WAKING

My eyes open and it feels like I’m immediately caught up in thoughts of everything I need to do with my morning before I head to work. Yet in those precious few moments, between waking up and regaining full consciousness, there is a little sparkle of serenity. Sometimes it’s bright and at other times it passes almost imperceptibly as the mind kicks in with a barrage of thoughts.

Spotting this freshly-woken moment is special, because it offers you the opportunity to catch your life turning itself back on, and allows you to watch the machine of your mind slowly cranking up though the gears. This is the moment that Harold Monro describes in his poem ‘Living’:

And in a moment Habit, like a crane,

Will bow its neck and dip its pulleyed cable,

Gathering me, my body, and our garment,

And swing me forth, oblivious of my question,

Into the daylight – why?

This is where we’ll start our mindful day. The very moment you open your eyes.

Meditation: (Very) Early Morning

(5 minutes)fn1

Here’s how to get started:

1. Spot the moment the outside world comes into view and you, in all your glory, reappear in the story of life.
2. When you spot it, simply lay quietly in your bed.
3. Notice the innocent freshness in those first few moments.
4. Don’t be concerned with grasping or prolonging the moment, just notice it while it’s there.
5. What are some of the first things you become aware of?
6. Could it be the feel of the sheets, the temperature of the room, your thoughts and ideas, the weight of your body in bed and the beat of your heart? Let it all happen.
7. You could imagine becoming porous and soaking up the moment like one of those luxury spa sponges – entirely intimate and in touch with life.

By starting out in a gently attentive fashion you’ll set yourself up nicely to notice your life as it unfolds, in big and small ways, throughout your day.

Waking Up Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed

(5 minutes)

In the early hours of the morning your brain will start working hard to prepare you for your wake-up. The brain is very receptive at this time of day and whatever activity happens in those early moments is priceless.

Once you are awake, start as you mean to go on by focusing on something inspiring. For instance, swap your newspaper for your journal and enjoy a few moments of self-reflection. Alternatively, spend ten minutes leafing through a photo book or a beautiful catalogue.

Planning Your Morning Routine in Advance …

(15 minutes after waking)

I don’t know how similar we are, you and I, but sometimes it’s – I don’t know – Tuesday night, say, and I think, ‘Yes, tomorrow I will get up early, maybe 5 a.m. Hell, let’s make it 4.30. And I’ll run four miles in the park before work. I’ll make juices and smoothies and do this, that and the other.’

Then, I actually wake up in the morning and the ‘me’ who wakes up isn’t interested at all; she just wants to press Snooze and sleep in. Why does this happen?

The Russian philosopher Gurdjieff suggests that most people lack a unified consciousness and are prey to the fluctuations of their minds. In this way, many ‘I’s arise and dissolve each moment.

There may be an ‘I’ who says one morning, ‘No, you don’t need to go for that swim, you’re tired. Just have a lie in and enjoy tea and croissants instead – why not, you’re in charge!’ And there is another I that surfaces, post tea and croissant, to say, ‘Oh, you’re terrible, look what you’ve done!’ Are these all the same I? Who knows, but there are a couple of things you can do to take control of your morning:

• Put your clean gym clothes or a pillow for meditation next to your bed so that when you wake up they are there, ready and waiting.
• Prepare a healthy lunch in the evening to take to work the next day. (This is likely to prevent the ‘I’ that couldn’t give two hoots about your nutritious living plan when it’s 4 p.m. and you’re starving and the only thing left at Prêt is a cheese baguette).

… But Don’t Overdo It!

‘You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you.’

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931)

Planning ahead is not about becoming neurotic; it’s simply about getting to know ourselves well, including our little ways. All the same, excess planning doesn’t leave much room for spontaneity. For joy. For aliveness. It is important to remember that freedom is fabulous.

So what to do?

There might be meetings to get to and responsibilities to share, but allow yourself to be open to plans changing. Why not let yourself have your morning, when it happens?

Meditation: Checking Your Diary

(10 minutes)

• Take an Easy Seat and a few Easy Breaths.
• Close your eyes and begin to imagine your perfect day in all its glory.
• Take your time over the special details that will make all the difference.

Raise your visualisation to the next level by adding emotion. Immerse yourself now in the feelings you would be having during your dream day. This way you don’t wait for your perfect day to actually happen before you start feeling amazing.

TIP: In doing this meditation you’ll highlight any ideas you currently have about what’s possible for you. For example, the chances are that your imaginary day will involve activities that you currently conceive of as viable or that are likely to be based on past experience. This meditation is a good reminder that while visualisation is a great tool, it is often reliant on the mind and the mind itself might be limited in terms of what it’s able to conceive.

