Radiator pipes creak and groan. Rain softly taps against the far window. Louder, more singular drops of water fall from the outside guttering, drip-dropping themselves into the forgotten, left-out bucket below. The distant noise of a car engine warming itself up for the day. Heavy breathing to the left-hand side of me. These noises signal one thing. I am awake. I am conscious.

All too quickly, the inner voice inside my head begins to boot itself up. Like a laptop firing to life, I can almost feel the electronic connections sparking between various connectors in my brain.

The all-too-familiar sound of my to-do list and today's schedule begins blurting out. But I’m quick. I catch it. Before momentum ensues.

Pausing, I take a breath and reclaim conscious focus. I want these first few moments of the day to be filled with something other than my pending schedule. In its place, I choose awareness, appreciation, gratitude, and focus. I choose to overwrite my own system.

These first few moments of consciousness are precious. The most precious moments of the day. Before you can even begin to exit from your bed, reach for your journal, press play on your meditation track, unroll the yoga mat, or reach for your morning cup of coffee. Arguably, these first few moments are the most potent minutes of the day.

These first few moments are yours. To be within your own mind, your own thoughts, and your own reality. Just you and your inner self. They set the tone for the rest of your day.

For a long time, one of my biggest blocks was believing that my morning practice was the beginning of my mindfulness practice—the start of applying conscious awareness to my day. And that process began when the pen touched my journal pages, when I was seated in that lotus position, when my morning ritual began. However, a recent epiphany drastically altered this way of thinking.

In the time between getting out of bed, using the bathroom, making a cup of coffee, and saying good morning to your partner and kids, circumstances have already begun to impact your emotional state. And quite often, the reason for this is because we don’t utilise those first few moments of conscious awareness—being awake.

If when you awake and circumstances are pleasing, your children and partner are bumbly and enthusiastic, there are no unexpected occurrences to wake up to, and your coffee tastes good, then your morning ritual would get itself off to a great start. However, if those circumstances were less than desirable, your morning routine would begin as an uphill battle. To claw your way back to a place of gratitude, appreciation, focus, and consciousness.

Whatever your chosen morning routine is, Your go-to spiritual practice. Don’t allow these practices to be the deciding factor as to whether or not your day begins moving in the direction you desire. Instead, think of these as enhancements. Practices that can elevate your state. Because if one morning, for whatever reason, you aren’t able to carry out your chosen practice, this won’t automatically be the deciding factor that determines the quality of your day.

So what can you do to harness the potency of those first minutes of consciousness?

Firstly, begin by catching that wandering mind of yours

As your mind begins to float towards the numerous emails you have to send today—the shopping list, the kids schedule, what you’re going to have for tea, etc.—try to catch it.

The best way to do this is to stop and take a deep breath. Use that breath as a claim. A claim to your own consciousness, to take control back of your focus.

Observe what your habits are. Do you lay in bed and think about all the busy elements of the day ahead and the more stressful tasks?

Do you instantly reach for your phone, checking emails, messages, or social media?

Or maybe you’re awoken straight away by your requests from your family, desiring your time and attention.

It’s helpful to become aware of these habits that have probably just unconsciously formed over time. Becoming aware of them means it is easier to catch them and to stop yourself before making them your first priority.

Set the alarm 10 minutes earlier

5 or 10 minutes is all you need. Set the alarm just a little bit earlier. Ensure you have mental space before you interact with anyone else or before you begin diving into action. Start your day in your mind. You don’t need to get out of bed or do anything else; expect to simply lay in bed with a conscious awareness that you are awake.

Turn your thoughts to more simple thoughts, such as noticing how warm the duvet feels after a full night's sleep. Notice the quality of the light in your bedroom; is it light or dark? Can you tell whether the sun has begun to rise? What do you hear? Birds outside, the sound of commuters already on their way to work—maybe you can hear your family downstairs or the person next to you just starting to stir.

Breathe into these simple observations for a moment. It is these observations that anchor you in the present moment and prevent your mind from contemplating the past or worrying about the future.

Begin to raise your emotional state of being

To fully utilise those first few moments, you want to focus on not just your presence in the moment but on raising your vibration as high as you can. Satisfaction, excitement, and gratitude should be leaching from your pores by the time you step out of bed. This may be what you use your morning practice to achieve, but I want to encourage you to discover how you can get to these types of emotional states without the need for your mat, journal, or transcendental meditation track.

Some of my favourite, easy-to-go-to practices that can all be done while lying in bed are:

Gratitude:

Make a list in your head of 3–5 things for which you are grateful in your life right now. It could be your career, your family, friends, or more simple experiences, such as how good lying in bed feels right now. How rested do you feel after a comforting night's sleep? It can be anything you like, big or small, so long as it helps you exude a feeling of gratitude and abundance.

Listing positive aspects:

Choose someone you love and focus on all their positive aspects. Think about all the things you love about them. Maybe you’re looking forward to seeing them. What will you do together the next time you interact? Where will you go, and what will you say? Use your imagination. This exercise is about getting into a place of love and appreciation for others. Equally, this can be done with yourself and is a fantastic self-love practice to begin your day.

Good old-fashioned daydreaming:

Daydream about your future. Blissfully drift off into pleasant expectations for the future, whether that be for the day ahead or the distant future. Enjoy just basking in the thought process. Revel in the feeling of excited anticipation; feel the smile spreading across your face as you enjoy taking time for yourself just to dream.

