by Krystal Russell

Created on: November 24, 2008

People who are interested in a meditation alternative to yoga, incense, bells, sounds of nature, and other traditional meditation methods should consider getting back to nature with a meditation tool created from exotic hardwoods.

Called Zen Sticks, these meditation tools are elegant works of art made from any of eight different varieties of exotic hardwoods from around the world, but several steps must be completed before a Zen Stick is finished. After the wood has been eco-friendly harvested, jeweler's tools are used to sand and polish the wood to a warm, iridescent sheen that brings out detail in the wood's grain. The completed Zen Stick is then sheathed in a cloth carrying case made from a retired Japanese obi. A few simple exercises transforms the Zen Stick from work of art into a beautiful alternative meditation tool.

Laurie Desjardins, creator of the Zen Stick, coined the term "experiential meditation", or doing something while you meditate. "If you just sit down and meditate, you sort of wait' for meditation to happen, for your mind to be stilled," said Desjardins. "In experiential meditation, you experience meditation almost immediately because your actionswalking, yoga, or tossing a Zen Stickpropel you to a meditative state."

Combining meditation and yoga balances the mind/body/spirit connection in a circular practice. Typically, students will briefly meditate at the beginning of a yoga class to begin stilling the mind. Doing yoga stills it even more through experiential meditation, and the class is ended with a deep meditation. Tossing a Zen Stick stills the mind like doing yoga, only more quickly and efficiently.

Other meditation tools, like bells, music, bowls, incense, and sounds of nature, impact only two or three of the senses at a time. "If you think of all that we touch, see, hear, taste, and smell, virtually all of our senses are being stimulated almost constantly, and we expect [these meditation tools] to still vastly distracted minds. Our every-day attention is divided between the demands of work, kids, schedules, relationships, diets and now the added pressure of having to have me-time'. We need to engage most if not all of our senses to still our minds," said Desjardins.

Zen Sticks directly involve four of our senses. Sight is stimulated by the sheen of the polished and oiled exotic hardwood and by the repetitive flips of a tossed Zen Stick, smell by the distinctive scents each variety of hardwood naturally exudes, touch by the act of tossing and catching the Zen Stick or simply touching the smooth, jeweler-polished surface, and hearing is stimulated when one listens to the rhythmic whir the tossed Zen Stick makes as it moves through the air.

As a meditation alternative, Zen Sticks are a beautiful and unusual way to initiate someone into meditating. All eight varieties of Zen Sticks, as well as brief meditation exercises for using them, can be found online at http://www.SleepingTiger.org.

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