This morning I completed the first full week of my morning routine! I reworked the routine after it felt disjointed on Monday, and did this for the rest of the week:
6:55 Wake-up
7:00 Bathroom time: wash face, brush hair, etc.
7:10 Make & drink lemon water, feed cats
7:20 Meditate
7:30 Yoga for 10/15 minutes
7:45 Make tea & breakfast
7:55 Gratitude journal & plan for the day (while eating breakfast)
8:25 Brush teeth
8:30 Sit down, ready to work!
Since this was my first week, I had been most concerned with eating breakfast almost an hour after waking. Before, breakfast was normally the second or third thing I would do, since I normally wake up pretty hungry. To my joy, this was not a real problem. Even on the one day I woke up hungry, the lemon water helped fill my stomach until I could eat something more substantial. I’m a HUGE advocate of eating breakfast, but it’s nice to have reassurance that it doesn’t have to be the first thing I do every morning.
This week’s focus was meant to be on physical well-being, which hit a snag pretty early on. Monday morning I sat on my yoga mat, found a yoga video from YouTube, and hit play. Fifteen minutes later I hear a POP in my hip as I was moving between positions, but didn’t think anything of it…until I got up from my chair after a few hours of working and noticed my hip hurt. And thus began my week of no running and minimal everything else. Yes, it still hurts almost a week later, and yes, I’m planning on seeing a doctor in the coming week. I didn’t think this project would cost me a doctor visit, and yet here we are.
Nevertheless, I kept up the schedule since I felt that some movement would be beneficial, especially to my mental well-being. From then on, I did some yoga in the morning, but did not follow any videos. Instead I followed my body and stuck to extremely easy movements that were on both legs, such as down-dogs and cat-cows. I was really curious about how this physical movement would affect my running later in the day, but this question did not get answered. Maybe I’ll try again in a few weeks when I’m able to run again.
I’m most curious to see how each week of this experiment affects me emotionally, and if a certain element or two lead to better focus through-out the day. Because I injured myself, bringing on a whole lot of emotional turmoil, I would say this instance caused my stress to increase. Overall, I feel like these questions remain unanswered. If I had not been injured, I don’t think this would have affected me negatively; however, it might have just been neutral, and a different component in the morning routine might affect me more positively.
Next week I’m focusing on spiritual well-being, with meditation and doing something fun (probably puzzles) in the morning will be my focus. Hopefully I’ll be able to have more insight into if it helps or hurts – unless picking up a puzzle piece lands me in the ER. In which case, this experiment might be over, due to detriment to my health.
Storylines & Sunshine 