I have just discovered something that has changed my life, and I just had to share.

Let me paint a picture of how my mornings used to go for me: My alarm goes off, and obviously I smashed that snooze button approx 6 times every single morning, which means I would be running late, because I would rather be rushing then have to set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier. I feel as though I don’t have to even explain anymore, I think you have got a fair idea of what it used to be like, and hey, maybe its exactly the same for you. A rushed breakfast, a rush to get your bags packed for whatever your day consists of, a quick change, and a whole lot of stress.

But that has all changed, not just in my morning routine, but pretty much in all other aspects of my life, but thats a topic for another day. I put this down to one thing, which is that I went on a yoga teacher training a couple of weeks back and we did “Yoga” every single day, from 7am-7pm. How good, right?! The reason I put “yoga” in quotation marks, is because, as I learnt on the course, it isn’t just the physical asanas that make up yoga, so no, we didn’t do physical yoga the whole 12 hours. But what we did do was learn and practice the centuries old Kriya’s (Cleansing’s practices) to have a healthy body on the inside, we learnt that yoga is the pranayama (controlling the energy/breath), to bring awareness to your body and your breath, It’s the mediation to calm/free the mind, and then finally we learnt the asanas, to awaken us and bring awareness to the body. It taught me so much and I can’t even put into words how great those 21 days were.

But you’re probably wondering how this has anything to do with a great morning routine, but I promise it actually does have some sort of relation. The reason being, is that we made habits while we were there. It was the same routine every single morning, and it made me feel GREAT. Beyond great. So I was on a mission to bring that home with me and keep up that routine. It is definitely far harder practicing all this by myself, but I just have to keep doing it, even though some mornings I would love to go back to my old ways, but where is the challenge in that?

So why listen to me and follow what I’m doing? Because I truly believe that this is life-changing. As I said before, it’s a real challenge but to start off with some good healthy habits in the morning, it really changes your whole day as-well. I feel as though I can take on the day, I have so much more energy, i honestly just Love Life, like all day. My stress has decreased so much, which was a such a negative part of my life in the last year and I wanted to change that, and this helps SO much. It just makes me into a better person, mentally, physically and now socially because I’m not some bitch with a short temper who snaps at anyone because I’m in a rush and why are they going 48.5Km in a 50Km zone?!

Okay I’m actually gonna get into it now-Please try this at least once, you’ll love it.

1. 1. 1. Set your alarm at least 1 and half hours before you have to leave, and dont you dare hit that snooze button. The best way to wake up is to get some light into your life. My favourite way to wake up is by looking outside and getting some sun and obvs being grateful for it all because how good is life?!
      2. My worst habit is going on my phone for far to long and it always used to be the first thing I ever did in the morning. But that just ain’t gonna set the tone for the day ahead so instead before I do anything or think of anything, I grab my journal and start writing. I have honestly learnt so much about myself in the short time that I have been doing this. The best part is that you don’t have to care about spelling anything correctly, if it actually makes sense or if anyone will read it. This is great to do in the morning as our mind isn’t already thinking about unnessarcy drama or other shit, but we can just write about anything that needs to come out. Oh and I can assure you that it will. It’s so interesting to see the sort of things that come up that you have been keeping suppressed, but the more you write about it, the faster you can eventually move on from it. Set a timer for 5 minutes and go hard.
      3. Get moving. On this one exception i’ll look at my phone, only to put on my fav song (usually Dua Lipa gets me fired up), and then I’ll get up and get dancing. I find it SO interesting to see how each morning my ‘style’ (I suck at dancing) changes, because I listen to my body and see what it wants me to do. Like yesterday mornings movement was completely different to this mornings, because of how I felt. Just connect back in and move how you need to move that morning. I can’t believe i’m actually sharing this but I go fully nuts but I just laugh the whole time because I just imagine if someone saw, they would think ive gone insane but ya know, who actually cares? The point of this is, is to just bring some movement to your body to warm and wake everything up, so it doesn’t have to be dancing!
      4. Then it’s onto the kriya’s, the cleansing practices: There are two I like to do, the first being the neti pot which will be hard to explain, so click here for all the dirty details. But I would definitely recommend purchasing one! Just add a pinch of himyalan pink salt into the pot, add in room temperature water and go from there. The second is Uddiyana bandha breath, again this is so complicated to explain, but there is a great video here that you can watch and it explains it all! I do 5 rounds. If these two practices seem a little to much for you, it’s totally not essential, I just love the thought of cleansing everything!
      5. Hydrate! In the book, ‘Own the day, Own your life’ by Aubrey Marcus, he explains that the three main objectives to a great morning, is to Get Lit (sunlight), Get Moving, and Get Hydrated. We lose so many essential minerals overnight and wake up super dehydrated, but we never do anything about it. SO to re-hydrate: juice of half a lemon, 2 pinches of pink salt, and fill the whole glass up with Luke warm water.
      6. Finally, If you can, wait another hour before your first meal, but if you have somewhere to be, thats cool too. Then have a nutrient dense, PHAT breakfast, cause you so deserve that. Obviously my go-to is a smoothie, but I’ve been really going for the oats (not just your usual oat breakfast though, I’ll post the recipe for this soon), but just make a good choice with your breakfast, It’ll kickstart your whole eating day.

That is the routine I go through pretty much every single day, sometimes it changes where I like to put in a mediation and finding some time to connect with the breath, or take out a few things when I don’t have much time. But it’s just changing it up to make your day start off in the best way possible. As I always say in my yoga classes, this is your practice, your body, no one else’s. What works for me, may not work for you. But I’m just sharing my practice so hopefully you can take some of it to make your morning and therefore your day, just that much better.

P.S- Because I’ve learnt from my mistakes in taking to much on, to fast, its probably best if you just choose 1-3 of these steps and then slowly build it up over time!

Don’t ever settle for the average day, you deserve so much more.

So much love x