’s more that sleep brings a change of approach,” explains Mark Holmes, an art director at Pixar Animation Studios who worked on the film “WallE.” “You can get tunnel vision when you’re hammering away at a problem. You keep going down this same path, again and again, just tweaking, making incremental changes at best. ” He continues: “Sleep erases that. It resets you. You wake up and realize – wait a minute! – there is another way to do this.”

Business attitudes toward sleep may be starting to shift. Claire Stapleton, a spokeswoman for Google, says grassroots interest in sleep led to an on-campus talk by Sara Mednick, a napping expert. Google also installed EnergyPods, leather recliners with egglike hoods that block noise and light, for employees to take naps at work.

Other companies that have installed EnergyPods include Cisco Systems and Procter & Gamble.

Vinayak Sudame, an engineer at the Research Triangle Park campus of Cisco, says he uses an EnergyPod to “shut my eyes and shut myself off for 10 or 15 minutes” when he is working on a problem or needs some quiet time. More than a walk or a coffee break, he says, this type of “total mental rest” helps him return to work with a reorganized perspective.

Alertness Solutions, a sleep consulting company in Cupertino, provided consultations and recommendations to several U.S. Olympic teams before the Beijing Games and also works with corporate clients. Bob Agostino, vice president of operations at L.J. Aviation, in Latrobe, Pa., worked with Alertness Solutions at a previous employer and says that employees learned specific strategies to improve performance. These included when and how long to nap, how to determine the amount of sleep one needs, and how to recognize signs of fatigue and symptoms of sleep disorders.

Acting on this knowledge, Agostino says, “gives you an edge.”

In general, West Coast companies are more concerned about sleep issues than their East Coast counterparts, says Arshad Chowdhury, co-founder and chief executive of MetroNaps, which developed the EnergyPods.

“Particularly in New York, where financial services play such a big role, people are consistently sleep-deprived and consistently in denial,” he says.

Chowdhury – who says the idea for EnergyPods came to him in a nap – recalls a seminar in which one banker responded to a survey question with a note saying she knew she had no fatigue-related problems at work because the only time she fell asleep was when she sat still. Chowdhury laughs a bit ruefully: “Maybe we could have avoided the crisis we are in now if these people had just gotten proper sleep.”

Our 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. 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.

adapted from sfgate.com by Leslie Berlin

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The next time you think about studying all night with your face in a book, think about this: Your brain will work better if you sleep on that book instead.

Shut-eye may be a good performance-boosting strategy, according to a new study presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference in Atlanta.

Scientists from Harvard University studied nearly 100 college students to find out whether sleep can improve memory.

They divided the students into two groups and told each student to memorize several lists of related words — such as bed, sheet, and pillow or sill, glass, and pane — as they were read aloud.

The first group tried to memorize the lists at 9 a.m. while the second group tried to memorize the lists at 9 p.m.

The memory test came 12 hours after the students had first heard the words.

So, daytime learners were tested at 9 p.m. while night learners were tested at 9 a.m.

But the students who first learned the words during the evening got a good night’s rest before facing their memory test the next morning.

Each group was asked to write down all the words that they could remember. Researchers found that the students who studied the lists at 9 p.m. and got some sleep remembered more words than the students who were tested after staying awake throughout the day.

The Phenomenon of Remembering Incorrectly

However, the students who got some sleep also recalled some words that were not on the lists.

From a list of words including bed, sheet and pillow, a student may incorrectly remember the word “sleep” or form a false memory for the word “window” in a list including sill, glass and pane.

The students were remembering words that were associated with the ones that they had actually heard.

Scientists call this phenomenon of incorrectly remembering something that didn’t happen a “false memory.”

False memories are not all that unusual. It’s similar to a feeling you have when you think you’re sure that something happened — until someone proves you wrong.

Then you realize that your false memory was just an idea very closely related to something that happened in reality.

Sleep Plays a Role in False Memories

The students who snoozed before testing had more of these false memories than their friends who did not sleep.

