Morning Practice> Morning Routine
6 Ingredients & Creative Layering
Morning practice sets the tone of your whole day.
We are surrounded by anxiety, cheap dopamine sources, abundant distractions, potential for addictions, and a barrage of overwhelming stimuli that are very confusing to our 300,000 year old brains.
How can we not get sucked into reactive mode, unconsciously letting our attention spans be manipulated and fall victim to energy vampires?
No matter what is going on externally, we can learn to play the game of life in a way that we are responsive and aware. We can experience ease, a sense of inner spaciousness, and simple (non-addictive) pleasures throughout our day. With practice, we can cultivate this to become our baseline state.
How we behave in that first hour after waking up impacts our hormones and neurotransmitters-our physiological mental-emotional state. State is everything. You change your state, you change your life. The ability to change, shift, adjust, amplify, reset, and fine-tune your state is easily one of the most valuable skills we can practice.
A simple overview of my functional neurological approach to transforming our brain & life can be summarized as “Reset, Resource, Rewire”. For this process to work, we need to create the conditions for balance and growth with some brain health basics. Morning practice sets the tone for your whole day.
Language shapes our reality. I prefer the morning practice over morning routine, as practice evokes a quality of intentionality, consistency, and commitment to growth.
The 6 morning practice ingredients I recommend:
Something you love first thing in the morning
Home Base-a collection of grounding/centering somatic practices
Water-both drinking water & showering/bathing (preferably contrast)
Light-seeing the sunrise or letting natural light into your eyes (no windows)
Movement (not necessarily exercise)
Creative expression
After starting with #1, the order of #2-6 is for you to discover.
#1 Start with something you love
And get creative with how you LAYER
If you only take away one thing from this article, remember this: the best morning practice starts with an activity that you are excited for. It should be something that lights you up inside so getting out of bed feels easy. If meditating or exercising first thing upon waking isn’t something you love, don’t make that the first thing you do. Reduce friction. Perhaps you love writing, making art, listening or playing music. Start there, then build.
I believe the magic happens when we start layering practices and experience synergy-when 2 or more behaviors combined create an effect greater than the sum of their individual effects. One way to experiment with this is called habit stacking- a strategy of adding a new practice/habit to an existing practice/habit. This is also how we can fit a lot of resourcing practice into limited amounts of time.
Personally, I love the sensation of hot water alternating with cold. It wakes me up better than anything else, especially with some singing and stretching in the shower, so that’s my first stop.
The ingredients can be layered into your morning practice recipe more than once. When I wake up and take a shower, this time alone includes 5 of the 6 ingredients:
It’s something I love
I check in with Home Base all the time
Obviously includes water
Includes simple movement
Creative expression in the form of singing, sounding, beatboxing, or giving myself an affirming pep talk
Morning practice doesn’t need to be complicated. Start with what excites you, mix and match the other ingredients, and treat it like an experiment. Ask yourself “what is most effective for me to create an enjoyable state to best move forward in my day?”
Another example: when I do my qi gong movement meditation practice, I paired this with a stack of somatic cues
Feeling the start of a smile in corners of the mouth
Visualize myself as stable as a mountain
Breathe into my skin layer and lower body
Let out a sigh on the exhale
Any one of these feels good to me. When I combine them all, I have enjoyable experiences that resource my system, setting me up well for whatever comes next in my day.
Keep this in mind as we continue through the 6 ingredients.
#2 Home Base
An open and/or closed eye meditative state
Home Base is a collection of grounding, centering, and balancing techniques that can be practiced anytime, anywhere—many of which are subtle enough to go unnoticed by those around you. These practices provide different ways to regulate, relax, recover, and create the conditions for quality rest and flow states.
For a nervous system that is disorganized or activated in a fight, flight, or freeze (FFF) stress response, sitting still with eyes closed may not be supportive and could even feel harmful. Forcing meditation in such states can be counterproductive. Instead, start with what I call “zen orientation,” creating a calm, zen-like state by connecting to your environment via your senses (exteroception).
Here’s a short introduction to Home Base practice:
Let your eyes “go where they want to go”. Let your eyes wander naturally, curiously, and effortlessly around the room, noticing what draws your attention.
Notice what looks good or interesting, and linger there for as long as it feels good
Listen for impulses and allow any movements or physical adjustments that could make you more comfortable
Listen for sounds without labeling them
Sense where your body connects with the ground
Release tension by lengthening the exhale, perhaps including a sigh
Can you locate any subtle pleasures of your sensory system?
