yogielizabeth

GOOD MORNING – how to wake up and start your day! Tips to sustain a healthy and beautiful body and mind

26 May 2011 Leave a Comment

by yogielizabeth in Life Ideas

GOOD MORNING – how to wake up and start your day!
Tips to sustain a healthy and beautiful body and mind

Dear Ones,

Starting a blog, like starting any new venture – is not easy! Whenever we start something new we have to overcome inertia, that energy that keeps us doing what we’ve always done before. Unlike the simple law of physics applied to an object in motion or at rest, when we are talking about moving or stopping a human from doing anything, we have to include the less than simple, less than clear rules governing emotions.

So when we start something new – any outstanding doubts or questions that linger about our possible successes or failures show themselves, again.

That is why starting something new can be a quick way to self-assess: how am I doing? Where do my fears lie? How confident am I? How well do I trust? What sort of awareness do I bring to my life? Do I sense I am on the right track? Are my motivations legitimate? If you’ve applied for a new job or school lately, or started a new relationship, you have had this experience in a very real way.

Although we don’t consider it perhaps because it’s inevitable, every day we start something new – and it’s called “morning”.

So for my first blog post as Yogi Elizabeth I want to address the topic of “morning” and give some ideas about how to successfully approach it. So many people not only struggle with morning, they condemn it and confess it’s a time they don’t manage very well.

But this time, like anything new, can be perfect for self-assessment and as a chance for a new opportunity or a new start. Maybe this is why morning is so hard for some people – because starting anything is so hard for them; they really don’t know where to begin, they don’t know how to overcome inertia even when what they’ve been doing isn’t working for them.

As it’s my intention to make this blog as useful as I can for anyone reading it, you will find herein a possible road map for that start of your day. I want to share with you some morning routine ideas that have kept my body healthy and beautiful, and my mind and mood happy and motivated.

I understand that perhaps I am a bit perkier than some in the morning – but I wasn’t always that way. Like many of you I expect, as an adolescent and college co-ed I slept my mornings away after spending late nights studying or with friends. Although my father was always up early and I admired him for it, I just couldn’t quite understand it, or do it.

Instead, I felt like I was doing important things at night that took precedence over sleep, let alone morning. So I’d wake up at the last minute, run out the door into my life and tell myself I’d catch up later on all the stuff I felt was not organized in the way I wanted it to be.

It wasn’t until law school in my early 20s that I began to appreciate the quietness and clarity of morning. Partly vanity, partly fear, partly a competitive nature motivated me to rise early to study, prepare for my day and burn off a few calories with a jog around the park before classes began.

I wasn’t so much disciplined probably, as over stimulated. But whatever, I got out there and moved my body and I understood that it changed me somehow, that I felt better; more alert, more expanded, more in control.

I got lucky too with a housemate who is still a great friend, Carl S. He got up and ran and exercised more mornings than I did. And his discipline struck me as quite amazing, actually. He even seemed to enjoy it!

Another fellow law student asked me if I was interested in the “aerobics of yoga” and he told me about Kundalini yoga. I instantly loved it – how I felt internally from it, as well as how challenged I was by it. I could feel the shift in my body and mood every time I practiced this yoga and meditation. I was hooked – and fortunate that a class took place very near my home in an elementary school.

As my yoga and meditation practices deepened through classes, I then began to meet and study with the master of this style, Yogi Bhajan. He advocated rising in the early morning, before dawn even, taking a cold shower, practicing yoga and then meditating for an hour! Yes an hour. This time was called the “amrit vela” – the ambrosial hour. And it was indeed, intoxicating.

It was also a pretty ‘hardcore’ practice and lifestyle and not one I undertook every day until a couple of years later when I moved into an ashram in Seattle. Being in a place where everyone ascribed to this idea definitely made it easier, but not a given. Many people in the ashram still slept in – but at least it was an unspoken agreement that the house had an early lights out!

After some years living the full-on yogi ashram lifestyle, and more years of studying with Yogi Bhajan at the famous Ladies’ Camps, White Tantrics and Summer Solstices in New Mexico, I made a conscious choice to no longer live in the American Sikh community. As yoga never meant religion to me, I discovered I didn’t want to live within a religious group. For me it limited my enjoyment and exploration of this yoga and meditation practice.

But leaving the ashram didn’t mean I left the desire for self-discovery or yoga, breath techniques, meditation or many of the healthy lifestyle practices I’d learned there. In time my yoga practice and training expanded beyond Kundalini Yoga to include other forms of hatha vinyasa practice as well – and these are as much a part of my yoga practice now as Kundalini yoga.

I love breathing with conscious movement and there are many ways to do this! Not only yoga but dance forms and exercise forms. Whichever way you have chosen, bravo!