This is the first time scientists have seen that sleep plays a role in false memories — and researchers are excited about the discovery.

The finding suggests that the brain is hardly asleep when the rest of the body is.

“Sleep is not a passive state where we lay around and lose productivity, but an active process during which the brain is integrating information,” said Dr. Christoph Nissen, sleep researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Western Psychiatric Institute in Pittsburgh.

According to this study, the brain is engaged in a sort of wordplay while the body is asleep.

sleep improve ones memory

This finding suggests that a learning process occurs during sleep that has a lot to do with language and what words mean, says Dr. Lawrence Epstein, past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and medical director of Sleep Health Centers in Boston.

Our brain forms links between our memories for these words to help us store information in a way that is meaningful to us.

During sleep, “our brain is writing a summary,” said Dr. Robert Stickgold, study author and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

When the brain awakes, it may recall words from this summary even though those words weren’t part of the original exercise.

Forget the All-Nighters

Sleep may do interesting things to our memories, but not sleeping can wreak havoc on the brain and on the body.

Experts say that getting enough sleep is vital to our overall health.

It plays a role in immune function, emotional regulation, and other processes like the ability to concentrate.

There’s no substitute for serious studying, but a good night’s sleep may prove to be more helpful than scientists previously thought.

“People who study and then sleep recall things better than people who stay up all night studying,” Epstein said.

Boulder, Colorado—an innovative company has taken one of life’s most unpleasant experiences (being startled awake by your alarm clock early Monday morning), and transformed it into something to actually look forward to. “The Zen Alarm Clock,” uses soothing acoustic chimes that awaken users gently and gradually, making waking up a real pleasure.

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Rather than an artificial recorded sound played through a speaker, the Zen Clock features an alloy chime bar similar to a wind chime.  When the clock’s alarm is triggered, its chime produces a long-resonating, beautiful acoustic tone reminiscent of a temple gong.  Then, as the ring tone gradually fades away, the clock remains silent until it automatically strikes again three minutes later.  The frequency of the chime strikes gradually increase over ten-minutes, eventually striking every five seconds, so they are guaranteed to wake up even the heaviest sleeper.  This gentle, ten-minute “progressive awakening” leaves users feeling less groggy, and even helps with dream recall.

adapted from abcnews.go.com by LISA PHILIPOSE

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“There is a direct relationship between the hours worked and its negative impact on sleep,” says James C. Walsh, vice president of the National Sleep Foundation. “This is particularly noticeable for people working more than 40 hours per week.” The study found most people tried to compensate for the lack of sleep during the week by tacking on a couple extra hours on the weekend.

Sleepy at Work and the Wheel

Ironically, while most sleep-deprived Americans say they give up sleep for work, nearly 40 percent say they are so sleepy several days a month that it interferes with their daily activities.

While sacrificing sleep can be counter-productive in the workplace, Gelula says it can be dangerous in a nation dependent on travel by car. Nearly one half of adults report they have driven while drowsy in the past year and nearly 20 percent say they have actually fallen asleep while driving.

“We have our work cut out for us to educate Americans that sleep is a necessity, not a luxury,” says Gelula.

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

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Waking Up in the Morning as a Form of Spiritual Practice

Waking up in the morning is a metaphor for life — a kind of daily microcosmic reenactment of our overall purpose for being in the world.  That is, just about every religious tradition emphasizes spiritual growth.  And the connection between “awakening” and spiritual growth can be found in practically all forms of spiritual teaching.

So if waking up in the morning really is a metaphor for our larger spiritual lives, this perspective might help us treat our morning ritual of getting out of bed as a kind of spiritual practice.  Indeed, when approached in this way, how we wake up in the morning can make a larger difference in our lives overall.

