We innately create morning and evening rituals, perhaps without even realizing it. Being intentional with these rituals will positively impact your life. Once I studied the reason why these early morning and before bedtime are so crucial to our overall wellbeing, it’s made me more mindful and intentional with this time every day. It does feel a bit like the movie Groundhog Day (parenting in general adds to that!), but looking at morning and evening rituals with less of a ‘do these three things’ approach allows you to structure your day in a way that works best for you.
Our sleep hormone melatonin is released as the sun sets but the pineal gland and preps our mind and our body for bedtime. It attempts to create calm and ease stress. The hormone cortisol, the stress hormone, works with melatonin. Cortisol is what wakes us up in the morning. When we’re short on melatonin, we end up with too much cortisol throughout the day. Too much cortisol wreaks havoc on our bodies but it also prevents us from getting deep sleep at night. Creating morning and evening rituals will shut down the hormone battle allowing them to work in harmony.
So how can create rituals that will let our bodies work their magic? The sleep/wake cycle works primarily through our exposure to light. Being outdoors for a bit during the day, our body produces substances that gives us energy throughout the day. Being outside the first thing in the morning will will give you tons of energy throughout the day. The sun tells your body “hey! Wake up! Let’s get this party started!”. As evening creeps in, being exposed to too much light confuses our bodies. This is why artificial light (our phones, computers, TV’s) make it so hard to acquire healthy sleep. Artificial light isn’t the same as sunlight, but they do limit the pineal gland from producing the correct amount of melatonin.
As I’ve mentioned before here, your 5-9 dictates your 9-5. Being mindful of this time creates a ritual that’s supports your natural rhythms. It’s truly miraculous how our bodies work and the more we understand the complexity of this, we can use these tools to help our minds and bodies out!
The duration and intensity of light we are exposed to in the morning and evening effects our physical and mental wellbeing.
So what are some ways we can create our own morning and evening rituals?
MORNING
Simply starting your day with a little sunlight, as mentioned, is a great start. Try including some light stretches or meditation (or both!) to really wake up your mind and body. I TRY (try is the keyword) to start the day in prayer spending time with a favorite devotional followed by soaking up the wisdom of God’s Word. One of my favorite devotionals is New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp.
Scientists say it only takes thirty minutes of morning sun to support healthy nighttime melatonin levels.
Meditating in the morning is ideal because your mind is more likely to be quiet. As the day progresses, we take in so much noise that our subconscious is more clouded. One of my favorite meditation apps is Simple Habit. There are short meditations and even ones specific for certain things like “Improve Focus” and ” Gain Self Confidence”. There’s the option to pay to unlock all the meditations but I’ve been happy with the free version.
The first hour of the day is critical. Our degree of consciousness is affected by our melatonin levels making us more sensitive to everything we absorb. This is the ideal time to set our intentions for the day. When we create morning and evening rituals with positivity being the focus, our we feed our brains the fuel for wellness and a heightened ability to heal and find balance. So often the first thing we do as our eyes are adjusting to waking up, is grab our phones and see what all we missed. I know you know, but you didn’t miss a darn thing! Feeding your brain everyone else’s updates (Instagram!) or tragic news stories or scrolling email reminding us of all the crap we have to get done is NOT the way to start the day. This is like starting the day eating a huge plate of fried food with a side of Red Bull. Not ideal. Your subconscious soaks all this yuck up which permeates the rest of your day.
Perhaps it sounds like advice from your grandmother, but make your bed! Completing one task like that will give you a sense of accomplishment. We spend so much time in bed, strive to create a space that feels like a little oasis away from the world. This includes sleeping on organic fair trade sheets (my favorite sheets ever are from Pure Parima) and doing a few things like clearing your nightstand of visual clutter.
Drinking a big glass of lemon water (I keep these drops next to the sink) is much better than gulping down a big cup of coffee. Maybe start with the water before the coffee.
EVENING
Aim for shutting the social media, TV, computer party down at least an hour before bed. Even thirty minutes will make a huge difference in your melatonin levels. If nothing else, set the ‘night mode’ on your devices which changes how much light they emit. In the same way we brush our teeth at night to get rid of the yuck, meditating and or prayer before bed sets a tone of positivity. Ending every day in negativity is like creating a warm and damp condition where that negativity will grow a little every night. Mental health and overall well-being are directly impacted by our own thoughts. We can choose the trajectory of our day simply by changing the thoughts in our mind.