Your morning routine may well be the most important part of your day. If you start the day well, the whole day will likely be better – you will be more productive, successful and healthy. Habits are powerful things that are self-sustaining once established, so setting up a routine of positive habits in the morning builds a virtuous cycle in your life where you can keep improving in a positive feedback loop. I believe that reclaiming your morning routine is one of the most important parts of reclaiming your health.
What’s the best morning routine?
Your optimal morning routine will depend on your personal needs and any health challenges you are currently experiencing. So there obviously isn’t one perfect morning routine, just a perfect morning routine for you at the current time. At different periods in your life, this will change, so you should review your routine periodically.
How to start reclaiming your morning routine
Now if you try to set up a completely new morning routine overnight, you will likely fail. Since habits are self-sustaining, they are resistant to changes. Therefore, it’s best not to attempt to change too many things at the same time. Better to focus on one part of your routine at a time. First, identify the habit which you most wish to change. This could be:
- Checking your phone or emails first thing in the morning.
- Snoozing your alarm clock or getting up so late that you need to do everything in a rush.
- Skipping breakfast (whether this is a good idea or not depends on many factors that we can’t go into in this article but many people skip it when they should not).
- Starting the day with a sugary snack, orange juice, pastries etc.
- Drinking coffee (some of you might hate me for that one, but caffeine to start the day is a really bad idea).
Now choose one of your bad habits or something you’d like to change. Decide to replace it with a new habit that will help you to reclaim your health and wellbeing. This could be something from the list below or something else entirely. Some examples of healthy morning habits are:
- Getting fresh air and natural light first thing in the morning.
- Moving – add some form of exercise to your mornings. Examples include the use of a rebounder, morning run or walk, tai chi/qi gong, yoga/pilates or other similar things.
- Having a healthy breakfast that is low in sugar and will take longer to digest. It should contain some protein which will slow any spikes to your blood sugar and give you longer lasting energy. Eggs are a great choice for many!
- Take some herbs and/or supplements on an empty stomach that are targeted towards your current health challenges. Need any help with this?
- Meditation and prayer.
My Own Morning Routine (an example)
People often wonder what others are doing for their morning routines. I thought I would share my current morning routine to satisfy any curiosity or perhaps for some inspiration. Now I don’t succeed in doing everything in this list every day – I’m far from perfect! But over time, the more you perform certain things at the same time each day, the more they stick and it becomes easier to do them than not to! So here goes, here is my current morning routine.
Waking up
I am fortunate enough to no longer work in an office (or for anyone else), so I don’t need to use an alarm. I wake up when my body has had enough sleep, which is always ideal when possible. I try to get up quite quickly after this or I run the risk or not getting up at all! While still in bed, I might run some basic meditation techniques like the Taoist Inner Smile. This simple technique is a form of self-love which also helps to harmonise the energies that accumulate in the body and especially the major organs. There is a Taoist tradition to open your heart before your eyes. Smiling to the internal organs before getting up helps to wake up the body with loving energy and get your day off to a good start.
First things first
First thing in the morning is a great time to take some supplements to help to reclaim your health. I usually take some healing clay first thing. I use this blend of three of the best healing clays available. This helps to cleanse the intestinal tract, provide minerals and remove a wide range of toxins. I tend to add some fresh organic lemon juice to the water. I sometimes alternate this clay with Schindele’s Minerals as they work slightly differently and have different constituents but provide similar benefits. Schindele’s Minerals is excellent in helping to protect the body against radiation, so I would use this more often if I lived in a city.
At the same time, I make a herbal tea. Drinking a warm drink first thing in the morning is a great way to wake up your digestive system. The warm liquid passes more quickly through the intestinal tract and assists the body in having an early first bowel movement which is important for optimal health and well-being. I alternate different herbal blends depending on how I feel that day and what health issues I am working on at that time. It’s good to take blends of herbs rather than just one herb and also to not always take the same things. My favourite blends are the Winter Blend and the Chemical Detox tea.
Time to start moving
While the tea is brewing (I tend to leave it for 15-20 minutes), I spend some time on the rebounder and sometimes in my anti-gravity yoga hammock (no, this isn’t for having a morning nap!). The bouncing and inversions that these create are powerful stimulants to the lymphatic system and circulation and help to get everything in the body moving, including the bowels for those important bowel movements. This helps to get toxins moving out of the cells and into the elimination organs for removal. It also seems to give me ridiculous calves, which was an expected benefit for someone who has always had skinny legs! If you have water retention this would also be very helpful. I’m lucky to have a place with plenty of light to perform these exercises, but getting outside to get some morning light and air would also be a good idea.
After this, I usually head to the bathroom for my morning shower. Some people prefer to have a shower first thing, but I find that it’s better to get some movement in first. Before jumping in the shower, I’ll dry brush my skin. This further helps to move the lymphatic fluids, circulation and refresh the skin, removing toxins and easing the load on the kidneys. I wrote a more in depth article about dry skin brushing which you can read here. Then I’ll jump in the shower to rinse off any remaining dead skin and finish with cold water. Cold showers have a myriad of benefits and are so well known that I won’t go into much detail here. They help to stimulate the circulation and immune system and I find that they help to wake me up and give me energy to start the day. Many people are scared of cold showers, but if you start by washing yourself with hot water, it’s not so scary to turn on the cold at the end for 30 seconds or so. I always feel better when I finish the shower in this way.
Quiet time
After showering, I take some time for prayer and meditation. I use this prayer template which addresses physical health and well-being from the spiritual plane, the highest plane for healing. I might also use this template to address bad habits and specific health issues.
A quick side note: when addressing any health concern, it is best to address it from several levels at once. The problem may be rooted in any one of these levels, or sometimes in more than one, but most powerful healing comes from the highest levels and ideally we should address any issues from multiple levels. The lowest level is the pure physical level which is related to movement, nutrition, physical adjustments etc. Above this, the use of herbs straddles both the physical and the subtle, through their chemical constituents, tissue salts and nutrition properties combined with the subtle energetic properties of the plants. Above this level is the more energetic medicine that works on the subtle meridian systems, which then filters down into the physical body. There are often subtle energy blocks causing physical problems. Gem elixirs are powerful tools for this level, as well as flower essences which work on more of an emotional level than the gem elixirs. Above this level is prayer, as some illnesses are due to entity/demonic afflictions, ancestral curses and/or karmic issues. Prayer is always helpful even if the affliction is not rooted at this level.
I also use some meditation techniques to clear and harmonise my energy field and usually take this time to do some taiqi, qigong and some general stretches if I’m feeling the need. I sometimes do pilates here but not if time is limited.
What’s next?
By now, I’m in a good place to start my day. This may take some time and so I may be starting my work later that if I’d skipped half of that, but I find that I am more productive, I drift less and get more done in less time when I start the day with positive habits. Note that up to this point I have not checked my emails, messages or any digital devices. This is really important, as they are big distractions and can take your attention away from completing the important morning habits and introduce stress into your day too early. This time away from your messages and devices gives a sacred time where you cannot be disturbed by any negative outside influences and this is priceless in the modern world.
Before eating breakfast, I may get any difficult tasks done first that I have been putting off. I may also do some more physical exercise before my first meal of the day.
Hopefully this peek into my own routine helps you to develop your own morning routine that works for you. So now it’s your turn. Start by changing just one habit then once you have established this new habit, look at starting the next one. This makes you far more likely to succeed. Now is the time to reclaim your morning routine so that you can reclaim your health!
Let me know in the comments below what changes to your morning routine you will be making. If you’d like any guidance on your own morning routine and other things you can do to reclaim your health naturally, you can read more about working with me here.
