Start Your Day Embodied
I saw an interview once with Elizabeth Gilbert where she was asked how she starts her day. You’d expect something profound from the author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic - like maybe she meditates with a smiling liver, or she sits with coffee and scribbles morning pages to clear her head for a day of writing, or she watches the sunrise and contemplates how she can have the most creative day possible. (These are the kinds of things I image she’d like to do). Her answer: “I look at my phone.”
“I look at my phone”. How… predictably underwhelming actually. Predictable because that’s how most of us start our days. Underwhelming because, well, it’s not like your phone is going to set up your body/mind to have an intentional or embodied day.
On a good morning you’ve (hopefully) slept all night and allowed your unconscious to tidy up a bit. The hope is that you’ve gotten enough sleep to clear your mind and restore your body. Starting your day by picking up the phone is like pulling out the dust bin and dumping it out all over your mind. Instead of preserving the freshness and restoration, you muddy things up almost immediately. Unfortunately your body registers that too and falls into lethargy.
There are other ways to start your day though…ways that maintain some of the clarity that comes from rest and integration while also encouraging you to build relationship with your body.
A MORNING RITUAL
If your body is your sacred home, the place where your true self resides, it makes sense to start your day reaffirming your connection with it. That’s why I recommend creating a morning ritual to help you strengthen your mind/body connection.
The productivity folks will call this a morning routine and tell you “The top 5 things you should do first thing in the morning to have the best day EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” That kind of messaging is harsh, and promotes hustle culture, etc. That’s why I like to call it a morning ritual rather than routine. Ritual is softer and more personal. Where routine might give you goal oriented results, ritual is a deeply intentional action meant to bring a specific shift in consciousness.
What you call it doesn’t matter so much as the fact that you choose to intentionally connect your mind and body to start the day.
CRAFT YOURS
Your ritual should be completely yours. It should be interesting and exciting when you imagine it (at least at first). It should feel compelling and inviting. And it should be simple and do-able. There are as many different options for morning ritual as there are people who want to perform them. The important thing is that it feels personal enough that you will DO IT.
To create your morning ritual, first consider your intention behind it. What do you hope your ritual will bring you? Then decide to do something that will help you meet that intention. Your ritual could have a few steps or just one. If you choose more than one thing to do, write it down in order so that you know your plan. Finally, be realistic about your life and make your morning ritual time sensitive. That part isn’t fun, but if it takes too much time you’ll never do it. Now it’s time to get started. Set your alarm a few minutes early, put a reminder by your bed and when you wake up tomorrow, start your day with a morning ritual.
Here are some ideas for what you might include in your Morning Ritual:
Consider your Intention for the day then drink a big glass of water while repeating your intention to yourself 3 times
Stretch or Practice Yoga and Meditate
Dance to a song that has the mood that you want to have that day
Ask your body to share it’s wisdom and journal it’s response
Dress with intention and adorn your body to highlight your true self
Take three deep breaths before you get out of bed
Place a hand on your belly and one one your heart and say a prayer of welcome to the day
Any of these could be a great starting place for your ritual. Follow whatever tugs at your heart and build from there. Know that your ritual doesn’t have to be “perfect”, it has to be yours. And, as you can see from some of the ideas on the list above, it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Spending just a few minutes with deep intention creates a groove that serves to support the mind/body connection that you’re growing through ritual.
GIVE YOURSELF TIME
It may take a minute for your morning ritual to find its way. You might forget and pick up your phone before you do your morning ritual. Or you might decide to stay in bed instead of getting up to meditate. That’s ok. Starting your morning ritual is really about starting a new habit. And that takes really strong intention. So if you’re struggling to get started, take some time to remember WHY you want this. Ask yourself: What’s so important about it? and what it’s going to bring me? Then be willing to start over as many times as it takes for this habit to take hold. If you stick with it, it will get easier, I promise.
EMBODIED WORLD
I see a world where folks are deeply embodied. Where their mind/body connection is so strong that they know who they are and what they want. They trust their intuition and know how to follow it, even when it seems illogical. I see a world where we are rooted in body knowledge that informs head knowledge. A world where folks are connected to their truth, their people, and their lives, not in spite of their bodies, but because of their strong mind/body connection.
I see a world that embodied people shape and care for out of their own innate wisdom. And I think all of it starts with rebuilding your mind/body connection. Let your morning ritual be the thread that reweaves the link between your body and mind. And see what happens from there.