The Morning Practice

When do you connect with yourself?

If you’re like most people, you wake up in the morning, check your phone, and start immediately into some form of “work mind.”

The moment our attention is taken from us by text, email, Slack, social media, etc… we activate our sympathetic nervous system - the stress response. When we’re stressed, our unconscious mind takes over to solve our problem as quickly as possible in order to get back to safety.

This happens automatically.

Our ability to connect with our deeper knowing is cut off. Our creativity is diminished. Possibility fades.

In order to manage our nervous systems, reduce anxiety and overwhelm, and connect with a deep sense of purpose in our lives, we need restful, attentive, time with ourselves. Instead of waking up and going directly into stress, we can wake up and enter our morning practice.

What is it?

In its most basic form, the morning practice is something we do each morning that is only for us. We put ourselves first.

We dedicate an amount of time, preferably the same time each day, to be with ourselves. In that time, we can engage in any number of activities that accomplish the task of being with ourselves, remembering who we are, what we’re up to in life or at work, and prepare ourselves for the day.

My personal preference is to engage deeply in mind-body exercises, including meditation, breath work, and yoga. My practice has developed over many years and keeps asking for more time from me. It’s now about 90 minutes, which I understand is long for a lot of people.

It didn’t start this way. I began incorporating meditation and yoga, usually alternated each day, many years ago. The practice was probably 15-30 minutes, and very irregular, for a very long time. Over time, I have felt the call to do more and so I have progressively woken up earlier and earlier to make more time for it.

Finding the time.

This is one of the greatest blocks people have with getting started … “finding” the time. Busyness is one of the greatest obstacles - and greatest illusions - to starting new habits or taking care of ourselves.

The truth is that anyone can start the day 5 minutes earlier to begin the process of creating a practice. Yes, even 5 minutes can ground us in the habit and provide initial benefits so that the practice starts to ask for more.

The most important thing to remember when getting started is to be successful. When we prove to ourselves that we can do something regularly, we begin to trust ourselves more and realize that we actually can impose a little discipline on the chaos.

Getting Started.

For my clients, I simply recommend a short meditation to begin with. I have a free seven day meditation training that makes it almost painless.

But even if all you do is take a few conscious breaths while you’re on the toilet, that’s a start!

Just start and feel more like yourself instantly.