A large part of what I teach to potential yoga teachers is how to have a daily practice, a discipline to wake up in the morning and have a routine that cleanses the body and mind. A teacher has to hold energetic space for students; how can you do that if you have no space of your own? A daily or nearly daily morning practice teaches you how to create space and clarity in your mind and your body.

How many people do you know that live their life in a state of feeling ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘out of control’? If this is you, then start a morning routine! I can guarantee it will change your life.

As you get into it you might agree with me: Morning is awesome!

The birds do it, bees do it, even … well you get the picture. But here’s the rub: thinking about it is not enough, we actually have to do it!

The body lives in time and space and it needs some of our time and space to be healthy and energetic. The mind goes everywhere in a flash – the body does not.

Students always ask, can I do my practice at night instead? Yes. But it’s not the same as doing it in the morning. Try it for yourself and then let me know what you think.

If you follow the simple ideas I have outlined below your body and working mind will show up for you, your glands will keep you young and beautiful and your mind will say: I am here life and I am ready to enjoy you, to shine! to live my life to its greatest capacity!

Ok, if I sound like a cheerleader for your life it’s because I am. I believe in you and myself as amazing creatures with huge creative capacities.

It sure beats the alternatives of addiction, depression and dis-ease. Who wants these? I don’t! And I don’t believe that any of us consciously wants to suffer in that way. I also don’t mean that we won’t get sick or that our bodies won’t expire – of course this is part of the human experience. But I do believe that a lot of our suffering comes from the choices we make and that if we made other choices we might avoid some of the states we find ourselves in.

Additionally, if we come to these challenging experiences with a solid routine that supports our mental and physical health, the grit we have gathered from that routine, as well as the wisdom and grace we might be lucky to have garnered, helps us get through it.

Taking responsibility to see who we are, to understand our capacity for change and growth and creativity, for me this is what makes life interesting! Each of us is the only one that can make the difference in our own lives. Your choices make the difference in your life. If you are behaving in a way that is holding you back, hurting your body, making your miserable – you have to make a shift or you will continue to be in pain.

And if you don’t have the energy to make the shift, just try doing one thing: wake up 30 minutes earlier in the morning and create some routine for yourself. The shift will follow. Your will – your choice. If you are still in a body with a functioning mind, you have a choice.

Looking back I remember the first time I had an early morning bliss experience where I clearly felt in my body the all pervasive energy that runs through all matter in the universe.

I was on Pulau Redang, then an uninhabited small island in the South China Sea with my family, at the age of 15. As we lived in Malaysia it was not all that far for us to go. You might have had this experience on the Chesapeake Bay, or the Pacific Ocean – or anywhere, too.

It was Easter morning and we woke before dawn to watch the sun rise from the beach where we’d slept the night before. As the sun broke over the ocean everything around me and within me lit up with life. There was so much beauty in this moment, my life and heart felt so full – this was my moment of rapture when I felt the aliveness in all beings. I remember saying to myself and perhaps out loud to others: this for me is what people speak of as God.

I knew then that no church building or religious doctrine could contain for me the full experience that I had that morning, within the beauty of this planet and the life within me. In this pre-dawn moment being breathed by nature I felt more alive than I had ever felt and I understood in a non-verbal way that I was fully a part of this great good universe we live in at the fundamental energetic level.

I can’t always be in a setting of nature so profound that it creates this experience for me; I have to be able to bring this into my life no matter where I am – and the way I do this is through a morning practice of yoga and meditation.

It doesn’t happen every day, of course not. But it does happen some mornings. I opened Yoga House Studio in 2005 in Washington DC and since then have trained a few dozen teachers in this area and now they teach too and continue to build community! And we gather together in the amrit vela and support each other in our practices. I connect with yogis and friends all over the planet that are doing the same thing.

It’s so amazing to have one’s heart burst open with aliveness! No amount of partying with friends the night before has ever given me this depth of love and experience as rising up before the dawn and having my quiet time that allowed my mind to open to all knowledge, all understanding and complete peace.

It is at this moment I can pose any question and get a certain answer that I know to be true. Having that state I can use my mind to be creative and productive rather than have it linger in drama or doubt throughout the day.

All the great mystics and spiritual teachers have said early morning is the time of the day best suited to develop a daily self discipline (sadhana) of meditation and prayer but like many in the West I’d been sucked into the other side of the day – burning the midnight oil as a night owl in order to feel like I was getting everything done that needed doing, by exerting my immense willpower.

Eventually that always led me to feeling “burnt out”, that I needed to ‘get away’ and just shake off bad habits.

At some point, if you choose to “wake up” your awareness beyond its survival mode, someone will come into your life that can speak in a way that you will understand and agree. Someone, somewhere or a book will provide information that “clicks” and stays with you – and this information will works its way through your mind until your body follows it, too.

Sometimes our initial motivations may not be all that lofty, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever gets you up in the morning to do a practice, the steady persistence of this practice will create changes in you that support your inspiration, and Self recognition.

