Rubber glove resonators

Resonators made from latex rubber gloves are the most versatile (and inexpensive) resonator kind for yoga exercises and many other meditative and sensual experiences.

In opposite to average toy balloons, rubber gloves usually have a way lower hysteresis, which enables them to return almost perfectly to their original shape and size after deflation; plain and cheap no-name latex rubber gloves* often even smell much better. Also sensually rubber glove resonators have only very little common with ordinary throwaway balloons; their fascinating, structured, energetic latex membrane is a class of its own, and their fingers can e.g. transmit vibrations, gently massage your face or produce sounds in resonaKampaña.

(*Expensive brand ones often include costly chemical surface coatings etc. those cause smelly antiprana.)
 
Below you can see, how pretty inflated rubber gloves can look like. How wonderful their magical material can feel like, an internet site like this is unfortunately incapable to transmit. ;-)
This almost transparent specimen is an old variant of a model from MAPA, which unfortunately wasn't very stretchable and later got replaced by more opaque successors. Red MAPA gloves are of a smooth and nice feeling material; unfortunately they emit a quite chemical smell (like a kind of synthetic cherry imitation fragrance, containing styrene??). They also bleach out extremely easy under influence of sun light and damp vibrations quite a lot.
This one is a tile craftsman latex glove of the brand name Kächele. (It nowadays may be out of production.)

The resonators shown above are without inlet pipe, but instead with a knotted finger converted into an inlet. The benefits of this design are that no stiff inlet pipe is in the way and though can't injure anybody and that no plug can't unwantedly fall out (and though also can't get swallowed by small children, those may likely enjoy dreaming with such resonators too).

The definitely best latex rubber gloves for meditation were of the brand Tender Tuffy. The most fantastic thing of them is that their extraordinary noble material had absolutely no unpleasant odours but smells very pleasant and natural. Unfortunately I later also found some small ones with a lousy petrol antiprana, though I hope the company hasn't permanently changed their formula to these toxic solvent chemicals to produce them cheaper. More about Tuffy gloves can be found on this page. (Also pictures are there.)

The strongest rubber gloves I found were Vileda - Der Starke. Unfortunately they are out of production, though I urgently need to find a replacement type, because their ultra- low steepness is necessary to perform certain yoga exercises. More details and pictures of this special type are here.

 

Building resonators with inlet pipe has the benefit that none of the glove fingers need to be sacrificed (neither are endangered to accidentally get ripped when plugging in the inflation hose nozzle), though all 5 fingers remain intact and stay capable to vibrate freely or to tenderly touch your skin to transmit vibrations. The inlet also permits quicker re-inflating without fumbling around with knots and it permits to tweak the exact degree of inflation in low operation ranges (and though its resonance frequency) much more precisely.

Besides this, at low operating ranges such a hand- shaped wholeness with all its lovely, tender fingers kept intact looks IMO much more beautiful.
Here is a closer look at such a resonator's inlet pipe and plug design, made from 2 pen ink cartridges and a cable tie. Gloves sorts with a cotton coating inside can be turned inside out (like the one on this picture) before mounting the clip to make their surface feel different.

More details about building resonators are explained on this page.

 
How large can rubber gloves be inflated...???

It is important to regard that although latex itself is very stretchable, most rubber glove sorts normally can not survive to stay freely inflated so large that the entire membrane area of their main body gets fully stretched. One reason for this is that while in a spherical (round) inflatable object the tension is equally distributed, in any approximately cylindrical shaped inflated structure an unequal load distribution exists, which results in a twice as high radial than longitudinal tension. Due to a rubber glove resonator is not round, this drives radial zones of the membrane near its middle into the 3rd operating range already before the resonator can get longitudinally stretched completely, and though drift effects lead to its soon destruction when attempting to operate it freely inflated in the 3rd range. How stable rubber glove resonators can be operated at larger sizes is very dependant from the exact rubber glove brand and type.

Interesting is, that (unlike you may expect) small size rubber gloves seem to make way less trouble here than larger size ones. While large size gloves tend to get forced more and more into a round shape by overload drift of their middle in 3rd range operation, the slimmer shape of small size ones permits also the front and rear end to remain inflated near a lower 3rd range, because their narrow "waist" is capable to reduce the tension in their middle enough to protect them from soon drift problems. To make this work well, it is necessary to pre- stretch its front and rear end into the 3rd range by elastAyama while protecting its "waist" from getting stretched too. When fully inflated this way, the resonator's main body reaches a similar shape like the known, snowman- like "clown" toy balloons. The load distribution of such a structure resembles rather 2 connected spheres than a cylinder and though protects the membrane zones at its middle from too high radial load. To prevent destruction by drift, it is important that the front and back end need to stay inflated to approximately the same size, while the waist must not reach the 3rd range.

Small size rubber glove resonators can likely be operated quite long in this state, but it would be all but good for them. The system must not get out of balance; when (e.g. by slow deflation from leakiness) one end gets much smaller than the other one while other membrane areas are still in high operating ranges, the larger end is endangered to get driven into the 3rd range by increasing pressure generated by the shrinking side, which makes the system unstable and can easily destroy it or at least increase its steepness in a way that will make it too unstable to become operatable at the large size again. Though in this extreme special case a smaller inflated state can become indeed more dangerous for such a resonator then a larger (but more stabile) one. During deflating and especially later during re- inflation it is crucial to manually support its waist and other endangered membrane areas (like known from elastAyama) to protect them from being overloaded by temporary 3rd range operation. (Further informations about the physical behaviour of inflated latex structures under that extreme conditions can be found in the Balloon-FAQ.)

In an experiment over night I managed it to keep a small size glove freely inflated in the 3rd range to a main body size of ca. 55cm length and 30cm ø for ca. 9 hours, which it survived without serious instabilities, and even the hysteresis stayed relatively low. Although it can be certainly an interesting experience to realize how such a fully inflated rubber glove resonator looks and feels like, I don't like it much to operate them freely inflated this way for long times; there is still a too high risk for its vulnerable membrane to get destroyed, and especially I also don't like to hurt it by drift damage. Latex is something holy for me and nothing I want to destroy. Keeping a latex resonator tightly inflated to maximum size is rather like senselessly operating a Pentium processor at a way too high voltage; the resonator's wonderful, vibrant, energetic membrane can do so much more and doesn't deserve to be ill- treated this way. I want to feel its energies and realize its interaction with cosmic vibrations. I want to realize how such a wholeness transmits signals to me and let it take me on a mystical journey. An inflated resonator symbolizes by its perpetual interaction with it the static- dynamical cosmic equilibrium that keeps us living. Its fragility is also a metaphor for the fragile connection between the human mind (-edness) and the divine. For spiritual development it is important to be capable to safely drive the resonator down again after meditation and not to damage them (explained here). In some ways a good resonator of latex can rather resemble a kind of mystical partner than just a simple meditation device, and they work quite similar like a data media; it is therefore important to treat the membrane of such mediator resonators with highest respect and protect them from any overload.

Instead of operating rubber glove resonators for meditation at the threshold from the 2nd to the 3rd range, I therefore have learned to operate them rather much smaller at the one from the 1st to the 2nd range, at which their shape is also quite stabile, but without the danger of drift damage. Even the 1st range can be interesting for meditation exercises, and with spiritual training even in range 0 some of the energetic aspects of their magical material can still be realized.
 

Note: On this site are many other pictures of rubber glove resonators, though this page only includes few.
 

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