Get Rid of That Beeping Alarm Clock - Kiyonaga Torii, Beauties in September

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.  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.

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.

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.

Soothing Chime Alarm Clocks - An Alternative to the Beeping Alarm Clock

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How to get that Elusive Good Night's Sleep - Tsukyoka Yoshitoshi 1888

Stanford’s Dr. Clete Kushida, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, who has worked in the field of sleep research since 1977, offers these tips to a better night’s sleep:

Maintain a regular schedule, getting to bed and rising at the same time as consistently as possible each day, selecting the number of hours of sleep that make you feel best, whether it’s seven hours or 10.

Use bright light within five minutes of waking, for 30 minutes, to synchronize your internal clock.

Avoid bright light two to three hours before bedtime, which delays sleep onset. If you read, get just enough light to read and avoid halogen.

Avoid remaining in bed if you can’t sleep. After 20 minutes, if you can’t sleep or fall back asleep, go into another room and do something else until you feel drowsy.

Avoid reading or watching TV in bed (especially thriller novels or action shows) unless it makes you drowsy.

Avoid napping, unless you nap every day at the same time for the same amount of time or you are tired and about to get behind the wheel of a car.

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.

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.

adapted from SFgate.com

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

Now & Zen’s Gradual Chime Alarm Clock Store

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Courtesan of Montoya with Zen Monk by Suzuki Harunobo, ca. 1770

People in need of a creative boost should take a long nap, according to new research highlighted by ScienCentral. The researchers found that naps increase people’s ability to solve problems creatively, but only if the nap includes REM, the deep sleep when dreams occur.  REM sleep happens only after about an hour of sleeping, so a long nap is recommended.  According to researcher Sara Mednick, “If you take a nap with REM sleep, you’re actually going to be boosting your ability to make these new associations in creative ways.”  Mednick has tried to put her findings to good use by taking a nap at least three times each week.  It is helpful to use the Zen Alarm Clock for a gentle awakening from a nap.

What makes this gentle awakening experience so exquisite is the sound of the natural acoustic chime, which has been tuned to produce the same tones as the tuning forks used by musical therapists. According to the product’s inventor, Steve McIntosh, “once you experience this way of being gradually awakened with beautiful acoustic tones, no other alarm clock will ever do.”

adapted from Utne.com,September 2009 by Bennett Gordon

Zen Alarm Clocks for a gradual and progressive awakening to a nap, to boost creativity

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how knowing your dosha can help you avoid sleepless nights

Sleep is natural to life—just look at how well babies do it—and any problems we encounter should have a natural solution. Our inner sleep rhythm should connect to the rhythms of nature, or more specifically of daylight. Normally, as daylight fades, the body’s biological clock triggers the release of melatonin from the pineal gland, making us feel sleepy. The onset of morning light triggers a drop in melatonin, causing us to wake up.

Yet if sleep is so natural, why do an estimated 75 percent of Americans develop sleep problems? Probably because our lifestyles have become so un-natural. Late nights, evening computer- and cell-phone use, and sleeping late all alter this natural pattern of melatonin secretion. Add alcohol and caffeine consumption and late-evening meals to those years of cumulative abuse, and you end up with chronic sleep problems. To top it off, melatonin production tends to decrease as we age, further reducing the quality of our sleep.

Ayurveda considers sleep to be one of three key pillars of health. It recognizes the role of biological rhythms and identifies six time periods throughout the day that affect sleep by affecting our doshas—the three fundamental processes that guide our body’s functioning. The doshas include mind and movement (vata), metabolism (pitta), and structure (kapha). To improve sleep, ayurveda suggests going to bed before 10 p.m., during the cycle dominated by the heavy, slow-moving kapha dosha, when you naturally feel more mellow and sleepy. If you go to bed then, you’ll fall asleep easier and your sleep will be deeper.

The other pivotal point in the daily cycle occurs at 6 a.m. If you wake up before then, during the time of the morning dominated by quick moving vata dosha, you should have more clarity and dynamism.

As you and your husband illustrate, not everyone suffers from the same sleep problem. If your mind is whirling, your body tense, and you can’t fall asleep, chances are you have a dominant vata dosha. Your husband’s sleep problem on the other hand, waking up between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., usually stems from a disturbance in the hot pitta dosha. People who sleep eight hours but still feel exhausted commonly have an excess of the slow, heavy kapha dosha. In each case, it’s important to balance the dominant tendency with diet and lifestyle choices.

Ayurvedic Sleep Aids
If you have trouble falling asleep (vata)
•Go to bed before 10 p.m., earlier in winter.
•Rub warm olive oil on your head and feet right before bed to calm an overactive mind.
•Avoid caffeine, raw foods, crackers, cold cereal, and other dry, light foods that aggravate vata dosha.
•Avoid TV, intense phone conversations, and exercise after 9 p.m.
•Choose quiet evening activities to wind down, such as washing dishes, folding clothes, and other simple tasks.

If you wake up between 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. (pitta)
•Avoid computer use and other work at night. Organize a to-do list to get a head start on the morning and settle your mind before bed.
•Avoid arguments or controversial discussions at night.
•Take an evening walk to clear your brain and cool your body.
•Avoid spicy or fried foods at night.
•Eat a juicy pear every day to cool the hot pitta dosha.
•Drink warm milk flavored with cooling organic rose syrup before bed.
•Rub your head and feet with coconut oil before bed.

If you feel exhausted after a good night’s sleep (kapha)
•Eat a light soup with whole-grain crackers or steamed vegetables for your evening meal.
•Flavor your food with digestion-stimulating spices, such as fresh ginger, cumin, and black pepper.
•Avoid meat, cheese, potatoes, and heavy desserts at supper, as these tend to clog the tissues, promoting snoring, apnea, stiffness, and morning lethargy.
•Make an effort to get up before 6 a.m.
•Exercise daily, if possible during the morning kapha cycle between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.

Singing Bowl Clock - Gradual Clock - with Progressive Gongs

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, September 2006 by Nancy Lonsdorf

Tibetan Chime Clock with Brass Bowl Gong

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what do our dreams mean?

Your nighttime revelries could hold the key to your health.

By Jeanne Ricci

It has happened to all of us: You sit up in bed after a doozy of a dream and wonder What did that mean? Mankind’s fascination with dreams has a long history. In fact, one of the world’s oldest surviving documents, an Egyptian papyrus, contains dream interpretations. Most ancient cultures believed dreams were communications from deities or departed souls. More recently, psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung paved the way for using dream analysis when treating patients, believing dreams could shed light on the workings of the unconscious mind. Today, many medical and psychiatric professionals believe dreaming can help us move beyond depression and grief and even identify underlying health issues.

As long as you are sleeping, you are dreaming. That’s right, everyone dreams—even if you don’t remember your nightly adventures. “Most dreams occur during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which replenishes certain neurotransmitters,” writes Deirdre Barrett, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, in her book The Committee of Sleep (Crown, 2001). Since you enter the light sleep stage characterized by REM every 90 minutes, you’ll likely have four to five dreams a night, assuming you sleep for eight hours. “Interfering with REM, and thus dreaming, interferes with creativity, problem-solving capability, memory, and, in extreme situations, even immune function and body temperature,” says Barrett. You don’t have to remember your dreams to reap some of the benefits, but if you can recall them, your dreams could tell you a lot. (For tips to enhance dream recall, see “To Dream, Perchance to Remember” on page 73.) “But stay away from dream dictionaries that would have you believe that one symbol means one thing,” Barrett warns. Instead, she recommends Our Dreaming Mind by Robert L. Van de Castle (Ballantine Books, 1995), which focuses on dream theory and learning to work with your dreams. If you really dive deeply into your dream life, the payoff is multifold. You can tap into more clarity and creativity, feel less depressed and stressed, and maybe even be able to predict disease.

Tap into your dream tank

zen clocks help remind you of your dreams

With a little effort, you can draw creative inspiration for both your professional and personal life from dreams. Need help solving a problem at work or making a decision for your household? Dreams can shed light on information stored in your brain and also help you think outside the box. “If you are stuck in your waking life on any sort of issue, then dreams can help you come to a resolution,” says Barrett. In fact, artists, writers, and philosophers such as René Descartes and Samuel Taylor Coleridge have used a method called dream incubation to nurture their creative processes.