Yes, we can all use a bit of our vanity to help propel us to our yoga mat, or on a run. It’s nice to stay healthy and beautiful – isn’t it? It’s part of our destiny to be comfortable in our bodies as well as mind and I don’t believe a spiritual person should ignore or shun the body – in fact I feel it is my duty to protect and uplift my physical body as well as my spirit.

That’s another reason the yogic path works for me because it includes the body on our path. In fact yoga teaches us that the breath in the body is one of our greatest teachers as it connects us to our mind – and “re-minds” us that we are more than just the body. Remember – yoga means the union of breath, mind and body! It all works together. So I think it is rather hard to be a spiritual person if the body is not included in our process, if it is just trashed and forgotten while we do everything in the ego mind as though this mind was our only identity.

So here are some ideas – and you will find your own, too. I am NOT the sort of teacher or person that says “don’t change a thing” or “follow this to the letter.”

I believe life is changing and to create or follow a rigid structure dis-empowers us.

So for me to say MUST is a rarity. Having said that, FOR ME, I find I MUST get up most mornings with enough time to myself to take care of my body and mind before my day takes me over if I want to feel comfortable in my life, able to handle all the complexities of this modern world.

Here’s a routine that works well for me.

While Still in Bed:
1. Inhale Deeply and consciously, move the diaphragm and navel.
2. Rub your hands together and then place them on your eyes, open your eyes and stare into the hands, then slowly draw the hands away from the eyes.
3. Grasp your shins and rock on the spine a little, who knows what might start to move you! Or within you! ☺
Stretch anyway you body wants to move.

Get out of bed
4. Go to the toilet.
5. Brush your teeth and mouth – gag yourself until your eyes water by brushing the back of the tongue with your toothbrush. (If you feel quite toxic and want to try something a bit more intense, try this ayurvedic idea: mix 2 parts Alum powder with 1 part salt and brush your tongue with it Warning, it’s intense!)
If you have a tongue scraper, scrape the mucous off your tongue. If you don’t clear your throat glands and clean off your tongue, you’ll reintroduce these toxins back into your gut along with your first drink of the day.
6. Rub your legs and arms and belly with a dry brush or washcloth to get your circulation going for a couple of minutes. Rub toward the core of the body.
7. Rub your body with almond oil or another high grade oil (I am loving the Dr Hauschka Lemongrass Body Oil this summer). Again rub a bit hard so you get the blood circulating.
8. Take a cold shower, yes cold!
This is a beauty secret in much of Europe and the Middle East, and I once read that Paul Newman stuck his face in ice water every morning, and we all know how gorgeous he was!
Once you’ve rubbed with the oil and or dry body brushing, you’ll have warmed yourself a bit. Start letting the cold water run over the feet and hands first, then move up the arms, legs toward the core.
The spine and back are last! And yes, a little noise when that cold water runs down your spine is a great way to open your voice!
Make sure to splash your face at least 5 times with this cold water.
If you can do this for 15 minutes, great!
Your blood will rush toward your internal organs and flush the organs out. Then the blood will return to the surface of the skin and flush out the toxins in the skin.
8. Dry yourself vigorously! Get dressed.
Wearing natural fibers allows your body to breathe a bit more. Your skin is your third lung, let it breathe!
9. Now you are ready for yoga and meditation – or whatever movement and breath work you have chosen.

Remember, even if you only have time to do a downward facing dog and a few minutes of pranayama, do something! Take at least 3 minutes to be quiet and breathe. Wash your mind the way you washed your body!

10. Try to schedule at least 30 minutes every morning for yourself. Start with what is realistic and then build toward this minimum of 30 minutes.

If you like to jog, don’t stop! Just do both. You can meditate when you run or walk – focusing on breath or a mantra – or save a few minutes at the end of your run just to be still for a few minutes and breathe.

***

I realize now that for me it was law school, even more than my ashram days, that ingrained in me the importance of having the early morning to myself, a time for me to set myself for the day. But it’s been my yoga practice and meditation that have taught me how to do it in a way that sustains all of me, body mind and spirit – to live in the world in a way that I can feel happy and whole and to fully understand that I belong here.

Perhaps others might find me a bit too perky in the morning, but hey – it’s working for me. I bought a t-shirt recently in Malaysia that says “I am very very Happy.” And I am.

So …. Good Morning! Give yourself some private time each day in whichever way you chose that you feel gives your mind and body some solace, some balance. And let me know how it goes.

Remember, we’re all in this together, thanks as always for listening. I am grateful.

(Please give me a bit of time to figure out how this wordpress site works so that I can make this easier to read, support links etc.)

Love Light Peace, YogiElizabeth
www.yogahousestudio.com
yogawithelizabeth@yahoo.com
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