Do you have mornings like me where it’s all go-go-go? I think Kamea’s face shows you perfectly how I am many mornings.
- Get up!
- Make coffee! Oh, the dishwasher can be emptied – empty dishwasher while scrambling eggs between going to and fro from dishwasher to cupboards.
- Get Kamea up, dressed, feed her – wait! No, feed her first and then dress her so she doesn’t get food on clean clothes.
- Now… brush teeth. I missed brushing them first thing. Darn.
- Charge phone. Check email quickly and delete the crap.
- Yadda yadda yadda.
It seems like that is my morning on at least three days a week and it’s just too darn crazy. Man, I think to myself, I gotta slow down more. But who has the time? I certainly don’t want to wake up any earlier because sleep is too precious.
Life shouldn’t be this way.
So, one day, I was making coffee and I looked off yonder trying to settle my mind to relax a bit and take the morning in a better stride. I noticed my meditation pillow and I thought to myself, “Kristen, you need to sit your ass down (with coffee), and just take three nice ommmmm breaths.”
Sit I did. With coffee.
You can do this without coffee but I don’t recommend it – or you’ll just sit there thinking about coffee the whole time.
I put my butt down, I closed my eyes (my coffee was on the floor in front of me), and I took a deep breath in and exhaled with a nice gentle “ommmmmmmmmmmmm.” It felt so good I did it again. And then I did it a third time. (I like doing the ommmm thing – which is pretty new to me – because it forces the riffraff out of my mind since I’m ommmmmm-ing. I felt a tiny bit silly the first couple of times, but no one was around so it didn’t matter.)
But I wasn’t quite done. I decided to add on just two more simple deep breaths – sans ommmmmm.
And, you know what? I felt in place. My day was perceived in a click-click-click orderly way. Everything would be in place and in a good time. Weird way to describe it, but I felt settled, ready to take on my day with more grace, and I felt like the force was with me.
The more I think about this and the more days I do it, I think there are two things going on: empowerment and magic.
- Empowerment: I think the very act of taking control of my day by taking the time to sit down for a moment means that I have the time. It is empowering. Being in control makes the rest of the day easier to tackle.
- Magic: We’re seeing study after study on the benefits of meditation and calming our minds. Something is going on in my brain and my body and my soul when I take a moment to settle it all down at the start of my day. It’s feels magical.
This has become my routine in the morning for most days now.
So, I offer to you this simple exercise that really only takes maybe a minute or less. Sit your ass down – with coffee – no meditation pillow needed if you don’t have one, but I recommend it – seems to make it a bit more official.
Then,
- Breathe in. Ommmmmmmm out.
- Breathe in. Ommmmmmmm out.
- Breathe in. Ommmmmmmm out.
- Breathe in. Breathe out.
- Breathe in. Breathe out.
Now, go take on your day.