To get started incubating dreams, write a question such as Which apartment should I rent? or How can I increase productivity at work? on a piece of paper and place it by your bed. Review the question before going to sleep and tell yourself you want to dream about it. Keep a pen and paper on the nightstand. For the next several nights, every time you wake up, lie quietly and try to recall your dreams. Write down anything you remember—events, places, characters, and feelings. The answer to your question may appear obvious after one night, or it could come to you over time as you piece together recurring ideas and themes. As with anything, the more you practice incubating and analyzing dreams, the more insight you’ll draw.

The blues are but a dream

Hiroshige, The Moon Over a Warterfall

An active dream life can help you shake the blues. Research conducted at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago found that people who were depressed after a divorce felt better more quickly if they had, and were able to recall, both good and bad dreams about their ex-spouses. Rosalind Cartwright, PhD, director of the research program, and her colleagues found that as dreams involving an ex-spouse became less negative and less frequent, their subjects’ depression lifted. This is not to say that people who don’t remember their dreams are more likely to be depressed—but people who do remember may recover more quickly from traumatic events such as divorce.

Similarly, people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are often encouraged to use dreams to aid their recovery. PTSD sufferers commonly have nightmares about real events that prolong their trauma. If they can successfully redirect a negative dream and change its outcome via hypnosis or self-suggestion at bedtime, it not only stops the nightmares but also lessens other symptoms, like heightened startle responses and daytime flashbacks, says Barrett. This method can also quash recurring nightmares for people who don’t have PTSD. Throughout the day and before bedtime, think of the dream and vividly imagine a more positive outcome. With determination, you can eventually change the content of your nightmare.

The interpreter of maladies
Is your body trying to tell you something? “Someone might dream she has cancer or some disease and then later see the first clinical sign of it,” says Barrett. The idea that our subconscious knows about illness before our conscious mind goes back to Hippocrates. Our body, it seems, often sends early warning signals that don’t always reach our consciousness. When we sleep and dream, the sensory overload that’s now part of everyday life gets blocked, making our psyches more receptive to messages our bodies send.

Shanee Stepakoff, a clinical psychologist in New York City, experienced this firsthand. “I had a mark on my cheek that looked like a freckle. I asked a few different dermatologists about it, and they all said it was nothing, but I kept having dreams about it,” she says. Stepakoff continued to see cancer metaphors in her dreams. “Finally, I had a very intense dream in which the word check kept appearing in various contexts (checkbook, write a check),” Stepakoff says. She believed this was her psyche urging her to get the spot on her cheek checked. Her doctor didn’t want to do a biopsy, but she insisted. Sure enough, it came back as melanoma—luckily, they caught it in time.

“I believe that the psyche gives us messages when there is something important that we need to pay attention to—it could be about our health, but it could also be about a relationship, a person in our lives, or a job situation,” says Stepakoff. “I think it is part of how our psyches help us survive and, ideally, to become more whole.”

Jeanne Ricci is a writer living in New York City.

To Dream, Perchance to Remember
It’s hard to learn from your dreams if you can’t remember them. But even if you draw a blank every morning, don’t fret. Follow these steps, recommended by Deirdre Barrett, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, and Andrew Holecek, a dream workshop teacher at Colorado’s Shambhala Mountain Center, to enhance your dream recall.

* Get seven to eight hours of sleep a night. The more you sleep, the more dreams you will have, increasing the likelihood you’ll remember one of them.
* Throughout the day and right before you fall asleep, remind yourself of your intention to remember your dreams.
* Keep a pen and paper by your bed. A dream journal can encourage recall and, at the very least, help you document any fragment you do remember upon waking.
* When you first wake up, don’t move. Lie quietly and reflect on any image that comes to mind. Sometimes a whole dream scenario will come back to you.
* Be mindful during the day, not just about dreams but about everything going on around you. The lucidity you cultivate in waking life will translate to your dream life.
* Set an alarm to wake you every two hours throughout the night. When the alarm sounds, write down as much as you can remember about the dream you were just having.

Zen Alarm Clocks for a Soothing Wake-up

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Get a good night’s sleep by retiring old habits and starting a gentle, bedtime yoga practice, also set your Zen Clock to wake you in the morning relaxed and refreshed with gentle chimes.

Ease into Sleep

The key to healing sleep disorders, Dyer says, is to cultivate healthy habits. “Regularity and rhythm are friends to sleep,” she explains. “Going to sleep and waking up at the same time each day, eating at the same time each day, doing yoga at the same time each day. The more rhythmic your life is, and the less scattershot it is, the easier it is to sleep well.”

