wake up your body in the morning

Start Your Morning with Some Simple Stretching to increase your circulation

Together, movement and breath will increase circulation, stimulate your nerve centers, and bathe your body in the oxygen that it needs to feel alert. You can’t hurry the process of getting the body ready to move in the morning, however. According to Maas, your internal temperature is lower in the morning and can’t support intense aerobic activity right away. Rather, go with simple exercises designed to get your energy flowing. Adds Novie, “The goal is to align your breath with your body by making movement and breath simultaneous.”

Breathe with abundance. Active breathing uses a faster paced, more intense breath, says Novie. “This method of breathing is said to purify the blood. It gets the fire going in the body.” Novie suggests beginning with three rounds of bellows breathing, in which the length of the inhalation equals that of the exhalation. Start out slowly if you’re new to this kind of breathing, gradually working up to a faster pace. Try for 15 breaths, but stop if you feel light-headed.  Eventually set your Zen Timer with Gong for 5 minutes and breath for this amount of time and then gradually increase the time.

Open up the body with a cat/cow exercise. Begin on your hands and knees. Moving slowly and carefully, lift up your head, sway your back (like a cow’s), and take a deep breath through your nose, filling your lungs with air. Then drop your head and round your back like a cat, pulling your belly in and exhaling. Return to cow position and then slowly drop back on your heels and exhale into Child’s pose, resting your torso between your knees, forehead on the floor. Return to your hands and knees to inhale, and repeat.

Stretch out with a half sun salute. Begin in Mountain pose, standing with your feet together and arms by your sides. As you inhale deeply, bring your arms up over your head. Then as you exhale, bend your torso forward, sweeping your arms down until your fingertips rest on the ground just in front of you (or on your calves if you can’t reach comfortably). Now straighten your spine and look up, taking a deep breath in; then exhale and drop your head down again.

Once you experience the Zen Timepiece’s progressive awakening, you’ll never want to wake up any other way. It also serves as the perfect meditation timer.

adapted from Body + Soul Magazine, March 2006

Zen Timepiece with brass singing bowl, a meditation timer