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of Bed

Despite all your positive bedtime preparation (see Part Three), sometimes you might wake up feeling blue.

Perhaps you are stressed and overwhelmed at work, and the thought of getting up and going at it again is almost too much. Maybe there are some concerns in your personal life. You might even wake up blue for no apparent reason, which seems most unfair!

More often than not, it isn’t necessarily the blue mood that causes suffering but our thoughts about it – our abstraction. The mere presence of our blue mood freaks us out and then we spend a lot of time thinking about why it’s there and how to get rid of it – and this freaks us out further. Then we notice we are freaking out and that freaks us out further still. Ad infinitum.

An Alternative Approach

The mind goes through a charade of over-processing our feelings because it really likes to know what’s going on (especially when it’s not happy about something and wants to get rid of that something ASAP). This defensive style of thinking gives the mind a sense of agency; it feels like it’s on top of the job – and who doesn’t like being on top of the job, right?

In time, and with a little self-awareness, we can get wise to the mind’s tendencies and find ourselves better equipped not to get sucked into that mental loop again. Instead we can entertain the possibility that:

This morning you woke up like this. It’s allowed. It’s no more personal than waking up to a sky full of sun or rain. Trust that if you get up and put one foot in front of the other, it will soon pass – everything does.

TIP: Try not to fear or fight feelings. On the contrary, welcome them and accept them. As soon as you do, they will be neutralised.

Meditation: Simple Morning Breath Counting

(5 minutes max.)

Breath counting is a good and simple way to calm both the nervous system and the overworked mind. When your exhale is even a few counts longer than your inhale, the vagus nerve, which runs from the neck down through the diaphragm, sends a signal to your brain to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system (the rest-and-relax system) and turn down your sympathetic nervous system (the stress response). With counted breathing, we aim to balance the in- and out-breath so that the out-breath is just a touch longer than the in-breath, or at least equal to it.

• Take an Easy Seat, and begin following some Easy Breaths for two to three minutes. Try to breathe using your nose for this exercise, if it feels comfortable.
• Begin to count the length of both your in-breath and out-breath. You can do this aloud or just quietly in your mind. Is the in-breath longer than the out-breath? Or vice versa? See what happens if, with very little effort (you don’t want to push hard now), you bring the in- and out-breath into balance, so they are equal in length. This gives you a chance to regulate the flow of oxygen around the body.

Meditation: Energising Morning Moves

(5 minutes)

This is a fantastic movement sequence that encourages us to feel part of life, getting us ready to share our voice with the world. Try these moves standing upright, with your arms at your sides. Right, let’s get started!

1. Gently sweep your right hand out at thigh height over the ground as though you are sowing seeds, turning your body from left to right moving the outstretched arm in an arc. Gently repeat this sowing motion from right to left with your left arm outstretched.
2. Next, standing upright again, with both arms at your sides, bend to the right and look down at your right hand, then bring it in an arc-shape up and round, over the top of your head. Reach it as far over to the left as you can while watching it. When you are leaning over to the left as far as you can comfortably stretch, let the right arm just swing back round. Now do the same with your left arm, leaning over to the right.
3. Stand back straight and look out at the horizon, raising your left arm up straight in front of you and moving it all the way round the left, following your hand with your face as your turn – all the time surveying the morning horizon. Do the same with the right hand.
4. Now imagine walking up a mountain: start by marching on the spot with your knees raised high for a few moments.
5. Having marched to the top, stand still and bring both arms up and out in front of you before letting them open out to your sides. Then place your hands, palms down, on your lower back. Lean back ever so slightly and open up your chest, out to the world.
6. Drop your hands back to your sides and make both your hands into loose fists. Then, using your knuckles, begin to tap gently around your chest and the front and back of your ribcage. Let out a little ‘ahhh … ’ sound as you tap, before letting your hands fall to your sides again.
7. Last but not least, let’s use the voice you’ll take out into the world. Start by making the lowest note you can possibly make on your next out-breath – perhaps it’s a deep ‘huur’ sound. Then, on your next out-breath, make a sound that’s in between your highest and lowest sound. Finally, on your next exhale make the highest pitched sound you can. Stamp your feet several times confidently on the spot to ground yourself. Now you are ready and (hopefully) keen to take your place in the world!

TIP: Go gently and move at the pace that suits you best. When performed mindfully, your stretches can become part of your morning meditation.