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How to Meditate
Meditation is something everyone can do. Practicing can help improve your health and wellbeing.
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Meditation Timer OnlineMorning Routine Meditation
Morning is a special time. Both body and mind are refreshed, and the day begins again with a renewed sense of possibility. A bad morning, however, is like laying the first row of bricks in a wall off-center: even small imbalances compound with every additional layer.
The cortisol awakening response (or CAR) describes how the stress hormone cortisol shifts in cycles, peaking just after waking up. Researchers theorize that this boost enables people to focus on the day ahead and plan upcoming activities. However, when environmental stressors turn anticipation into anxiety, this natural response can become dysregulated, causing a range of knock-on effects for the day ahead.
Mindfulness practices such as meditation have been shown to lower morning cortisol levels, however, and result in better sleep, lower anxiety and improved overall wellbeing. It’s clear – the best way to have a good day is to have a good morning.
Being vs Doing
Morning habits are an outward expression of a person’s mindset, priorities and personal values. In other words, a certain routine doesn’t cause success, and success doesn’t cause the routine; rather, both the routine and the success are caused by a third factor: conscious, mindful intention. To put it simply, being inspires doing.
Easy Rituals For Starting Your Day With Mindfulness
Instead of examining what we should do and what specific routines and habits are ideal, we can investigate ways to nurture conscious intention in the moment and focus on how we should be.
By prioritizing awareness first thing in the morning, we gather up our consciousness as a resource that we can then use according to our own will, rather than having it drained away on mindless distractions and stress.
On a more practical level, research into the unique biological variation in people’s sleep/wake cycles (called chronotypes) shows that mornings are not necessarily the most productive time for everyone anyway.
Music For A Peaceful Morning
Three Stages Of A Healthy Morning Routine
The best morning routine will depend on you and your unique preferences and values – deciding how you want to be will inform the actions you choose to do. Most healthy morning habits, however, seem to follow three broad stages.
Stage 1: Support Your Physical Body In Waking Up
Waking up is a whole-body phenomenon – it’s not just the brain that wakes up. During hours of sleep your body undergoes several physiological changes, and it needs time to transition to waking. Help your body by supplying the natural physiological cues that trigger wakefulness.
You can do this by opening a window and taking a few deep breaths of fresh morning air. By doing a body scan you can check in with how you’re feeling physically. Try yoga, walking or other exercises, but avoid strenuous workouts until you’re properly awake.
To assist the normal waking process and promote healthy melatonin levels, you should also expose yourself to natural light as soon after waking as possible. Have water or tea instead of coffee immediately after waking, especially if caffeine tends to amplify anxiety for you. Neuroscientists William Lovallo and colleagues claim that coffee raises cortisol levels, and the optimal time to drink it is mid to late morning.
Center Into Your Body & Start Your Day With Yoga
Stage 2: Come Into Stillness
Morning routines don’t have to be elaborate – turn an ordinary shower into a moment of self-care by slowing down and bringing mindfulness to the sensations. Savor the feeling of the soap on your skin, the warm water. Take your time with a favorite cup of tea or some gentle music.
If we can hold silence and stillness for a moment, we gain the opportunity to ask, how do we want the next moment to unfold? How do we want the rest of the day to feel? Where do we want our attention to go?
Flow Into The Present Moment With Morning Breath Practices
Mindful Breakfast Practices
Waking up and immediately tumbling into distractions, activities and stressors destroys the ability to be present. In fact, a study in The Journals of Gerontology Series B found that worrying about the day’s events and expecting future stress could actually alter the brain’s functioning that day.
Practices For Releasing Morning Anxiety
Avoid self-judgment (not just as part of your morning routine, but in your daily life). Just be, without resisting or clinging to thoughts, sensations or perceptions as they emerge. If worries about what you need to do later keep cropping up, acknowledge them but gently set them aside. You can return to these thoughts at the proper time – for the moment, you have no obligation but to be, in the moment, as you are.
Living In Gratitude, Loving Kindness & Peace
Stage 3: Set Your Intention
With your body and mind gently woken up and your consciousness held in calm attention, you can now begin to focus yourself by making plans for the day ahead. Before diving into a practical “to do” list of tasks and obligations, first set an intention for how you want to be today. Think about the attitude you want to hold, how you want to feel, and how you want to engage with the tasks that lay ahead of you.
You can experiment with affirmations or visualizations to focus your attention on what you wish to cultivate that day. You could also use prayer, journaling, or inspirational reading to put yourself in the right headspace. Ask yourself what you’re happy to let go of today, or where you’d like to reassert a healthy boundary.
Set Your Intentions For Your Day & Life
Morning Meditation For A Conscious Start To The Day
With a mindfulness-induced morning routine, being comes before doing. Being still and focused on the present moment, we are more prepared to face the day’s tasks with balance, resilience and conscious focus. From here, we are empowered to decide how we want to practically structure the upcoming day.
Whether you choose a simple breath-focused practice, use chanting or mantras, or do a short loving-kindness meditation, mindfulness is a way to take hold of the day and set it moving along the right track.
Early Risers: Nature Sounds At Dawn
