Morning Routine
Morning Routine: A Powerful Practice for Connecting with Self and Life
Take a deep breath.
Settle in to your body for a moment.
Listen to your sensations in your body as you read the following words:
Routine
Discipline
Morning
Rhythm
Alignment
Presence
Notice what you feel. Notice where there is resistance, where there is ease. You don’t have to do anything with the feeling, except give it your gentle attention. In preparing what was a talk on morning routine, I had the opportunity to give much thought and contemplation to the process, to the resistance, to the invitation of a morning routine. What came forward was something simple and yet beautifully rich. The recording of the talk is below, though I will warn you, the train sounds make it difficult to hear. The transcript, a bit modified is below and yes, a bit longer than I usually go in these newsletters, but I hope it is an easy and useful read and more importantly, a profoundly useful practice.
How many of you have a daily morning routine?
I would pose that everyone reading this already has a morning routine. For some of us it might be hitting the snooze button 2, 3, 10 times before getting out of bed. For some of us it is a specific time of waking, a splash to the face of cold water, perhaps a moment of gratitude. For some it is a meditation practice, or morning sex, or exercise. For some of us it is reaching for our phone and doing at least a quick scroll of social media or the news. For some it is the every day pattern of waking with a sense of urgency, of rushing through a quick shower, teeth brushed. For some it is our every day coffee or matcha, with or without breakfast.
Every one of us has a routine, a pattern, a habitual, even mundane way of starting our days. The webster dictionary gives us the following synonyms for routine: pattern, ordinary, commonplace, standard, unexceptional, a regular course, habitual. So, the question might not be whether or not to have a morning routine, but what this routine entails and does it allow for the most fluid, skillful expression of our unique being? And, how do we identify our own needs and engage in a routine that serves us best; given our physiology, and the rhythm of our days?
For even those of you of think of yourselves as non-routine people, I would guess there is more routine to your mornings than you may realize. The habitual nature of a routine is exactly what makes it so mundane and unrecognized at times. So, why bother talking about it? Does it need to be anything different? Maybe. The more important questions for me are:
How is your morning routine working for you?
How does your morning set the tone for your day?
Does your morning routine reflect and enhance and enliven your way of being in the world, your unique expression?
Does it allow you to be in rhythm with yourself and your world?
And, of course, we all know what a morning routine should consist of, right? Fasting until 11 and celery juice. No, wait, fasting until 11 and a big cup of bulletproof coffee. No that’s not right, a warm nourishing breakfast to start your day. Hmm, A walk, a run, a gentle yoga practice. 5 minutes of meditation. Only an hour of meditation will do. Waking at 4, wake at 8. Wake with the sun. Journal for 10 minutes. List what you are grateful for. Scrape your tongue. Brush your teeth. Wash your face before you meditate, after your meditate. Ok, you get my point. There are a lot of should’s in the world. So, which is it? Is there one prescription?
I’m not here to give you a prescriptive morning routine. For all who know me well, it is the common joke that I answer almost any question posed to me… “it depends.” I even had a group of students who wanted to make a t-shirt with these words. It depends…
Rather than a prescription, what I hope is that this contemplation will invite you into a conversation with yourself. I would like to invite you into this conversation today, and then every morning. I invite us into a routine that allows us to know ourselves, to tap in to our needs and to live in alignment with our essence nature.
Life/Divinity/Consciousness takes form as you. We are One; one infinite essence. We are each a unique, beautiful expression of this Oneness. Oneness dances through each of us, flows through us. We have the opportunity and the invitation and perhaps the mandate to remember our essence nature.
Ayurvedic medicine states that the two most common core reasons for illness are being out of rhythm with ourselves and out of rhythm with nature.
The invitation of a morning routine is to bring us into rhythm with ourselves and our world. Every morning, we awaken. Consciousness sees, smells, hears and feels through our bodies. We begin moving our bodies. Thoughts form. The energy of our emotions takes on a certain palpability. Waking in the morning is going from Conscious Awareness to an awake state and yet one could argue, a less awake state. A state where we put on our mantles of self as we put on our clothes. We put on our labels, our identities, our mental projections and stories, our concerns, our worries, our personality structure.
