Snow at Itsukushima by Watanabe Shozaburo

1.  Power

Giving to others is the most powerful thing we can do for ourselves.

2. Honor

Approach gift shopping as an opportunity to honor the people you really love.

3.  Strength

Share your strengths — and be open to others’ gifts.

4.  Need

Help others because they need it, not because you need to provide it.

5.  Kindness

Kindness is in our nature; practice giving and receiving it freely.

6.  Discovery

Teach what you know, and you’ll discover what you’re ready to learn.

7.  Presence

Simply being present is often the most valuable gift you can give.

8.  Abundance

Contribute to abundance: If you no longer need something, pass it on.

9.  Contribution

Give yourself time to consider what you most want to contribute to the world.

10.  Welcome

The right gifts are just as welcome in simple packages.

adapted from Body + Soul Magazine, 2009

Natural Chime Alarm Clocks and Timers

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create a sacred place to be mindful

Is there a place in your home or yard where you can let go, relax, and renew your awareness of transcendent, loving oneness? It doesn’t take much to create such a place.

Your can create your healing retreat —a garden, a teahouse, a room—or you can claim one that already exists—a window seat, a rock by a stream. Your haven can be a balcony with potted plants and a wind chime, a hot tub surrounded by lavender, a bedroom where you have banished all distractions, or a comforter you roll up in like a cocoon. It needn’t even be a particular place; it can be an experience you recreate each time you need it, like a candlelight bubble bath with fresh flowers and Mozart.

There are no rules about how to create a personal haven, but consider incorporating some of these features (let your heart and your gut guide you):

• A gateway or marked entry to set it aside as sacred

• Privacy (freedom from interruptions and demands)

• A place to rest (a bed, hammock, comfortable stool)

• Calming colors

• Curved shapes

• Soft textures

create a sacred space in your house

• Plants

• Objects of beauty

• Simplicity, absence of clutter

• Soothing sounds (birdsong, moving water, music, wind chimes)

• Sunlight or soft, warm electric light

• Pleasing scents

• The four elements: air, earth (the ground, stones), water (in a bowl, fountain, or body of water), fire (sun, candles, a fire)

• A long vista, if there’s a pleasant one available

• Symbols of calm, transcendence, love, nourishment (hearts, stars, sun, moon, angels, personal treasures)

You deserve it

If you are like most people, the hardest part isn’t finding or creating a sanctuary; it’s believing that you deserve to spend time there. We tend to be so overwhelmed with demands that time taken away from meeting them feels like time wasted. We somehow learned that doing something just because it feels good is detrimental to others. Question these assumptions.

In fact, great inspiration, beautiful works of art, and profound love arise from the experience of unstructured time. In quiet, we can hear our muses and feel our passions. Here we can dream freely and drink from the deep well of our source. The peace we find carries into all our actions and relationships. What better gift can we give the world?

adapted from Natural Home Magazine, January/February2004 by Carol Venolia

Carol Venolia is an architect, author of Healing Environments: Your Guide to Indoor Well-Being (Celestial Arts, 1988), and former publisher of Building with Nature Newsletter.

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mindful eating

Conscious eating

Just as you bring mindfulness to your yoga practice, you can be mindful at mealtime. Yoga philosophy and all of the world’s healthiest diets recommend a conscious eating practice for optimal health. Mediterranean cultures traditionally regard meals as experiences to be savored and a life pleasure meant to be enjoyed. Asian cultures consider eating an aesthetic experience and reverentially enjoy beautifully prepared and presented foods that nourish the senses—to see, smell, touch, taste, and observe any sounds—while slowly eating the meal.

The Slow Food movement is reviving and sharing the benefits of conscious eating and the enjoyment of wholesome foods. Slow Food USA, part of the international Slow Food movement, is dedicated to supporting local farmers, the production of regional foods, and small producers. The movement promotes a slower lifestyle that cultivates time for conscious food preparation and eating, and opposes the fast life exemplified by corporatized foods and degradation of farmland.

conscious eating, a mindfulness practice

Eat Here Now

How can you incorporate mealtime mindfulness into your own life? Try the following essential components of a conscious-eating practice.

1. Schedule time for meals. Allocate at least twenty minutes each for meals and/or enough time to truly experience the food you eat. Avoid overeating. Set your Zen Timer for at least 20 minutes.

2. Eliminate distractions during meals. Eat slowly in a calm, quiet environment without a blaring television, loud music, or your computer as an accompaniment. The experience of the meal should be the focus of your attention and entertainment.

3. Enjoy conscious eating. Practice a state of awareness while you eat. Savor the appearance, smell, and taste of your food, so you can be truly satisfied. Chew each bite twenty times, which will help digestion and keep your attention in the moment. Enjoy the rasa, or “juice” of the food, through our senses.

4. Practice snacking awareness. Avoid mindless snacking, eating while you’re talking, and snacking just because food is present.

5. Use tasteful presentation. Small portions beautifully arranged on an attractive plate nourish the senses and encourage you to savor each bite.

6. Practice cooking meditation. Feed your soul by incorporating mindfulness as you cook. Allow cooking to express your love and be the ultimate gift to others, as the food we eat literally becomes a part of us physically, mentally, and spiritually, in our cells, skin, bones, and thoughts.