If pleasure feels out of reach, aim for neutral: simply orient to “what is” & release judgments or narratives as you observe your inner chatter. Nodding your head is a physical way to show acceptance of the moment, letting go of resistance.
Home Base works best when we visit it dozens of times per day. Eventually, it becomes autopilot.
There are so many things you can customize your Home Base with, such as massaging your legs and feet to reinforce grounding. This draws energy downward toward your center & lower body and away from the chest & head where energy often gets trapped.
It’s common to lose this state of conscious awareness, and the practice is simply remembering and returning.
Think of this practice as giving irrefutable evidence to your system that you are safe in this moment. There are no immediate threats. You can relax.
A core concept in Organic Intelligence is that our most crucial biological resilience factor is the ability to expand our awareness outwards, paying attention to both our internal states and the external environment, fostering a sense of connection and responsiveness to our surroundings.
Whether or not you have a closed-eye stillness practice, an open-eye orientation practice is foundational to nervous system health. It seems too simple to be effective, but understanding and sensing the external environment in relation to our body is the most important function of our brain.
Home Base is the first of 3 pillars of movement practice in RESET.
#3 Viewing Light
I structure my morning around the sun, timing a walk about 15 minutes before sunrise. This is when the colors are most vibrant, then I get to witness that magical moment when the sun appears over the horizon.
There is extensive research that shows the many physical and mental health benefits of viewing (and not viewing) light at different times. Three things to consider:
View sunlight for 5-10 minutes within 30 minutes of waking
If it’s cloudy, it still works! Extend the time 15-20 minutes
Looking thru windows/windshields doesn’t work the same
Glasses and contact lenses are no problem
Don’t look directly into the sun!
I wake up before sunrise, so I turn on all lights
View sunlight light least one more time, ideally in the afternoon
Avoid lights between 10 PM and 4 AM.
Avoid screens & turning on the bathroom light
Use red and/or low, floor-level lighting
You can find the full protocol here popularized by Dr. Huberman.
In the back of our eyeball, the retinas receive light and activate the suprachiasmatic nucleus (“master clock”) which is located in the hypothalamus, which is attached via the infundibulum to the pituitary gland (“master gland”). You don’t need to know any of that, I just think those are fun words. Just know that proper exposure to light regulates circadian rhythms. This is one of the most basic and important ways to synchronize our biology with nature.
The pituitary gland regulates your endocrine system, which consists of the glands that secrete hormones into your blood. This includes:
Growth hormone (stimulates cell division and bone growth)
Thyroid-stimulating hormone (regulates metabolism)
Adrenocorticotrophic hormone (stimulates adrenals to make cortisol)
Antidiuretic hormone (regulates water reabsorption in kidneys)
Prolactin (breast milk production)
Sex hormones
Oxytocin (many functions)
Viewing sunlight in the morning regulates our circadian rhythm and makes a world of difference with our ability to focus, metabolism, mood, motivation, alertness, sleep quality, stress response, and the ability to regulate our nervous systems.
Viewing light is a totally free high-benefit habit, and this is a great opportunity to layer in additional positive habits. Some ideas: start with expressing gratitude that the sun rose today, acknowledging that life would not exist without that star. Extend that gratitude to the land you are on and the nature around you, and remember that your body is made of Earth.
I believe it’s good practice to zoom out and connect to wonder, awe, and fascination. It puts our “problems” into perspective. Can you find some wonder and awe in the fact that the light that is entering your eyes, skin, and the photoreceptors of your mitochondria left the sun about 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago? What happens when you remember that the “rising and setting” of the sun is the Earth spinning 1,000 miles per hour on its axis? And we’re traveling through space at 67,000 miles per hour, which is over 18 miles per second!
You could layer in any form of movement, walking meditation, or Home Base practices. This is an ideal time for circulation practices briefly described later in this article. Experiment. Be creative. Mix and match. Feeling good can be trained to become your baseline state.
#4 Water
I love to get up early, well before the sunrise most of the year. My first move is to turn the lights up all the way before taking a contrast shower: hot to cold at least 3 times back and forth, always ending on cold. If this is too intense, simply going from hot water (on the edge of discomfort) to slightly cool water will have a positive effect on the nervous system. You can also wash your hands and face in the sink, alternating hot and cold water. The contrast in temperature dilates and constricts the blood vessels and stimulates the receptors in your skin-which is intricately connected to your nervous system.
Whatever you choose, remember that you would not be alive without water. Expressing and feeling gratitude for water is a great habit. The benefits of gratitude are powerful and well-researched. Imagine if every time you engaged with water, you felt gratitude for water and then added one more thing you’re grateful for. These simple “micro-practices” can be done throughout the day-these moments of conscious awareness-all add up. Repetition is one of the most important ingredients in the Reset, Resource, Rewire process of transforming your brain, and therefore your life.
I practice layering in the shower. I do a round of 30 rapid breaths before getting in the shower. (Caution: this can make you dizzy-I recommend being seated). Breath is one of the quickest ways to change states. I sing a few short songs (starting with a favorite “Why Why Worry”) and that puts me in a good mental place. I may mobilize my spine, take some extra time to scrub, brush, percuss, & massage my skin, and sometimes I’ll run through a simple sequence of soft joint mobilizations. The restriction of space can be a fun parameter to play with.
#5 Movement
“The first step to radically improving your health is to let go of the notion that movement is exercise” -Katy Bowman
Your morning movement doesn’t have to be strenuous exercise. We recommend exploring a full range of entry points into moving your body.
As with the recommendation to “do something you love”, starting your day with movement you enjoy is a great entry point.
“Circulation Practices” are what we call a collection of daily movement practices aimed to move blood, qi, lymph, synovial fluid in the joints, cerebrospinal fluid in the brain/spinal cord, and circulation of our attention & awareness. Qi gong-style shaking practices & skin stimulation as well as moving your spine are part of our Mixed Movement Arts Foundations. These potent practices activate the brain and support a state of relaxed focus and alertness. They can be used to destress and lower anxious energy
Circulation practices paired with somatic exploratory improvisation are my favorites. These are topics we will be going deep into in RESET.
#6 Creative Expression
Creative expression in the morning taps into your brain’s natural state of openness and clarity after waking. Research suggests that creativity is often at its peak during this time, as the mind is free from the distractions and fatigue that accumulate throughout the day. Creative activities can be journaling or any writing, movement & dance, music, drawing or any visual art, crafting, gardening-anything you enjoy. These activities stimulate different parts of the brain and can set a positive tone for the day.
You can’t be creative and anxious at the same time. A mentor spoke on a podcast recently and shared their model that “creativity is the opposite of addiction”-that addiction is caused by repressed creativity. Find what time in your morning practice works best for you for some sort of creative expression, and experiment which mediums work best for you. Give yourself permission to dabble.
Another mentor encouraged me to expand my creative options and outlets beyond movement and dance. They told me to not worry about quality-you can get a lot of enjoyment in a creative medium without “being good at it”.
I never thought I would sing or learn how to draw. YouTube has a ton of free lessons on nearly every creative topic for when you want to level up your skills. Allow yourself to follow your impulse to where you're drawn, don’t judge yourself, and be proud of yourself when you try a new thing. We’re all just experimenting. Creative expression, especially from the states cultivated in Home Base, can be transformative, endlessly fascinating and deeply enjoyable.
What NOT to do
Checking text messages, emails, social media, or the news within the first hour of waking is one of the worst things you can do for your dopamine and neurotransmitter system. This can damage your motivation, energy levels, creativity, productivity, and sense of well-being. It puts your brain into a “reactive mode” instead of a more empowering, responsive state. You owe that first hour of your day to yourself. Morning practice sets the tone for the day.
Instead, I highly recommend an “intermittent fasting” approach to technology—set intentional boundaries, such as not looking at screens until a specific time and/or avoiding email or social media until later in the day. Have a clear cut-off time to put the screens away. There are apps that can help with this including Moment, Flipd, Stay Focused, Offtime, BreakFree, and AppDetox.
Sugar in the morning is another thing to avoid, as it can set you on a mood destabilizing roller-coaster of highs and crashes throughout the day. Same thing applies to excessive caffeine. I’m not going to get into diet here, but some protein in the morning is generally beneficial for most people.
Closing thoughts
All of these ingredients can be used throughout the day whenever you need to shift your state. Simply walking outside, intentionally breathing deeply, or grounding yourself with a Home Base practice can make a noticeable difference. The beauty of these tools is their flexibility—adapt them to fit your needs, your schedule, and your unique preferences.
Customize your practice. Find what works for you. Layering practices not only saves time but also amplifies their effectiveness, creating a synergy that deeply supports your nervous system and overall well-being. Practices should evolve and change seasonally-another reason why Practice>routine.
If this resonates with you, I invite you to check out my new course, RESET: Maps and Movement Tools to Resource and Rewire Your Nervous System, where we dive deeper into all of these practices and explore how to resource and rewire your nervous system for a better quality of life.
Wishing you all well,
Dae
P.S. This is my first long-form blog post. Feedback and critique is always welcome. Reach out to info@mixedmovementarts.com