Surprisingly, your morning routine is as important, if not more so, than your evening one for improving sleep quality.
It essentially sets up a hormonal cascade that builds your sleep need for the night ahead.
Mine isn’t perfect according to the bio-hacker people on the internet but it serves me well and rarely struggle to get to sleep.
My alarm is set for 5.50am but I rarely require it because I’m either awake if I’ve slept well or my wiggly bed partner has woken me up.
I get on the Shakti mat and put my heated eye mask on and either meditate or/ dose back off or think about the day ahead for about 15 minutes.
Then get up, brush my teeth and either get dressed or put my trunks on.
At least 3 mornings per week, I jumped in our cold bath for 3-6 minutes depending on time factors.
The kettle is on in that time and I make a lemon & ginger tea to have during my first client of the day at 6.30am.
I make a coffee after my first client and try to sit down and do the morning section of my journal and record the previous days wins if I didn’t the night before.
I use my journal to set out the things I want to achieve that day that take me towards my quarterly goals.
Me and Fran try to have breakfast together on the mornings I haven’t got a second client or a class. Breakfast generally revolves around eggs but can be anything that’s left over from the night before.
That’s it.
I don’t purposely avoid caffeine in the first 90 minutes because the internet said to, although I do think that’s a good option, it’s simply because it’s quicker to pour water on a tea bag than let my coffee filter thing drip through.
On mornings when I’m cabin based, I also do a couple of minutes of red light therapy. I don’t worry about it if I’m outside with clients.
As I mentioned last week, the most important thing for improving sleep quality is the consistency of lights out and wake up times. Ideally keeping them within a 30 minute range.
Give that a go and let me know how you feel.
Darren “early riser” Checkley