What if we allow ourselves an invitation each morning to stay awake to our Oneness, to the greater consciousness? What if we mindfully noticed how we step into our personality structure and practiced the movements of morning that allow us to stay close to this pulse of life, to let it inform our being, to let it infuse all aspects of our personality structure at every layer; healing, manifesting, being? How would this inform your day?
This is the invitation, in the morning hours, to cultivate a discipline that delights our being, that allows us to know our own needs, that lets us check in with our senses, that starts our day in full Awareness, in the expanded Consciousness of all of life. It is a practice that permits us a moment to witness how Consciousness takes form as us. When we wake with this practice, we potentially set the tone for each day to be more in alignment with life’s expression through us. And, this becomes a practice that we choose. While in the beginning it may meet with resistance, if in alignment with our nature, it will take the formation of new habits. It will become a practice we would not want to live without.
This is the essence of discipline. Discipline does not have to be something we do with drudgery or force. Erich Fromm, mid-20th century psychologist and philosopher explores this question. “To get up at a regular hour, to devote a regular amount of time during the day to activities such as meditating, reading, listening to music, walking; not to indulge, at least not beyond a certain minimum, in escapist activities…, to not overeat or over drink are some obvious and rudimentary rules. It is essential, however, that discipline shouldn't be practiced like a rule imposed on oneself from outside, but that it becomes an expression of one’s own will; that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behavior which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practicing it.” The practice of discipline does not need to be painful. “That which is good for man - for his body and for his soul - must also be agreeable, even thought at the beginning some resistances must be overcome.”
For a morning routine to serve us well, it needs to be in alignment with our own being, our own rhythm. And, through the discipline of a morning routine, we have the opportunity to learn and be in this alignment. By tapping in to core essence, we are inviting our essence nature to express itself to its fullest each day. And, through this practice each morning, we get to check in, notice where we are today, in this moment; recognize our needs and learn the ways we can most honor our needs with deep love and grace.
A morning routine has the powerful potential to set the tone for our day. Honoring ourselves and our needs is a beautiful gift to ourselves that has the potential to radically transform how we move through each day, and with what degree of ease of being. And, our morning routine should also reflect who we are.
So, let’s start there.
Who are you?
I know, that is a giant, profound question. But, what if we asked ourselves, in those first moments of waking, as Consciousness clothes itself in our particular body and mind, who am I?
And, what if the answer simply is:
“I Am!”
Imagine the space this opens to be a beautiful, unique expression of life essence.
Let’s give ourselves a few more tangible questions.
First, what are your current routines; whether intentional or not?
How do they serve you?
Everything we do serves us in some way - maybe only one part of us, maybe only one particular narrative or story line, but it still serves us. Does hitting snooze several times give us a sense of pushing away the inevitable getting up we must do, or does it allow us to enjoy the luscious, pleasurable feeling of our skin against the sheets and the soft morning light and the bird song of early morning? Or, do we literally need more sleep?
What need is this routine meeting? is there a deeper need?
Is the current routine meeting the need skillfully and allowing for a more fluid expression of self? If so, beautiful. If not, let’s look at the need again and explore how to meet that need. For example, if we need more sleep, let's work with our schedule to arrange for that without the interruption of a snooze button every 9 minutes.
How do you feel when you wake up in the mornings? Body, Mind, Emotion?
What is your favorite time to wake up in the morning?
What do you enjoy in the morning?
What are the external demands on you in the morning that may affect how you can structure your morning routine?
What is your ideal morning?
Does your current morning routine feel fulfilling? Is it a true expression of your needs? Is there anything that feels like it has been imposed by some outside source? Has someone told you what you “should” do? When you check in, do these feel true and right for you? Has the discipline of any of these “shoulds” evolved into a custom you would miss you if you stopped practicing it?
How much time do you have in the mornings? What could you prepare for in the evening to have a bit more time for in the morning?
What are your priorities?
How do you want to feel as you wake and move through your day?
What is the invitation you would like to bring in to the beginning of every day?
What would allow you to create and mindfully invite in that energy, expression, direction?
Can you allow yourself to practice a discipline and also allow for fluidity and grace?
Not every morning has to be exactly the same.
The routine can be the practices that allow us to begin our day with conscious intention, remembering our Divine nature, and rooting ourselves in this nature before we engage with the rest of our day. This can take many forms. And, therefore, the individual actions may shift while the intention, the energy, the actual intentional pattern of each morning remains solid, disciplined and habitual.
First, we start with the basics? What do we generally all need?
Movement
Rest/Sleep
Hydration
Nourishment (food)
Play/Pleasure
Connection
Ideally our morning routine should meet these needs or at least set the stage for them to be met each day. And, to do this, we can start our morning with a set of check in questions. This can be done while we are still in bed, as we sit down to meditate, to write, or even as we are making breakfast for the kids.
Morning Check in:
Who am I?
I am! (Feel in to this each morning, for even a breath)
What am I feeling? Physically, emotionally, mentally?
What am I sensing?
What is bringing me pleasure?
What do I meed?
How can I honor that need?
How does life want to dance through me today?
That's it... that's the routine. Check in. Pay attention. Honor how life expresses as you and what you need. And, see where this takes you. Now, a few tips for making it even easier.
Being in alignment with nature is the second step for thriving wellness. This often comes with more ease once we have begun to align and remember our true essence. But, honoring nature’s rhythms can also make the practice of engaging in a morning routine more easeful.
Nature has a rhythm which can be recognized when we pay attention. When we tune in. Ayurvedic wisdom, based on acute and wise observation gives us the following map.
This wisdom helps explain why when we stay up past ten we might get a second wind, why our most productive sleep occurs between 10 and 2, why we may find a particular time of day more creative or more productive. When working with our morning routines, it is useful to look at the times between 4am and 10am. From 4-6, we are still in the vata hours. This is a time of light energy, a natural connection to spirit. It is a beautiful time for visualizing, meditating, creative thought. Waking and engaging in the morning check in questions, especially connecting to our fundamental state of oneness is more supported in these hours.
From 8-10, we are in kapha time, a time more grounded in earth energy. We are in our form. Our body takes more dominance. It is a time for breakfast if we are eating that, for movement. It is a time that supports habit, routine, steadiness, setting a foundation for the day.
There is also an energy to the season. As we begin engaging in a mindful morning practice of attention, we may also notice the subtle and not so subtle shifts through the seasons.
Looking at what our individual lives hold is an important piece of this. For some of us, we have the luxury to wake to our own rhythm. But, some of you may have a child who leaps on you first thing in the morning, announcing with force they are hungry and demanding their needs be met first. I get it. And this is another reason there is no one prescription. It would do no good to force an outside routine into a life that simply does not support it. If our morning routine comes as one more boot in the back, forcing us to squeeze ourselves into alignment with a social norm, a podcasters list of to-do’s or a outdated family story, we are not doing ourselves any favors. However, we can check in, and when committed to a practice, we can also work with our families to communicate our needs, to engage our children in our morning practices, and to set our boundaries with ourselves and with others. And with the commitment, comes the place of discipline where we can’t imagine living without the pause, the check in, the nourishment, the remembering who we are.
Knowing our life patterns and needs also helps us set the necessary boundaries for our own thriving. Boundaries are the places we choose to meet others. They are the places we consciously choose to engage ourselves. Setting boundaries on our activities allows for greater freedom of expression, for more conscious and engaged time. They allow for us to meet ourselves in all the places we choose to, rather than escaping, numbing or simply not having the time to know ourselves.
Our morning routine is an opportunity to get to know ourselves!
We get to wake up to ourselves every day. We get to see ourselves exactly as we are in that moment, in this new day.
We get to wake up to the world.
Like a baby playing peek a boo as they are learning the tangibility of consciousness, we have the opportunity to be this fresh, new and delighted with ourselves, and with the new, fresh moment of morning.
This also becomes a delightful practice with our partners, with our friends, with our work.
Every day is a new opportunity to see ourselves, to see another, to delight in ourselves, to delight in another, to know love as it dances in all forms, including ourselves.
Mark Nepo, poet and philosopher, calls this Reaching the River of Light; Remembering and drinking from and expressing from the River of Light. He says:
“And so, you don’t have to work to find what is lasting and enlightened. You simply have to open your heart and let what’s there flow. The rest will follow. Expression will find you. For water finds water, light finds light, feelings find meaning, and love finds love.”
With that, I invite you to a morning practice of staying in close and intimate conversation with life. A morning practice of staying close to the pulse of life. A morning practice of getting to know yourself moment by moment and inviting this awareness and movement with life to permeate your day, every day.
~Dr Amy