Wake up Refresh
Having grown up performing and doing theatre, I always thought I wasn’t a morning person. Combine that with a 60 hour a week job and a newborn that nursed all night but blessedly slept until 9 am regularly and it wasn’t until I was in my late thirties that I realized that I actually AM a morning person.
You might notice that my office hours don’t begin before 11 am and I will admit that I truly cannot get my family anywhere on time before 11am (luckily we homeschool so this isn’t such a problem) but mostly this is because we all like our mornings and so they fill up rather quickly with inspiration and industry.
Sure, I like to hang out in bed and watch the leaves rustle on the tree outside before I actually start my day, but frankly, once I’m awake, I’m awake and rolling over to snooze a bit more is never a pretty option for me. I do enjoy a leisurely cuddle with my babes when they wake up, but by and large, my best days are the ones where I exit the bed shortly after waking and then get to work.
In Chinese medicine one of the symptoms we talk about when discussing sleep quality is whether or not you wake “feeling refreshed”. This almost always gets a chuckle from my patients and we start to talk casually about how many times they have to hit the snooze button and how many cups of coffee it takes them to feel “human” in the mornings. A lack of feeling refreshed in Chinese medicine indicates a deficiency of Spleen Qi or in other words a lack of metabolic efficiency. Your Spleen is responsible for making the Qi that helps your body maintain optimal function and if you don’t have the energy when you need it (i.e. when you wake for your day’s activities) then its not doing its job. In western medicine we also look to the adrenal cycle of the body and whether your adrenal glands are supporting your cortisol levels and at the proper time.
One of the fastest ways to improve both of these patterns is to take a look at your sleep schedule and while many folks will focus on getting to bed at the same time each night and cultivating a healthy sleep environment in the evenings, today I’d like to talk about how our morning routine can affect these things as well.
- Wake at the same time every morning.
Obvious right? Often times when folks are having a hard time falling asleep at night, I will have them focus on top of their day, waking at the same time every morning is another way of naturally resetting your circadian rhythms and help those adrenal glands follow the right cycle.
- Get up and move first thing.
By giving your body something active to do in the mornings at the time when your cortisol should be high is also a way to signal the proper timing of the cortisol cycle.
- Eat something (preferably protein based) within an hour of waking
Food can signal our bodies that its time to start the day. If you’re one of those people that can’t eat anything first thing in the morning, your circadian cycle could be off. Remember before when we were talking about the Spleen and metabolic efficiency? Our bodies are meant to metabolize food during the day, not at night. Bonus tip: proper scheduling of meals can be another tool to help combat jet lag as your body will also regular its circadian rhythm by your digestive schedule.
So…whats my morning routine? On a good day or a bad day? I think we can all relate to the AM snooze followed by a late carb ladened breakfast and a slothful day in front of a computer screen, but on a good day…
I wake up at 6:30am and if its light outside I say my good mornings to the oak tree outside my window. I get out of bed and sit quietly with a large (10-16oz) glass of water with lemon if I have it and my herbs, while the kettle boils. This is literally the only time of my day that is quiet and this isn’t a necessity for me but I certainly enjoy it when it happens.
If I’m going to indulge in caffeine that day I prefer a pu-er or a moderately caffeinated black tea, otherwise my go-to is lemon balm with a bit of honey.
After hydration I do a short bit of activity (no more than 15 min because I get bored) yoga or HIIT depending on what I’m up for, even some light stretching will improve my productivity and sense of well being and sometimes I have to settle for dishes as my AM workout.
By this time the little one is up and in need of a cuddle, hopefully her sister is up in time for me to eat, if not I enlist the help of the clinger monkey and the smell of breakfast (2 pasture raised eggs and sourdough toast with cultured butter) rouses sissy and we get to have hot breakfast together as a family.
When I follow this routine, I find that I adhere to my other forms of self-care and my productivity increases for the rest of the day. I also find that I am asleep by 10pm so nightlife is really no longer a thing for me but then again neither is insomnia.
How about you? What’s your circadian groove? Quiet morning or evening dance party?
