We understand how coming home after a peaceful escape can be a difficult transition. Our yoga retreat in Costa Rica offers beautiful surroundings, healthy meals, and intimate yoga instruction. Living a healthy lifestyle is simple and straightforward here. But what about when you return to your daily life, without all of the conveniences and luxuries of that pampering vacation?
Getting home doesn’t have to mean settling back into your normal routine. Here are a few tips from Modernize to help you get your mind and body in tune each morning before you jump into the day’s activities. Every day will feel like a retreat if you start off peacefully and with healthy habits.
Avoid Your Devices
We all do it every now and then. We wake up, roll over, and immediately look at our smartphones. If you have a habit of checking the news or your emails first thing, it can quickly stress you out and interrupt a peaceful morning. To infuse your daily life with time for more mental clarity and appreciation of your surroundings, try to separate work and free time by waiting until your work day begins to check emails. Getting on your devices first thing may lead you to skip breakfast or your morning walk outside, and in general, just derail your plans for a serene start to the day.
Spend Time Outside
There are irrefutable health benefits to spending time outdoors. Outdoor air is cleaner than indoor air, but that’s not the only advantage. Boosted mood, higher self-esteem, increased vitamin D levels, and inner peace are just a few advantages of spending time outside. There’s no better time of day than the morning to get in touch with nature and enrich your inner life. Whether you’re going for a jog or just sitting on your patio, going outside with your warm water and lemon is sure to be a refreshing start to a busy day.
Save the Coffee for Later
Stimulants are helpful for feeling prepared for work and ready to face the day. But if you rely on coffee every day to wake up, you might not notice signs of poor sleep or a lack of proper nutrition. Instead of leaning on this crutch to shake off sleep, drink warm water with fresh squeezed lemon juice. Add some cayenne for an extra boost. This will kickstart your metabolism and help you feel fresh, clean, and awake. Follow it up with a healthy breakfast and save your coffee until 9 or 10 am.
Avoid Drinking Your Calories for Breakfast
Juices, smoothies, and shakes are all the rage these days. With the right ingredients, these refreshments can have undeniable health benefits. But sometimes the benefits come with too big a cost. Juices are often packed with sugar since they extract all the juice out of the fruits and veggies for you to drink, leaving the healthy fiber out of the mix. Many “healthy” drinks do not contain protein and fat, essential components of a healthy breakfast, but do contain carbs that mostly come from sugar. When you do drink healthy smoothies and juices for breakfast, make sure that they are mostly green and that you accompany them with healthy food like granola or eggs to kerb hunger and kickstart your metabolism.
Stretch Your Muscles
Morning is a great time to fit in a short yoga routine to help energize and center you for the rest of the day. Even if it’s difficult just to roll out of bed, practicing yoga or even just stretching in the morning will help you feel awake and in control of your body and emotions. For the rest of the day, you’ll experience improved posture, fewer aches, better blood flow, and higher energy levels.
Tackle the Most Difficult Tasks First
It’s natural for us to want to postpone the hardest tasks as long as possible. With such full plates, it’s easy for all of us to get in the habit of doing the easy things first. But this only prolongs the stress and anxiety of doing a difficult task. Instead of letting that intimidating call or tedious report loom over your head all day, get right to it the moment you start your workday. This will make for a peaceful remainder of the day, and maybe a chance to knock out another intimidating task while you’re on a role. Just make sure to allot sufficient time to wake up and get in touch with yourself before diving into a busy work day.
Adapt Your Routine to Fit Your Day
Although it may be hard to stick to a routine without being strict, make sure to give yourself a break and adapt to the circumstances. Some mornings, you may want to force yourself out of bed to stretch and wake up. Other times, it may be healthiest for you to hit snooze and catch fifteen more minutes of sleep. Stay attuned to what your body needs. These healthy morning habits will be so rewarding that you won’t need to be strict on yourself to do them regularly.
Try to Devote an Hour to Your Well-Being
This one is easier said than done, but the benefits of it are hard to deny. Taking time each morning to center yourself and prepare for what lies ahead positively affects your entire life day by day. You may cringe when you think of waking up an hour earlier to devote time to the above rituals, but these rituals will have you feeling so refreshed that you won’t regret it. Do nothing to get ready for work in this time. Dedicate it to stillness, introspection, and building habits that are good for your mind and body.
Photos via Modernize
