For the many of us that have been working from home since March, building and maintaining steady, balanced routines remains to be a challenge.  The lines between home and work are blurred, and the once inevitable, sometimes long morning commute is now as instant as Zooming into a meeting from the couch.

Though the morning commute is infamously associated with frenzied to-dos, rush-hour traffic and cranky coffee lines, it acts as a buffer and effective transition of mindset into a work environment. Some of you may even miss it!

With mindful intention and a little creativity, you can design your own “morning commute” to make the conscious shift into a productive day ahead. Below are some of our favorite, simple suggestions you can pluck from to build a routine that works for you.

MOVE YOUR BODY

We all know from grade school the law of inertia: objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Put your body in motion and your day will follow on a forward-moving track. Even just a  little movement in the morning can go a long way for your day. 

• Take a leisurely stroll to get your blood pumping and stimulate your senses with a change of scenery. Bonus points if you can stop by a local coffee shop to support small businesses in your area and enjoy some IRL human interaction!

• Stretch it out - 20 minutes of holding yoga stretches can enhance your ability to maintain focus and take in, retain and use new information significantly more so than after 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity. If space is limited, try these five yoga-inspired stretches for desk dwellers that you can do right from your chair.

• Call us biased, but there’s just no better option for morning movement than a complete yoga practice. For a live class experience that works for any budget, sign up for a donation-based 45-minute morning yoga flow with Kristen Hill through our Community Studio. 

SIT WITH YOURSELF

Use the breath to slow down your storied internal monologue and clear space.

We use the breath as the object of meditation because it is always and only in the present moment, thereby anchoring us to what is real and true right now.  The breath is available to each of us any time, anywhere, and it has a direct correlation to our central nervous system. It also gives us something vital we can easily control, which can be incredibly cleansing and calming.

• Use the breath to calm the mind with this quick and easy breathing technique that has been shown to lower your heart rate, lower blood pressure, reduce respiratory rate and reduce muscle tension in just a couple of minutes. Great to ward off any anxiety about the day ahead.

• 27-minutes of mindfulness mediation a day can change your brain for the better. Sharpen your senses of perception and access your highest self with an intentional 30-minute meditative journey of visualization and affirmation led by our founder Sarah Vaynerman.

• Think of meditation not as a way to quiet your mind, but to access the important stuff quietly hiding underneath all of the noise pollution caused by mental chatter, rumination and countless distractions thrown at us at every turn. After a few minutes of focusing on the breath, the big - and yes, sometimes scary! - stuff will pop up, but the practice of directing your attention back to the qualities of the breath trains your brain take ownership of your attention in the real world as well.

PUT PEN TO PAPER

Write a to-do, list, journal freely or doodle mindlessly. What’s pressing will naturally flow out, helping you to identify and prioritize what really matters. This is just for you, so don’t worry about the quality or neatness; the important thing is to get it out of your head and onto paper.

• Organize your intentions and track your habits with some mindful, hearty planning. We built this simple weekly template where you can track your habits, keep a gratitude log and set one big commitment for each day.

• Spill your guts into a notebook by writing stream-of-consciousness style for either a specific amount of time - say, 20 minutes - or a set number of pages. Let it flow and enjoy the catharsis of releasing what’s been stewing in your psyche. (You can even toss it in the trash when you’re done!)

• Squeeze your creative juices by drawing, doodling or coloring to open up the more playful and curious part of your brain. Sure, organization and productivity is important, but even in the professional world, magic only happens when we go beyond the lines and limits of what’s logical and quantifiable.

In addition to the practices above, we recommend building in some simple non-negotiable items into your morning routine, such as drinking a full glass of water, taking a vitamin, eating a nutritious breakfast, checking in with a loved one, taking a hot shower, etc. You decide! Stacking a few super-easy things like these to “accomplish” first thing each morning will create a positive feedback loop and catalyze your flow into the bigger pieces of your routine. It may sound trivial, but writing them down and checking them off will give your brain a tiny victory to celebrate each time, providing you with a hit of dopamine and leave you thirsty for more.

Do you have a morning routine? What are some of your favorite practices for starting your day the right way? Let us know in the comments!

Recommended reading:

• The Power of Habit - Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

• The Miracle Morning - The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) by Hal Elrod

• The Artist’s Way - A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron