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.

Repeating a phrase can reduce your stress

Mumbling to yourself may not be as crazy as it seems. Repeating a mantra–a meaningful word or phrase said silently–can help you cope with the hassles of life, finds a new study from the Veterans Administration San Diego Healthcare System. In it, 66 volunteers were taught to repeat a mantra (sometimes called a mantram) of their choice as often as possible during low-stress activities such as washing dishes or getting ready for bed. The goal was to train their brains to associate the phrase with calmness so they could employ it to counter turmoil. Mantras varied: Some chose words or phrases with religious meanings, while others went secular–one golfer repeated fairways and greens.

Regardless of their choice, the returns were similar:
Six months later, 83% had employed their mantras to help them stay calm, and 75% were able to ease stress, frustration, and tension. “Mantras are a Jacuzzi for the mind,” says lead researcher Jill Bormann, PhD, RN. “And unlike many stress-reduction techniques, you can literally use this anywhere, anytime.”

Meditation is generally an inwardly oriented, personal practice, which individuals do by themselves. Meditation may involve invoking or cultivating a feeling or internal state, such as compassion, or attending to a specific focal point.

The Zen Timepiece can serve as a mindfulness bell in two ways: it can be set to strike on the hour (providing an hourly moment of stillness), or it can be set to strike at a programmed interval, such as every 20 minutes, or even every three hours.

adapted from Prevention by By Rachel Meltzer Warren

This unique "Zen Clock" features a long-resonating acoustic chime that brings the meditation session to a gradual close, preserving the environment of stillness while also acting as an effective time signal.

Now & Zen – The Meditation Timer Shop – Timers & Clocks with Gentle Sounds

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

orders@now-zen.com

“Mindfulness” is the spiritual practice of being aware of your present moment.

Try This Technique: Body Scan (10 to 20 minutes)
Lie comfortably on your back, side, or stomach with your eyes closed. Beginning with the toes of your left foot, focus on any sensations (tingling, warmth) you feel there. Now imagine your breath traveling down to your toes, then back up and out through your nose. Slowly move up your left leg, focusing on the sensations you encounter and directing your breath to your ankle, shin, knee, and thigh. Repeat the sequence with your right leg, then move through your lower back, abdomen, upper back, chest, shoulders, and both arms. Next move to your neck, throat, face, the back of your head, and–finally–the top of your head. You should also take notice when you don’t feel any sensations at all.

adapted from Prevention, By Nicola Nieburg

Mindfulness practice, is increasingly being employed in Western psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions.

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.

Now & Zen – The Meditation Timer Store

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.

Japanese tea ceremony

Kyoto: 10 Things to Do

By ROB GOSS

Zen again, but this time in a tea cup. The cleansing of the tea utensils, the gentle bow as you receive your cup, the three clockwise turns before you take a sip: it’s not difficult to see how deeply rooted the slow and graceful movements of the tea ceremony are in Zen Buddhism. Chado or sado, as the ceremony is known, is by no means limited to Kyoto, but with the city’s rich Zen connections, it is an ideal place to experience it. Try visiting En, a small teahouse in Gion with tatami tearooms and English-speaking Kimono-clad servers. You’ll find it next to Chionin Temple, a short walk from the Chionmae bus stop on route number 206 from Kyoto Station.

1. En
272 Matsubara-cho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto, Japan; 81 (0)80 3782-2706 teaceremonyen.com

adapted from Time Magazine, Jan. 2012

Zen Alarm Clock for a Gentle Awakening with Chime

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Kitagawa Utamaro, Komuraski of the Tamaya, House After a Bath, 1795

On June 22, I was invited to participate on National Public Radio’s The Diane Rehm Show along with Dr. Richard Davidson, NCCAM grantee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Mr. Jonathon Foust, founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute in Washington, D.C. The topic was “The Power of Meditation.”

Meditation can take a variety of forms: mantra meditation, relaxation response, mindfulness meditation, Transcendental Meditation, and Zen Buddhist meditation, among others. Yoga and Tai chi also incorporate meditative components. Meditation practices are often rooted in spiritual practices, but many people practice meditation outside of a religious context. The 2007 National Health Interview Survey revealed that some 20 million U.S. adults use meditation for health purposes.

Meditation has been used for centuries to increase calmness and physical relaxation, improve psychological balance, cope with illness, and enhance overall health and well-being. The literature on meditation suggests that it is a very powerful tool for learning control of attention, regulating emotion, and increasing self-awareness or cultivation of the state called mindfulness. These insights are old. But what is new in the last 15 years or so is scientific data. These data show that during meditation there are a number of measurable biological changes—for example, in the autonomic nervous system—and the recognition that meditation has the potential to impact on mental and physical health. This is an area of scientific promise in mind-body medicine that NCCAM is supporting and welcoming continued exploration by our grantees.