Claiming consciousness the moment you wake is your superpower. It can be done anywhere in the world, in any location, and under any circumstance. No equipment is required. Just yourself and your ability to focus. Try grabbing your focus by its invisible horns and begin learning to steer it in the direction of thoughts that will positively impact your day.

Josephine Snowling is a writer, teacher and entrepreneur who shares her own personal truth, understanding and insight of how this reality works and how you can learn to come home to yourself so that you may consciously manifest the life you desire.

Images by tobetold by Lena Kinast for ‘Homecoming’, heiter issue 2. Order the issue now!

For those of you living in the northern hemisphere, you’ll have noticed by now that the evenings have become darker, the temperature has begun to drop and leaves are steadily beginning to fall. Autumn is here and winter is on its way.

But this doesn’t mean that your spirits need to drop or there are any less of those heiter moments to revel in. In fact, what this article will enlighten you to is that if this time of year is given a bit more consideration and attention, it can actually end up being something you look forward to each year.

So allow me to guide you through some of the mindfulness practices I use to heighten my enjoyment of the darker, colder seasons.

Vision boards

Pour yourself a cup of your favourite brew, open up your laptop and afford yourself an hour or two to create a vision board. So often when we think about the colder seasons, our focus goes straight to all the not so pleasing aspects. However, there are many fun and exciting activities to be enjoyed during these seasons.

Fill your board with enticing images, colours, inspirational words and watch how quickly your focus fades from your usual unpleasing thoughts to ones of excitement and anticipation.

This year my autumn vision board has images of pumpkins, warm drinks held in snuggly mittens, gatherings around the fire, candle light, books, blankets, autumnal walks, favourite jumpers, marshmallows on sticks, mugs of soup and the list goes on. What isn’t to love about that?

If you can, carve out some time to create your vision board in the last month or few weeks before the end of each season, that way you won’t be shocked when the colder weather comes. Instead you’ll be eagerly awaiting those first few leaves to fall and the sound of the heating clicking on.

But if you find this article in the midst of winter, I always say there is no better time than now. What seasonal activities can you look forward to in the coming weeks?

Be prepared

They have a saying where I live in Wales, “there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad choice of clothing” and that couldn’t be closer to the truth.

Now is the time to hunt in the loft, thrift the secondhand stores or go all out and by yourself some new winter apparel.

One of the main issues people have with this time of year is the weather. Being cold and wet don’t tend to rank too highly on anyone’s list of enjoyable activities.
So prepare your outfits like you have every intention of enjoying the weather. If you have warm waterproofs, wellies and even thermals then no amount of dreary weather will dampen your spirits.

For many of us this is the number one reason why we don’t spend much time in nature around this time of year but nature is a freely available resource that allows us to neutralise our energy and soak in the rich nourishment that the earth has to offer. Don’t allow unprepared clothing choices to stop you from taking in the freshness of the air and the wonder sights that can be found in nature during the cooler months.

There is beauty in darkness

Another common complaint from people about the colder months is the increasing amount of darkness.

Sunlight is a natural mood enhancer and so when the sun loses its strength and is only present, for sometimes a few minutes each day, it can become very easy to slip into feelings of internal darkness.

But I want you to think of darkness differently. For those of you that have ever sat to meditate, I want you to think how nice, how comforting and relaxing it feels to be in the quiet and comfort of your own mind.

This form of darkness is rejuvenating, calming and zen like. And the same can be applied for those darker days of winter. The darkness is our invitation to go inward, to quieten our minds and our internal landscape.

If this still doesn’t enhance your thoughts about darkness, see if you can play around with mood lighting. Candles are a wonderful way to add an element of light but also encapsulate a feeling of warmth and cosiness in any space. Alternatively you could install a dimmer light switch, dulled lamp such as a himalayan salt lamp, or even a string of fairy lights will do the trick.

This duller lighting also allows you to stick more closely to your body's cues for sleep, as it can be difficult to start receiving sleep signals when we have bright lights in and around our homes.

Honour your body

Whatever the season, it’s important to listen to how you feel and to honour your body’s cues. If your body is telling you that it needs rest, that it needs to curl up in a warm blanket by the fire, shut out the cold and dive into a book or magazine, see if you can honour that desire.

Equally, if you feel energised by the winter sun and want to spend a day roaming the countryside in the fresh air, put yourself a flask together, pack your waterproofs and go explore.

Depending on our culture and our upbringing we can feel very pulled to conform to either of these two approaches toward the cold and dark days.

We either feel like we have to carry on with the same energetic energy left over from the summer and deny ourselves the opportunity to slow down and to rest. Or we feel like we should be slowing down, when really the bracing weather is what ignites our energy levels.

Neither is right or wrong. The best option is always what feels good for you, your life and your body.

Mindset shift

All it takes is a simple mindset shift. A turning of our attention from the less desirable aspects that often consume our conversations around this time of year and a refocus towards the small heiter moments, that if peppered throughout the colder seasons, can have a profound effect on your mood, outlook and enjoyment of half the months of each year.

Will this year be the year that you see the cold, dark and damp in a different light?

Words: Josephine Snowling

Main image: Katharina Geissler-Evans

Images 2-4: via Unsplash

Image 5: tobetold for heiter issue 2, Homecoming

Why mindfulness should begin before your morning routine starts