Fortunately, for those who want to wake up right, without being startled awake by an annoying alarm or some radio DJ, there is The Zen Alarm Clock.  This clock was designed to make waking up a kind of spiritual practice.  The Zen Clock wakes users with a built-in 10 minute gradual progression of acoustic chimes.  And this gradual form of “progressive awakening” has been thoughtfully designed to include esoteric features that are fitting for a form of spiritual practice.  For example, not only is the hardwood Zen Alarm Clock beautiful to see and hear, the clock’s chime is tuned to produce the same frequencies as the tuning forks used by musical therapists in their healing work.  Moreover, the Zen Clock’s pre-programmed 10 minute chime progression sequence advances according to the “golden ratio,” which reflects both the natural proportions of our own bodies and the patterns of growth used in the overall evolution of the universe.

Even those who care little about such esoteric details nevertheless report that they love waking up with the gentle chimes of a Zen Alarm Clock.  And as the makers of the Zen Alarm Clock hope, we may eventually come to see many of the simple details of our lives as forms of authentic spiritual practice.

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Imagine a long leisurely lunch with a nap instead of a cold sandwich in front of your computer.

“It makes absolute sense,” said Dr. James Parish, medical director for the Sleep Disorder Center of the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. “Sleep research has recently and repeatedly shown us what we have known for a long time and that is that sleep deprivation is an epidemic in this country.”

A new global Internet survey by the U.K.-based Sleep Council, a non-profit organization that advocates more sleep, calls for implementation of the siesta. The survey, released Sunday, asked people when they felt most alert and productive. Of 12,000 respondents, mostly from the United States and Europe, 41 percent said in the morning, while 38 percent said they hit felt most alert in the evening.

“The implication is that the majority are not fully alert in the middle of the day — the traditional time for a siesta in hot countries,” sleep expert Chris Idzikowski, a professor at Surrey University who conducted the two-year sleep study, told Reuters.

A Sleep Deprived Nation

Sleep deprivation usually manifests itself in feeling especially drained in the afternoon, say sleep experts. It’s the time of day when serotonin and dopamine levels, which regulate mood, sleep and emotion, naturally dip. And if you are already sleepy, this dip is even more dramatic.

“This feeling of drowsiness is sometimes associated with the mid-day meal,” said Dr. Michael Smolensky, author of The Body Clock Guide to Better Health and professor of environmental physiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. “But it really has a lot more to do with natural changes in the brain at this time in the afternoon. The body clock naturally governs itself and it includes this natural dip in the afternoon.”

Many European countries and others with hot climates have long implemented an afternoon down time, or siesta, when stores close, business shut down and residents go home for a nap, or take a long rest at a cafe or restaurant.

Experts say that with a rest during the afternoon hours when the serotoninergic system in a person’s brain slows, workers might perform better at their jobs, and even be more safe.

“What we see in children and adults with this loss of alertness is also a loss of hand/eye coordination in the afternoon,” Smolensky said. “Frankly, I sometimes take a short power nap in the afternoon.” Another way to feel refreshed in the afternoon, if you are not one who naps, is to take a rest, walk around the block, sit on a park bench, Smolensky says.

Less Sleep, More Bragging

“[Americans] like to brag about how little sleep they need, almost as if they are bragging about how many cars we own,” said Dr. Phyllis Zee, director of Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Sleep Disorder Center. “We say we can get away with something like six hours of sleep. But, that’s not enough sleep. Most people need eight hours of sleep. This is why we feel tired in the afternoon and run down.”

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The Council’s study suggests that workers allowed to follow their natural sleeping habits and rhythms would benefit employers by expanding working hours and production.

“It’s a very cultural thing for Americans to push themselves during the day,” said Zee. “With an economy that moves and changes quickly and rapidly, the harder you work and the longer hours you put in, you think you are more productive. But it reaches a point when you are sleep deprived, then you are just going to make mistakes and that productivity you perceive won’t matter.”

One of the most alternative alarm clocks is called The Zen Alarm Clock.  The Zen Clock’s long-resonating Tibetan bell-like chime makes waking up 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.

adapted from abcnews.go by By Rose Palazzolo

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zen monk

Zen proverb: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

The idea is that we should find meaning in ordinary tasks, because true clarity is fleeting enough…

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