There are many interesting challenges related to bringing science to the study of meditation. Modern neuroscience has increased the tools available for this research. It is now well established that the meditative state can be associated with changes in electrical function of the brain, and recent imaging studies suggest that there may actually be neuroanatomic changes as well. In particular, Dr. Davidson’s work on the effect of meditation on processing of attention and neuroplasticity is fascinating, as is hisexamination of meditation on immune and brain function. Challenges to this area of research include understanding how to set up adequate control and understanding the factors that determine how people actually incorporate the practice of meditation into their daily lives. These are study design challenges that need to be met so we may further explore the potential health benefits of this intriguing ancient human practice.

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.

adapted from National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine by Dr. Josephine P. Briggs

Meditation is generally an inwardly oriented, personal practice, which individuals do by themselves. Meditation may involve invoking or cultivating a feeling or internal state, such as compassion, or attending to a specific focal point. The term can refer to the state itself, as well as to practices or techniques employed to cultivate the state. There are dozens of specific styles of meditation practice; the word meditation may carry different meanings in different contexts. Meditation has been practiced since antiquity as a component of numerous religious traditions. A 2007 study by the U.S. government found that nearly 9.4% of U.S. adults (over 20 million) had practiced meditation within the past 12 months, up from 7.6% (more than 15 million people) in 2002.

It's exquisite sounds summon your consciousness out of your meditative state with a series of subtle gongs.

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.

Now & Zen – The Meditation Timer Shop

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Orders@now-zen.com

Wake up refreshed, love your alarm clock, transform your mornings with The Zen Alarm Clock's progressive awakening with gentle chimes.

When faced with stressful situations, older adults who sleep poorly showed increased levels of a marker associated with inflammation, a new study finds.

The marker, called interleukin-6 (IL-6), has been linked to a variety of health issues, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and psychiatric problems.

“Our study suggests that, for healthy people, it all comes down to sleep and what poor sleep may be doing to our physiological stress response, our fight-or-flight response,” study author Kathi Heffner, an assistant professor of psychiatry at University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, said in a center news release.

The study was released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

The study included 45 women and 38 men with an average age of 61. Though all of the participants were in good health overall, about 27 percent were poor sleepers. Compared with good sleepers, those who slept poorly reported more depressive symptoms, more loneliness and more general stress.

At the start of the study, levels of IL-6 didn’t differ between poor sleepers and good sleepers. However, when put through a battery of verbal and memory tests intended to stress them out, poor sleepers’ levels of IL-6 spiked higher than that of the good sleepers.

The researchers concluded that older people who do not get adequate sleep may be at greater risk for mental and physical health problems because poor sleep changes how the immune system responds to stress, resulting in increased inflammation.

“This study offers more evidence that better sleep not only can improve overall well-being but also may help prevent poor physiological and psychological outcomes associated with inflammation,” Heffner said.

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

Although a gradual decline in the immune system is a normal part of aging, the study authors concluded that treating sleep disorders among older adults could help prevent certain illnesses.

“There are a lot of sleep problems among older adults,” Heffner concluded. “Older adults do not have to sleep poorly. We can intervene on sleep problems in older adulthood. Helping an elderly person become a better sleeper may reduce the risk of poor outcomes associated with inflammation.”

Just Say No to a Snooze Button

People want snooze buttons because they want to awaken gradually.  And this is only natural because just as our bodies fall asleep gradually, our bodies also want to wake up gradually. However, with a regular, snooze button-equipped alarm clock the user is initially “startled awake” by the alarm, and then continually startled awake with each press of the snooze button.  This is not the way to treat your body because it creates a kind of merry-go-round of multiple “rude awakenings.”

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

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about understanding sleep.

– Mary Elizabeth Dallas

SOURCE: University of Rochester Medical Center, news release, March 1, 2012

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

Now & Zen – Alarm Clocks with Gentle Sounds

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

orders@now-zen.com

Hugs are Good For Your Heart

Here’s some heart-healthy advice: Plan quality time with your honey.

In a 2003 study, researchers from the University of North Carolina told couples they would have to give speeches. But first, 100 of the couples sat together for 10 minutes, holding hands, then they embraced for 20 seconds. Another 85 couples rested quietly, separated from their partners.

During their speeches, heart rates and systolic blood pressure (the first number) rose twice as high in the no-contact group as it did for the hand-holding group.

“More intense and prolonged blood pressure responses to the stresses and strains of daily life create greater wear and tear on the body,” says study coauthor Karen Grewen, PhD. “Repeated episodes of positive contact and feelings of closeness may reduce the negative effects of life’s inevitable hassles on bodily systems.”

adapted from Prevention by By Kelly Stratton

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

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.

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 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

Now & Zen – The Gentle Sounding Alarm Clock Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

orders@now-zen.com

the zen of air travel

Flight delayed for another three hours? Just breathe deeply.

The San Francisco International Airport continues its quest to make itself its own destination. The airport has just opened a yoga room for harried travelers seeking a moment of peace following airport security.

In Terminal 2, serving Virgin America and American Airlines passengers, SFO’s “Zen Room” is reportedly the first of its kind. The space features dimmed lights meant to soothe weary spirits, a glass wall and door to act as a sound barrier from the busy noises of the terminal, and felt-covered rocks to add to the Zen garden atmosphere. The room will have plenty of yoga mats for travelers to use, and will be open from 4:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. each day.

zen mediation space in SF airport

Melissa Mizell, design director for Gensler, the architecture firm behind Terminal 2, said in a statement that the room “gives modern travelers a space that fosters and supports quiet and reflection,” MSNBC reports.

adapted from Time Magazine, January 2012

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.

