One of the best things we can do for our bodies and minds is to start our day with morning meditation. The benefits of meditation are profound. From reducing stress to improving sleep and increasing focus, mindfulness helps improve our quality of life.
If you’re looking to incorporate a morning meditation practice into your life, consider the following steps for cultivating a daily ritual that enriches your 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 for 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.
For ideas on how to fill your meditation space, discover these 12 gift ideas for a meditation room that inspire peace and balance.
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. Breathe slow and deep, focusing on bringing your breath into your lower belly, 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
Once you have created your meditation space and dropped into visualizing your intention, 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
Chyawanprash is an ancient Ayurvedic herbal formula 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.
For more meditation help and inspiration, be sure to read our meditation tips.
Clare Michalik, Ayurvedic Practitioner