7. Count your blessings. Before your meal, experience a moment of thankfulness for having food.

adapted from Natural Home Magazine, November/December 2005 by Elaine Gavalas

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mind-body therapies help your heart

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

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, January 2010 by Kate Hanley

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How to Create a Stress-Free Life

Kathleen Hall is one of the nation’s noted experts on stress management — she’s consoled Katrina survivors, counseled victims of domestic abuse, and advised families in hospitals coping with cancer and AIDS. But she didn’t always hold this title.

More than 20 years ago, Hall was a successful stockbroker on Wall Street, with a supportive husband and two healthy children. But the late nights, high-stakes pressure, and stressful commute wore at her over the years, until one day she snapped. She quit her job, retreated for six months to a remote cabin in Clarksville, Georgia, and spent the next seven years pursuing degrees in divinity and spirituality.

On her journey to a stress-free life, here’s what she learned.

Hall adopted a powerful but surprisingly simple mantra — SELF, an acronym for serenity, exercise, love, and food — and started teaching it to others to great effect. These “four roots of real happiness” may seem almost too easy, but she insists they have a centering effect in even the worst of circumstances.

Making time for serenity creates space in our lives for meditation and stress reduction; exercise benefits the spirit and mind as well as the body; love and friendship bring physiological and emotional rewards; and nourishing food, consciously consumed, feeds the senses in a deeply satisfying way.

It’s these simple things that keep us balanced, she says, and they make up Hall’s 10 secrets to a stress-free life.

adapted from Body + Soul Magazine

Natural Sounding Alarm Clocks and Meditation Timers, The Digital Zen Alarm Clock in Solid Walnut

 

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it's okay to yawn

Afraid to risk rudeness and let out a hearty yawn? Well, here’s an excuse to give Miss Manners a hissy fit: According to neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, MD, director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, yawning is one of the best-kept health secrets. “If you want to maintain an optimum healthy brain, it is essential that you yawn,” says Newberg. The action stimulates neural movement in certain areas of the mind and regulates brain temperature and metabolism—all of which can increase muscle control, enhance sensuality, and even ward off jet lag. Newberg suggests yawning 10 times in a row every day, along with your regular workout or wellness routine. A nightly yawning ritual can help you:

Chill out. Newberg says a good yawn can relax you more effectively than meditation. “More than simply calming the body, yawning brings the mind into a heightened state of cognitive functioning.”

Stay focused. “Yawning rids the brain of sleepiness, helping you keep your attention on important ideas and concepts,” says Newberg. So why do we start yawning before we hit the sack? Because it also helps regulate our internal clock: When we’re tired, yawning signals sleep.  No need to set your Zen Alarm Clock for bedtime quite yet.

Be more compassionate. Studies show yawning stimulates the part of the brain responsible for generating empathy and social awareness. So intentional yawning may actually strengthen our ability to be kind to others.

adapted from Natural Solutions Magazine, October 2009 by Danielle Winston

Digital Zen Alarm Clock

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Butterflies Plate #21, Natural History of Britain

           on the patio

the afternoon drifts along

       with the butterfly.

                                 – Patricia J. Machmiller

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Koitsu, "Full Moon at Akashi Beach" Ukiyo-e Woodblock Print

The spiritual aspect of ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) is considered very important to its practitioners.  Silence is a must during practices of ikebana.  It is a time to appreciate things in nature that people often overlook because of their busy lives.  One becomes more patient and tolerant of differences, not only in nature, but also in general.  Ikebana can inspire one to identify with beauty in all art forms.  This is also the time when one feels closeness to nature which provides relaxation for the mind, body, and soul.

adapted from wikipedia.org

Zen Alarm Clock, Ukiyo-e Hokusai Wave Dial Face

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Kiyonaga Riverside Ukiyo-e

The phrase iki is generally used in Japanese culture to describe qualities that are aesthetically appealing and when applied to a person, what they do, or have, constitutes a high compliment. 

Iki is not found in nature.  While similar to wabi-sabi in that it disregards perfection, iki is a broad term that encompasses various characteristics related to refinement with flair. 

The tasteful manifestation of sensuality can be iki.

Etymologically, iki has a root that means pure and unadulterated.  However, it also carries a connotation of having an appetite for life.  Iki is never cute.

The basis of iki is thought to have formed among urbane commoners (chonin) in Edo in the Tokugawa period (1603 to 1868).  Iki is sometimes misunderstood as simply “anything Japanese”, but it is actually a specific aesthetic ideal, distinct from more ethereal notions of transcendence or poverty.  As such, samuri, for example, would typically, as a class, be considered devoid of iki, (see yabo). 

At the same time, individualistic warriors are often depicted in contemporary popular imagination as embodying the iki ideals of a clear, stylish manner and blunt, unwavering directness. The term became widespread in modern intellectual circles through the book The Structure of “Iki” (1930) by Kuki Sukuzo.

adapted from wikipedia.org

Digital Zen Timers, a mindfulness practice tool

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Hana Wachigai, the crest of the Izumo Genji clans (Oki, Enya, Takaoka)

Mon, also monshō, mondokoro, and kamon, are Japanese heradic symbols.  Mon may refer to any symbol, while kamon and mondokoro refer specifically to family symbols.

There are no set rules in the design of a mon. It most commonly consists of a roundel encircling a figure of plant, animal, man-made, natural or celestial objects, all abstracted to various degrees. 

Religious symbols, geometric shapes and kanji were commonly used as well.  Virtually all modern Japanese families have a mon, though modern usage is rare.  Many Japanese may no longer recognize their own family’s mon.

adapted from wikipedia.org

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