Creating a Morning Ritual

Creating a morning ritual is something I learned about in this last year at my Life Coach Leadership Retreats through the Coaches Training Institute.

I am happy to say that these retreats were held at The Mother Tree Retreat Center in Sebastopol, California.  Each morning, our leadership group would go out in the field and breath and stretch and greet the morning.  As you can see, every morning even the turkeys had a morning ritual!

It was so beautiful because we overlooked a valley that looked different each time I was there in all of the seasons.  After stretching, we then did a process called Shintido.  We saluted the east- for the spring season–new birth, babies, flowers blooming, new learnings, beginnings.  We saluted the south for the summer season-cookouts and barbecues, the teenage years, living fearlessly, everything in full bloom.  We saluted the west for the fall season-colors changing, adult life, cool crisp air, football games.  We saluted the north for the winter season-snow and ice, maturity in life, surrender, acceptance, reflection, end of life.  We also then saluted Mother Sky, the earth, the center and each other.

What I loved most about having this morning ritual is that by going outside first thing in the morning and turning different directions to look around me, made me feel appreciation for everything I saw-the trees, the sky, the fog, the birds, the hills, my leadership tribe.  It also made me feel tremendous gratitude for all of the phases of my life.  Also, stretching and breathing at the beginning made me be present, to slow down and experience the ‘NOW.’

Here are my coaching questions for today:

What can you do each morning that will make you look around and feel gratitude? How might your day be different if you felt appreciation right at the start of your day?

Might taking time to breath and stretch when you awake cause you to be calmer and more present all day?
How about taking 15 minutes to read, journal, meditate?  How might that help you by starting out this way?
One of the things I have also enjoyed during morning ritual at The Mother Tree, is observing and listening to all of the animals in the morning-mostly the birds and the turkeys.  When I looked at my pictures, I laughed because I saw that the turkeys have a morning ritual also.  It looked like they were breathing, stretching and doing Shintido just like us!

I hope you will think about creating a morning ritual.  It just might change your life!

Here are a few ideas for creating a morning ritual:

• Writing in a gratitude journal-list three things for which you are grateful
• Sitting in quiet for 15 minutes-they say any mediation is better than none at all
• Reading from inspirational books-just open to a page and read-it might be just what you need to hear
• Visualizing your life—picture in your mind how it feels and what it looks like to live the life you want
• Play a song that you absolutely love and that gets you fired up-instead of watching television

As Eckhart Tolle says in The Power of Now, the whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor’s edge of Now—to be so utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you are in your essence, can survive in you.  In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve.

Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.