Now & Zen’s Yoga Timer Shop

Yoga Timer and Alarm Clock Shop - Boulder, CO

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

zen chime alarm clock and meditation timers

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.

Simple Strategies to Strengthen Self Control

Witness the role of willpower in your daily life: From the moment the alarm sounds in the morning, it’s only by sheer determination that you rouse yourself from the warm sheets into the still-dark morning. You grit your teeth when the barista takes 6 minutes to fill your coffee order–never mind those $200 shoes you talk yourself out of buying or the fries you force yourself to leave on your plate at lunch. It’s no wonder that by the time 6 pm rolls around, you’re waging World War III on your husband for forgetting to pick up the milk on his way home. Again.

Our lives are full of temptations that tax our self-control and drain our willpower, but a new and growing body of research says you can make it through the day without losing your cool–and it isn’t as hard as you think. First, you need to realize that doing anything you don’t want to do–suppressing irritation at your mother-in-law, fighting an impulse to do something you shouldn’t, completing a task when you want to quit–draws on the same storehouse of willpower. But help is here: According to Roy Baumeister, PhD, director of social psychology at Florida State University, willpower functions like a muscle. It can be fatigued by overuse, but it can also be strengthened to make you more productive, less stressed, and happier. All you need are a few healthy habits to keep your willpower tank on full.

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.

When Dr. Baumeister monitored workers in Germany, he was surprised to find that people spent between 3 and 4 hours per day resisting desires, the most common of which were urges to eat, sleep, take a break from work, and have sex. But Dr. Baumeister also found that people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did. At first he was puzzled. If self-control is for resisting desires, why are people who have more of it using it less? Soon the explanation emerged: They’re better at proactively arranging their lives to avoid problem situations. These are the folks who take the car to the shop before it breaks down, give themselves enough time to finish a project, and steer clear of all-you-can-eat buffets. They play offense instead of defense–which means they set themselves up so they have a realistic chance of succeeding.

“Mindfulness” is the spiritual practice of being aware of your present moment. World famous Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh has developed the use of a bowl-gong in a practice he calls the “mindfulness bell.” When you hear the sound of the mindfulness bell, you are invited to take a moment to breathe in and out and center yourself in the present.  This practice allows the sound of the bowl-gong to periodically connect you to the peace and tranquility that resides inside you right now.  This delightful practice reduces stress and improves your overall health.

The Zen Timepiece can serve as a mindfulness bell in two ways: it can be set to strike on the hour (providing an hourly moment of stillness), or it can be set to strike at a programmed interval, such as every 20 minutes, or even every three hours.

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.

Now & Zen – The Gong Meditation and Alarm Clock Shop

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

orders@now-zen.com

It's exquisite sounds summon your consciousness out of your meditative state with a series of subtle gongs.

Trying to not think about falling asleep only creates stress for troubled sleepers. And the more stress, the less chance of falling into slumber. An ancient Kundalini yoga relaxation technique can give your mind something else to focus on and, in turn, help you relax.

Nancy Elkes, an instructor at Practice Yoga in Manhattan, recommends using the Meditation on the White Swan (also called Hunsani meditation) to quiet the mind in order to fall asleep. The more you use it before bed, the more accustomed your body becomes to this process of physically settling down. Once it’s part of your routine, it can soothe your entire body to fall asleep faster.

Meditation on the White Swan

1. Sit in a comfortable seat with a straight spine. Fold your fingers into your palms with the thumbs extended. Press your thumb tips together until they turn white (no need to press hard, just firmly). The tips are facing down in a V-shape to keep the joint relaxed.

2. Place your hands 6 to 8 inches in front of the brow point, with the backs of the hands facing you. Fix your eyes on the white of your thumb tips and get a clear mental image of your thumbs.

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

3. Then close your eyes and clearly “see” the thumb tips through the eyelids mentally.

4. Let the mind meditate on the sound “Sat” (Sanskrit for “truth”) as you inhale, and think “Nam” (meaning “the expression of your truth”) as you exhale. Let the mental sound vibrate in your body and continue for 5-11 minutes.

5. Give yourself over to the sleep gods as you let go. “You will reach a state of complete relaxation when you surrender all the mind’s busy thoughts and all of the body’s tensions over to someone or something else,” Elkes says. “Even if you have to envision your thoughts and aches or tension being swallowed up in the waves, let them flow away from you.”

6. To finish, touch the tongue to the roof of the mouth, gently swallow, softly float your eyes open and lay down for a deep sleep.

You can also try this lying down. You might find that soon after envisioning your thumbs, your alarm is waking you up.

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.

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 Women’s Health Magazine, by BY KRISTEN DOLLARD

It serves as the perfect meditation timer.

Now & Zen – The Gentle Chime Alarm Clocks & Timer Store

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302

(800) 779-6383

Orders@now-zen.com