Whether you experience chronic or intermittent insomnia, a program of relaxing asana and easy meditation performed at bedtime can help you slow down mind and body and ease the transition into slumber, says yoga teacher and sleep scientist Roger Cole.

And then, when it’s time to sleep, cover your eyes with something that provides both darkness and very gentle pressure, like an eye bag and set your Zen Alarm Clock knowing that you will wake gently in the morning to a chime clock.

By Rachel Brahinsky – Yoga Journal Magazine

Visit us in Boulder - Soothing Clock Store -- Colorado

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Eat right to sleep tight

The right food at the right time can get you ready for a good night’s sleep.

Can’t sleep through the night? If you find yourself tossing and turning instead of sleeping soundly, you are not alone. Experts say that at least once in our lives, most of us will suffer from severe insomnia. But before you reach for the over-the-counter sleeping aids, try an all-natural approach to catch those Zs.

“Chronic insomnia—defined as difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep three times or more per week for a period of one to three months—affects about 10 to 15 percent of all adult Americans. This number increases with age: studies of people over 65 have shown that as many as 40 to 50 percent of senior citizens suffer from chronic insomnia.”

To combat this, there are many proven lifestyle strategies to cope with insomnia, from increasing your daily exercise to making your bedroom a sanctuary for sleep. According to a news release from Northwestern University Sleep Foundation, people suffering from chronic insomnia who exercised aerobically four times per week—for only 20 minutes each session—reported better sleep quality, fewer symptoms of depression, more energy, and less sleepiness during the day.

But what you eat can also be a powerful medicine to fight insomnia. Eating certain types of food during the day and especially at dinner, can ensure a sound night’s sleep, says Dr. Aaron Tabor, of Kernersville, North Carolina, who is an expert on how the body metabolizes nutrients.

how to get a good night's sleep

“The amino acid, tryptophan, is nature’s natural sedative,” he says. “By eating a light dinner of foods rich in tryptophan along with a small amount of carbohydrate, you allow the body to release serotonin, a brain transmitter that makes you calm and sleepy.”

Dr. Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in sleep disorders and author of Beauty Sleep: Look Younger, Lose Weight and Feel Great Through Better Sleep (Plume 2010), adds that your bedtime snack should be eaten about 90 minutes before lights out.

“Your body doesn’t digest foods lying down well, so even if you nod off, you may find you have gastrointestinal upset that will wake you up,” says Breus. Tryptophan is more of a sleep regulator than sleep inducer, so the best way to help your body’s sleep schedule is to plan your daily meals to accommodate how your body digests fatty foods, carbohydrates, proteins and fluids—all of which pass through the body at different rates.

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid. It’s called essential because the body cannot manufacture it, so we have to get it from the foods we consume. Tryptophan is converted in the liver into vitamin B3 or niacin, which is important for all neurologic functions, including mood balance, relaxation, and sleep. In order to support maximum tryptophan absorption, its best to consume tryptophan-containing foods on an empty stomach along with a small amount of healthy carbohydrates.

When you eat carbohydrates along with a protein food that is high in tryptophan, the carbohydrates initiate the release of insulin by the body. Insulin tends to clear most amino acids, but tryptophan is not affected by insulin. Therefore, more tryptophan is able to reach the brain since it is not competing with other amino acids to cross the blood-brain barrier. This can then significantly increase serotonin, which in turn helps the pineal gland to manufacture melatonin. This is essential for healthy sleep.

Research also shows that getting enough sleep—about eight hours for most folks—can help you lose weight three times faster than simply lying awake in bed.

“People who get enough sleep are less likely to crave sweets and highcarbohydrate snacks to keep them awake,” explains Breus. He points out that getting a good night’s rest ensures the hormones leptin and ghrelin work efficiently to regulate your appetite and hunger. Ghrelin triggers your impulse to eat, while leptin sends a signal to the brain that you are full.

what to eat before falling asleep

“When you don’t get enough sleep, the leptin levels decrease and you don’t feel satisfied when you eat,” says Breus, who is also a faculty member of the Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine.

Of course, practicing good sleep habits can also help you catch your Zs. Going to bed the same time every day, avoiding conflict, caffeine, and alcohol in the evening, and even using aromatherapy or a sound machine can all help you fall asleep faster.

Making breakfast your biggest meal of the day, while avoiding high-sugar cereals or high-fat concoctions, will help you start the day on the right foot. You can determine the sugar and fat content of breakfast cereals by reading the Nutrition Label and Ingredients. Sometimes, this can be surprising.

Even some organic cereals have “organic cane sugar” as the second ingredient on the label. Since the ingredients are listed in descending order, the second ingredient indicates a relatively high amount. On the other hand, an old-fashioned cereal such as Uncle Sam Toasted Whole Wheat Berry Flakes & Flaxseed Original Cereal is not certified organic, but is much lower in sugar and higher in whole grains and protein—a much better choice. Uncle Sam’s would also work well for a sleep-supporting evening snack. If you are choosing an oatmeal, stick with the plain, unflavored variety. Even if it is organic, flavored oatmeal will usually contain sugar and other ingredients you just don’t need.

Lunch can be a sandwich or a salad with protein to help you get through the afternoon. Dinner should have protein as well as complex carbohydrates and needs to be eaten four hours before bedtime. If breakfast is not your largest meal, you can use lunch as your main meal for the day, and use the evening meal as a light snack. Miso soup and whole grain, wheat-free bread or organic rice cakes are a good choice. Lundberg Wild Rice Cakes with organic almond or peanut butter is the perfect high tryptophan sleep supportive snack to eat at night, accompanied by Sleepytime Tea. This gives you time to metabolize your food. The best bedtime snack is one that contains complex carbohydrates, protein, and calcium. Calcium helps the brain use the tryptophan to manufacture melatonin.

Dairy foods, that contain both tryptophan and calcium, are one of the top sleep friendly foods, says Breus. And by combining carbohydrates together with a small amount of protein, your brain makes serotonin, known as the calming hormone.

Food Allergy Connection
Research is continuing to uncover a myriad of suspicious symptoms that are being linked to individual food sensitivities and allergies, including mood imbalances and insomnia. Common allergens that might be the culprit include wheat and dairy products. Try giving them up for six days and monitor your response. Although dairy can be a useful relaxant for most individuals, it may have the opposite effect for someone who is lactose intolerant or dairy sensitive.

Limit Caffeine

eliminate caffeine before bedtime so that you can sleep soundly

Caffeine is a stimulant alkaloid molecule that naturally occurs in many plants that are used for food and beverages. These include coffee, tea (yes, even green tea), and chocolate. Many pharmaceutical drugs and soft drinks are also high in caffeine, as well as popular ‘energy shot drinks.’ Consumer Labs (consumerlabs.com) evaluated 5 Hour Energy, a popular energy shot drink, and found:

“5-Hour Energy…notes that the amount of caffeine is comparable to that in a cup of ‘leading premium coffee.’ ConsumerLab.com found the 2-fluid-ounce bottle to contain 207 mg of caffeine. However, this is 15 percent higher than what you would get from a ‘short’ cup (8 fluid ounces) of a premium coffee such as Starbucks, which Starbucks claims to have 180 mg of caffeine.”

Since the effects of caffeine can last up to 20 hours, having an innocent cup of coffee or energy shot drink, even early in the day, can seriously interfere with sleep, especially for a caffeine sensitive individual. Choose organic decaf coffee or herbal tea instead.

Ellen Kamhi PhD, RN, AHN-BC, AHG, The Natural Nurse®, is a medical school instructor, author and radio/TV host. She has been actively involved in natural medicine since 1964.

Soothing Chime Alarm Clocks with Acoustic Sounds

Lynn Allison is an author, 30 year veteran reporter in the health and fitness field and writes weekly for several national publications.

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sleep and wellness

Leverage two powerful tools for managing your own wellness.

You have the power to impact your own health and well-being. The actions we take, the choices we make, the way we think, the way we act or react to situations, and the way we move through life all impact our health and wellness more than we may realize. There are shifts you can make in how you think and act that will affect the overall quality of your life.

Routine daily activities we take for granted can impact our health and wellness. The beauty of these activities is that we do not need a medical or healthcare practitioner to pre- scribe them. Two such activities that you can use to impact your health and wellness are movement and sleep.

Movement and exercise

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines physical activity as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure.

According to WHO, physical activity reduces the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, and breast cancer in women. There is even evidence to suggest that increasing levels of various types of physical activity may benefit health by reducing hypertension, osteoporosis, and risk of falls; improving body weight and composition; and decreasing the incidence of musculoskeletal conditions such as osteoarthritis and low back pain.

WHO recommends 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity five days per week to improve and maintain health; the 30 minutes can be accumulated over the course of a day in blocks as short as ten minutes.

yoga as exercise

We tend to think of exercise as running, playing a sport, swimming, using workout equipment, or some other activity that requires extensive physical exertion. There are other options that have benefits, including walking, low-impact exercise, or other mild fitness practices.

In addition to the conventional forms of exercise popular in the West, there is another type of activity that promotes wellness. In China there are two movement programs that have been used for thousands of years and are becoming very popular in Western cultures: t’ai chi and qigong. These programs impact not only the body but also the mind.

T’ai chi (pronounced tie chee) is an ancient program of gentle, slow, fluid movements and coordinated breathing. The movements are designed to stimulate the flow of the energy force (chi or qi) and to promote balance in mind and body. T’ai chi originated as a martial arts style and has been adopted as a movement program because of its health benefits.

The opening ceremonies to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, included 2,008 t’ai chi experts demonstrating its graceful and fluid movements. In parks in China, it is common to see groups of people practicing t’ai chi in the morning.

Qigong (pronounced chee gung) is another ancient movement program based on gentle movements with coordinated breathing that includes visualization. It has been described as a self- healing art that, like t’ai chi, cultivates the energy force within us and plays an active role in maintaining health.

When gentle movements are integrated with full, relaxed breathing and deep relaxation of mind, the body enters an especially healing and restorative state. This has a positive effect on the blood, the nervous system, the immune system, and oxygen metabolism.

mindfulness practice

Yoga is another practice that may serve you well. Yoga is a mind-body practice with origins in ancient Indian philosophy. The various styles of yoga that people use for health purposes typically combine physical postures, breathing techniques, and meditation or relaxation.

Sleep and Rest

Although getting adequate sleep and rest is essential to health and wellness, most people take it for granted. Your body has remarkable healing power, and rest and sleep play a large part in the healing process. When you don’t get enough, it impacts your body’s healthy functioning.

The National Sleep Foundation maintains that seven to nine hours of sleep per night is optimal for most adults and that sufficient sleep promotes overall health and alertness. Sleep debt is the result of not getting enough rest and can cause physical, emotional, and mental fatigue. Studies have shown that sleep loss impairs immune function and the healing process.

When we sleep, our blood pressure is lowered, hormones are secreted, kidney functions change, sensory and motor activities are relatively suspended, and the immune system is impacted. The hormones produced during sleep pro- mote growth, help build muscle mass, repair cells and tissues, and work to fight infections. Sufficient sleep not only pro- motes healing when you are ill or sick, but helps create a positive environment in your body which may reduce the occurrence or severity of disease or illness.

All bodies are unique in how much sleep they need to function optimally. Your body knows how much sleep you need and will be your teacher and alert you when you aren’t getting enough. What shows up in your body when you have had insufficient sleep?

The routine daily activities of moving and sleeping affect our health and wellness. Making a shift to recognize their potential and to make appropriate changes in these areas will have a positive impact.

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.

Marc Levin is the author of the recently re- leased book Eight Shifts for Wellness: Practical Transformative Steps to Enhance Health, Wellness, and Well- Being (Golden Nuggets Press, 2011). More information about him and the eight shifts is available at eightshifts.com.

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Snow print by Suzuki Harunobu

It’s snowing heavily, and everyone in the backyard is in a swimsuit, at some kind of party: Mom, Dad, the high school principal, there’s even an ex-girlfriend.  And is that Elvis, over by the piñata?

Uh-oh.

Dreams are so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists have long assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose.  To Freud, when dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes.  Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations.

Yet what if when dreaming isn’t psychological at all?

In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.

“It helps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,” Dr. Hobson said in an interview. “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’t remember every step, but it knows it has exercised. It has been tuned up. It’s the same idea here: dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness.”

Drawing on work of his own and others, Dr. Hobson argues that when dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but normally suppressed during waking. The idea is a prominent example of how neuroscience is altering assumptions about everyday (or every-night) brain functions.

adapted from The New York Times, November 2009 by Benedict Carey

Honey Japanese Maple Leaves Zen Alarm Clock, calming alarm clock useful for remembering one's dreams

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