One of the best things we can do for our bodies and minds is to start our day with morning meditation. If you're looking to incorporate a meditation practice into your morning routine, consider the following steps for cultivating a daily ritual that reduces stress, improves sleep, increases focus, and quality of life.

1. Create The Space for Your Meditation

To set the scene for your morning meditation, try creating a mini-ritual around it to cultivate the intentional energy further. We recommend designing a chosen nook to call your meditation space so that every time you revisit your morning meditation, you're familiar, more comfortable, and can quickly drop into stillness. 

You can create a simple altar, lighting a candle, burning incense, gazing at your house plant, or sitting quietly on your favorite pillow. Maybe you drape a beautiful sarong or cloth over a corner table, add your favorite crystals, and keep your journal nearby for instant downloads before or after your meditation experience.

2. Visualize Your Intention

Visualizations hold deep power. What we experience in our inner world is translated into what we experience in our outer world. Thus, if we set an intention during a practice, we can then transmute it externally, aiding the manifestation of our goals. Visualization can also be a useful stress management tool. 

To practice visualization, find a quiet seat in your meditation space. Begin to drop into stillness by settling in your heart and closing your eyes. Take deep, slow, breaths, focusing on bringing your breath into your lower belly, feeling the movement of your belly as it goes in and out. Start to draw focus on your intention. For instance, if your intention is gratitude, concentrate on someone you are grateful for or someone you want to show gratitude to. Fill your heart with love, and imagine how it would feel to have gratitude for all things. Emphasize the feeling of abundance, love, and gratitude. Settle into this feeling.

3. Voice Your Mantras and Affirmations

Next, call in your mantra or affirmation. Dr. David Frawley says mantras have the ability to alter your subconscious impulses, habits, and afflictions. Thus, when mantras are spoken or chanted, they can direct the healing power of prana (vital life force energy). Affirmations work much the same in which you affirm something to be true. 

You may repeat mantras and affirmations regularly to increase the potency of the gratitude you wish to call in and thus are the perfect addition to your morning meditation. Here are a few examples of mantras/affirmations you may adapt for a gratitude morning meditation:

• I am grateful and happy for the life I live
• I am thankful for the obstacles in my life, for they are the lessons I get to learn
• My grateful heart is a magnet that attracts everything I desire
• I live in gratitude
• Shanti, Shanti, Shanti (peace, peace, peace)
• Thank you, thank you, thank you

4. Meditate

The final step of a morning meditation is to drop into your meditation. Once you have created the space, visualized your desired outcome or feeling, and then affirmed through a repeated mantra, you are now ready to fully surrender and absorb the positive effects of your morning meditation. Filled with peace, continue to relish this feeling for 5-10 minutes or until the desired amount. Feel free to let yourself smile.

5. Enhance Your Morning Meditation Through Chyawanprash

One of Ayurveda’s best kept secrets to move your morning toward clarity, focus, and energy is Chyawanprash. This ancient Ayurvedic herbal formula was crafted to enhance the potency of yoga and meditation. It does this through a specific combination of brain-boosting herbs, stress-relieving adaptogens, and health-promoting superfoods. 

PIOR Living Chyawanprash is formulated to deliver nutrients deep into the body's tissues, opening energy channels for prana to flow freely in your practice and daily life. You can take it first thing in the morning to focus your mind and calm your nervous system. This makes it perfect to use before or after meditation. The act of drinking it can be a meditation in itself.

For more tips on cultivating positive daily habits and rituals, explore our guide to an Ayurvedic daily routine.

Clare Michalik, Ayurvedic Practitioner, @Clareminded