This habit is about lining up with nature. Waking up at the right time of day to be aligned with the expansiveness of the universe’s energy is important to feeling great energy in the day. When you’re lined up, you are more at ease. When we aren’t in alignment, we experience stress, there’s a loss of energy, and we feel dull and out of tune. Habits that we have that don’t line up with nature don’t serve us.

Look at the big picture: why are we doing all of these habit changes? They’re hard. Tap into your WHY. Why do you want to feel healthier and younger? Don’t try to be a perfectionist. Success isn’t doing any of this perfectly. Perfectionism will get in the way of you experiencing success along the way. Perfectionism leads to “the what the hell” principle: throwing in the towel if you can’t do it perfectly and don’t do it at all.

Starting the day right is all about the energy in that part of the daily cycle, during vata time. Movement stimulates the peristalsis. We experience time opening up. The sacred time of day is the early morning.

When we start our day right, we wake up with the sunrise, connect to the universe (in our own way), hydrate, and eliminate. That’s it!

What is one small change you can make with getting up early, connecting to the universe, hydrating, and eliminating?

You can do a very quick and simple one-minute meditation to get in alignment with the expansiveness of the universe. What also helps me on some days is to just take a minute to connect with my breathing or with a feeling of gratitude for the day ahead. I lay in bed for a minute, do a minute of deep breathing, and with my eyes closed, I get right into gratitude for my day, for my life, for my daughter (I think of 3 things to be grateful for today, each day), then I think about my day ahead in the most positive light way I can (like this: today is going to be so great, I’m going to make a nice breakfast for the two of us, I am going to jog around the block for 20 minutes, I am going to enjoy the sun and the fresh air while I’m outside, I am going to teach this class at 4:00, and I am going to go out to dinner at 6:00 with my boyfriend. Yes, it is going to be so amazing!)

I say this to myself everyday, even if it’s a Saturday and I have no plans to leave the house. On a day like that I might say “today is going to be so relaxing and easy, I don’t have to be anywhere, I am just going to enjoy watching movies with my daughter, I will cook us some yummy food, and I will do a 20 minute yoga class video in my living room. Today is going to be so awesome!”). What this does is set up your day to be in ease instead of in stress.

Then I sit up and drink my water. I usually drink about 4 glasses of water. Then I get up to go to the bathroom to eliminate. Sometimes it’s a full elimination and sometimes it’s not, but I don’t worry about it. If it’s not complete, I just know that I need to drink more water or eat more watery foods (like juices or soups) during the day so that tomorrow will be better. I also take some herbs to help me with elimination because I used to be one of those people that was constipated for a long time. I take Triphala or Triphala plus with each meal. You can take it at bedtime too.

Check in: Are you eliminating first thing in the morning? Are you sleeping through the night? What are your morning habits? Are you waking up early, are you hydrating, and are you eliminating?

Hydrate until you poop. It might seem weird for people to drink a quart of water to try to create peristaltic pressure, but it works. This is where Eastern and Western medicine differ. Ayurveda addresses things like constipation naturally with water. Western medicine gives people prescriptions for constipation (I know from personal experience). Add lemon or ginger to your water if it’s nauseating. Or take it slowly one cup at a time. If you are really that dehydrated, you need to take in more water throughout the day. You will probably lose your morning appetite if you drink that much water.

During the vata time of day: Wake up, hydrate, eliminate. Tap into the Vata energy which is full of expansion and super easeful in its essence. Take a walk or sit to meditate. Hydrate, eliminate, then get into an easeful relationship to life.

Either you’re aligning with nature or you’re making life harder for yourself in the short term and the long term. Morning people exhibit traits like being agreeable and conscientious. Vata becomes prana, which becomes consciousness. Tap into consciousness which contains space and ease. It’s free and available every morning, and we can honor it every day. Figure out your own way to honor this time of day. Remember that Vata’s qualities are clear, expanding, mobile, subtle, the qualities of consciousness itself. Prana is exquisite in this time frame every day. How are you going to plug into this power source every day?

These habits should be non-negotiable for us, or they should be becoming non-negotiable. We can try to get away with cheating, but we are cheating ourselves and we are going against ease and a stress-free life if we do that. Try to work in these habits so they become your standard.