Learn about the positive effects of having a healthy morning routine that lower your levels of stress and anxiety.
Morning Anxiety Is An Age-Old Problem
A thousand years ago a Saxon poem already described “dawn care” or uhtcearu. The exiled wanderer in the poem had reason to be worried and stressed during the early morning hours – his world collapsed when he lost his lord, his family, and his comrades in battle. What the Saxon narrator did not realize, though, was that the morning anxiety he experienced did not just stem from catastrophe-induced stress, but was also brought on by his body’s own Circadian rhythms.
Cortisol is a stress hormone that primes you for action. And guess when the body’s cortisol release peaks? Around the time you are waking up. Combine this cortisol spike with stressful lives and the epidemic of generalized anxiety that marks the 21st century and many people start the day revving too high.
Read more: Is the morning person real or just a myth? Explore the different chronotypes and what they have to do with your sleep pattern.
The Benefits Of A Healthy Morning Routine — And What Exactly Makes Them Healthy?
There is hope, though, for salvaging your mornings and placing yourself in a healthy mental space. A structured, healthy morning routine goes a long way towards alleviating the effects of high cortisol levels and prepares you for a productive, balanced day.
Morning routines are powerful mood modulators. Scientists say your morning mood affects your productivity and relationships for the rest of the day. It determines how you see and treat your colleagues and clients and how productive you are.
Planning And Executing A Healthy Morning Routine Is An Investment In Yourself
When you follow a sound morning routine, you are making an investment in your mental, emotional and physical health. Morning routines boost confidence and equilibrium and consequently prepare you for success. If practiced diligently, they focus your mind and break harmful habits such as lazily hitting the snooze button or reaching like an addict for the phone first thing in the morning.
Read more: A bedtime ritual is just as important as a healthy morning routine. Discover guidelines for your healthy evening routine to set the foundations for restorative sleep.
Stepping Towards Healthier Mornings
Here are six useful steps you can incorporate in your morning routine.
Step 1: Examine your thoughts
Very often the first thoughts that enter your mind when you wake up reveal your current preoccupations. If you are worried about your child’s test results, your spouse’s irritable behavior or a stressful project at work, these thoughts will probably rise to the surface first thing in the morning. They represent your mental pulse, in a way. It’s a good idea to take that mental pulse.
Scientists have found that CAR (cortisol awakening response) can help coping with stress during the day. In a way, your brain rehearses coping mechanisms by anticipating the demands of the day that lies ahead.
The best way to deal with anxious thoughts is therefore to acknowledge them. Engage your thoughts for about five minutes and analyze your concerns to get a sense of where you’re at. Try to come up with positive, constructive solutions to your problems, but avoid iterative force-thinking.
After five minutes of discipline yourself and make a conscious effort to replace these worrisome thoughts with self-care activities. These popular guided mindfulness meditations help to observe your thoughts and clear your mind in the morning:
- Mindful Morning Meditation Kate James 13:48
- A Simple Morning Practice Al Jeffery 7:46
- Mindfulness Of Thoughts As Clouds In The Sky Dr. Lillian Nejad 14:10
- Morning Mindfulness Martin Schubert 8:28
- Mindfulness Of Thoughts Meg James 10:30
New to mindfulness? Read what to do with arising thoughts during meditation.
Step 2: Get up and hydrate
The best way to interrupt a negative stream of consciousness and a feeling of generalized anxiety in the morning is to get up. Do not give in to the temptation to stay put and cocoon under the warm covers while you’re stewing in anxiety and negativity. You have to ring-fence the negative thoughts.
Throw the covers off and do something completely practical and mundane. Go to the bathroom. Squeeze some lemon juice into a glass of water to hydrate your body and boost your immune system. Stretch! Bend down and try to touch your toes and reach your arms high above your head.
Step 3: Practise gratitude
Deliberately challenge negativity with gratitude. Keep a small dairy next to your bed in which you write down the things for which you are grateful every morning. Shawn Achor, bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and a specialist in the relatively new field of happiness science, says that the simple act of writing down three things for which you are grateful every day for 21 days in a row increases your levels of optimism. The effect lasts for up to six months.
Expressing gratitude physically changes the brain. A study published in 2015 found that engaging in gratitude writing created lasting neural sensitivity to gratitude. The more you express gratitude, the more grateful you become. And the happier you are likely to be! So use gratitude writing to set your mood for the day.
If you want to move beyond your gratitude journal and start living a life of gratitude you can also cultivate this feeling and bring it into your daily life through meditation. Explore hundreds of guided gratitude meditation practices in our free web library.
Step 4: Breathe
Make a habit of breathing deeply for about three minutes every morning. Stand with your weight evenly distributed on both feet. Breathe deeply through your nose while supporting your breath with the muscles of your diaphragm. You need more guidance? Practice with these short morning breathing meditations:
- Morning Breathing Practice Tracey Soghrati 6:00
- Brief Mindfulness Of Breathing Dr. Miles Neale 7:14
- Morning Meditation For Energy And Clarity Manoj Dias 15:18
- Morning Flow Tomek Wyczesany 17:37
Research published by the European Respiratory Society indicates that breathing six to ten deep, slow breaths per minute can promote ventilation, gas exchange, and oxygenation of the arteries, helps to maintain the parasympathetic-sympathetic balance in the body and optimizes the amount of cardiorespiratory reserve that could be called upon in times of intense physical or mental stress or activity.
In other words, taking the time to breathe deeply and deliberately every morning prepares your body and mind for the challenges the world might throw at you.
Read more: Learn more about the workings of breathing exercises for anxiety release and discover helpful guided practices.
Step 5: Meditate
Take time out to meditate, even if it is just ten minutes. There is no scientific doubt anymore that mindfulness meditation is a powerful anxiety buster. Numerous studies have found that meditation reduces anxiety and increases positive feelings. According to an article published in Nature, mindfulness meditation enhances attention, improves emotion regulation, and reduces stress.
Daily meditation practice as part of your healthy morning routine is, therefore, vital preparation for the day. Start your healthy morning routine with this free playlist of Insight Timer’s most popular morning meditations:
Read more: If you are new to meditation or feel your meditation practice could improve, discover the different types of meditation and learn how to meditate properly to truly experience the many health benefits.
Step 6: Exercise
Invigorate your body and your mind by doing fifteen minutes of exercise every morning while your body is in a fasting state. Choose your weapons: sit-ups and push push-ups, jumping jacks, brisk walking or jogging on the spot. As long as you get the blood flowing and the heart pumping. Moderate exercise energizes the body, and the energy you generate during your early, healthy morning routine will last well into the day.
Read more: You want to start the day with gentle sun greetings? Explore how to best start your yoga at home practice.
Turn Dawn Dare Into Self-Care
A healthy morning routine has the power to change the nervous, exiled wanderer into a calm, grounded go-getter. It takes you on new paths of seeing and being. It changes uhtcearu into self-cearu.
Read more: When we love ourselves, it helps us feel our best, and when we feel our best, we can give more to the world. Discover six meaningful approaches of how to practice self-love.
