Ways you may choose to adopt for a balanced and fruitful life.

Look at us — how much we’ve evolved.

Not so long ago, we were the most enthusiastic participants of trends that celebrated busyness at the expense of sleep. Forgoing quality sleep, contributing to activities to prolong wakefulness, indirectly weakening our immune system and putting ourselves at risk of infections. But not anymore.

The good news is that we’ve come full circle. The decades-long habit of abuse we’ve put our bodies through has taught us what we needed to know. Now we can celebrate the wisdom we’ve gained and happily pass it on to a new generation that is ready to accept it.

In a recent article, I outlined my true and tested routine of pointers of how I’ve managed to stay at the top of my game when it comes to sleep. Please visit Do You Have a Healthy Sleep Routine in Place? HERE — my Newsletter for October.  The same article also tells of how I became complacent and fell off the saddle. No need for sympathies; I have found my way back to my pointers and believe in them just as strongly as I always have.

Like you, I’m after good healthy habits. The testimony I made in that article has to do with how to end your day.

I mention that here, for the way you end your day — intentionally making room for a healthy routine — is the first step for feeling energized, capable, productive, focused, and creative the following day. That is a prerequisite to help you face the morning with zest.

To face the morning with zest,
it’s important to end each day right.
Intentionally.

It’s all there in that ‘Sleep Article’. Sleep boosts our resistance to illnesses and helps us to create a robust environment for a good quality of life.

Now onto the morning after

“Gravity makes us shorter at the end of the day than at the start, says Inverse.com. Research has now found something similar happens to the size of our brains.” ~ inverse.com

According to a study published in NeuroImage, here’s what happens to our brain in a day:

•  As the day progresses, our human brain shrinks, becoming its smallest size at night.
• Then we sleep.
• When we awake, after sleeping in a prone position, our brain is the largest it will be all day.

“A possible mechanism may be that lying down during the night is associated with a redistribution of body fluids that had accumulated in the lower extremities during the day… It is also possible that the effect of time-of-day is associated with hydration status.” ~ discovermagazine.com

Our sponge-like brains rehydrate while we sleep. Makes sense, right?

This hydration suggests that our brains are primed to work for us in the morning, primed to be awake and functional.

Primed to be!
That’s assuming you got
a good night’s sleep.

Come morning, two main points need to be addressed right away:

• blood
• information flow

For your brain’s ability to function, you need to ‘water it.’ Feeding it water is the crucial ingredient that calls forth the blood and information flow it needs. And the sooner you provide it, the more awake and functional you will feel.

But water is not the only thing needed to speed up the wake-up-your-brain process. This time, I’m listing five morning-suggestions that can help.

1. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Upon waking, drink a glass of water. Your body and brain need water to be able to send electronic messages. In essence, while your brain regains its size by hydrating overnight, your body goes its longest stretch without fluids. Once out of bed, and fluids begin to redistribute, your brain will experience a lack of water, so water it, please.

2. Eat something. Your brain runs on a single food source: glucose. Glucose is directly obtained from the food we eat. Once in the brain, glucose energizes mitochondria.
A study published in Neuroimage explains that each cell’s organelle is responsible for respiration and energy production, which is necessary to convert chemical energy into a compound used for cell energy.
Aha! I got that! Did you?

3. Breathe. Burn the fog of sleep with the Kundalini yoga practice of The Breath of Fire. While a regimen of deep breaths can extend your energy over the course of the day, short, shallow breaths invigorate your body and wake up your brain with a quick dose of oxygen.

4. Engage your cortex. The cortex is the outer part of our brain — it’s the place where our executive and decision-making function starts. The cortex revs up the most when it’s focused. This is why early morning meditation is recommended; it’s a great way to gently ease your brain to activate and set the stage for the rest of the day with a sense of wellbeing.

If you don’t know how to meditate yet, here are a few choices with scientifically proven wellness benefits:

-crossword puzzles

-brain teasers

-mindfulness

-singing your favorite song

5. Get moving asap. Exercise pumps both blood and information to our brain. When we participate in an activity that increases our heart rate, mood-elevating endorphins flow at a higher rate to our brains and out to the rest of our bodies. Moving invigorates our mind and our muscles.

“Additionally, the focus and healthy-stress of exercise help engage our minds and bodies in a feedback loop that reinforces wakefulness and well-being.” ~ NeuroImage

Of course, all these suggestions assume the first step of getting out of bed, or at least out of sleep mode. If you still need help to get you to your wake-up process, implement this step first:

Open the shades and let in the day’s natural light. Light helps activate our circadian eye, retina cells that sense light to reset our body clock.

Wow. What fine-tuned machines house our souls.

And thanks to all the advancement in technology — because, let’s face it, every day might not be a sunny day — with an orange-light by your bed, you can create a rise-and-shine feeling just by flipping a switch.

Particularly sensitive to the color orange, photoreceptors in our eyes respond to light by creating melanopsin, a light-sensing pigment that wakes up the brain. Researchers have discovered that people exposed to orange light experience greater levels of alertness and cognition.

I enjoyed researching this one for you. May the value of the wealth of information available to us all right now lead us to a balanced and fruitful life.

THANK YOU FOR READING.
I Wish You Miracles.