The morning routine can be a critical part of your day. How you start your day will have a huge impact on the rest of it. Kendra Perry takes us on a behind the scenes look at her morning routine in this special episode. We hear a few tips and tricks to make the start of your day better and give you a few options to boot. Tune in for greater insights from Kendra and take inspiration from her daily routine.
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Behind-The-Scenes Of My Morning Routine
We are going to switch gears a little bit. We are going to be talking about my morning routine, what it includes, and how you can implement one of your own. I know morning routines. There are a lot of hype around them. I’m not going to be that annoying person who tells you to wake up at 5:00 or 4:00 in the morning and do your morning routine. That is not my jam. Sleep is incredibly important. As someone who suffered from chronic insomnia for so long, I like to let myself sleep. I have been sleeping incredibly. I have been sleeping better than I believe I have my entire life.
I have been getting two-plus hours of deep sleep. I have my Oura Ring and I track it every night. I have had my Oura Ring for years. I get a lot of REM sleep where I dream crazy of super visual dreams every night but my deep sleep was usually tough. In the beginning, I was lucky to get an hour. Sometimes, it was less and I made a few small changes that seemed to make a big difference. The one thing that made a huge difference was eating earlier. I used to eat quite late, around 7:00 or 8:00, but that interferes with your deep sleep. I knew that. I was a health coach but I didn’t want to know it.
I was like, “It can’t be that big a deal.” I’m pretty active in the evenings, especially in summer. I liked eating later. I made an honest effort to try to eat before 6:30 every night and before 6:00 if possible. Oftentimes, I eat dinner around 5:00. It was crazy how much that helped. I went from getting maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour to 1 hour and 30 mins or 1 hour and 15 minutes. At the end of 2021, essentially right after it, I did Kambo. I do think the two are related. Kambo is the frog medicine ceremony that I did.
If you want to get all the dirty details about frog medicine and my experience doing it three times in a week at the beginning of December 2021, you can tune into episode 102, My Journey with Kambo Frog Medicine. I’m off on a bit of a tangent here. My sleep has been insane. I have been sleeping over 2 hours of deep sleep every night, sometimes 2.5 and sometimes close to 3 hours. It is crazy because I have been sleeping less overall but feeling better. Sometimes, I only sleep 6.5 to 7 hours but when I’m getting almost 3 hours of deep sleep, I wake up feeling super energized and great. I have been naturally waking up about 5:30 or 6:00 every morning, which has been great. It has been helpful for my morning routine.
Top 5 For Your Morning Routine
I’m someone who has my best focus in the morning. Usually, by 2:00 PM, I’m over it. It is better if I can start work earlier. I believe these are the five things that are critical to any morning routine. I’m not saying you need to do this every morning. Sometimes, it is not realistic. Sometimes, our morning routines are supposed to help us feel good but then it is stressful because we are putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to do it. I’m someone who rebels against routine. I hate routine. My rebel self is repulsed by it. I should have a morning routine menu and go with how I’m feeling and what feels good that day.
Get Your Body Moving
If you can get these five things in a morning routine, I do believe this will set you up for success. Number one is some movement. This could be a higher intensity movement or a lower intensity movement. Whatever it is, it is good to get the blood flowing. When it is not winter, I will usually wake up and go for a walk right out the door. I will go to the forest, get that movement and go for a brisk walk. We got a ton of snow, although it is melting because it got warmer. We got so much snow that it was hard to walk anywhere. I started jumping on my little rebounder trampoline for five minutes. That felt like a good way to get the limp moving, blood flowing and wake me up.
Some people will say that you should do intense exercise in the morning. Ultimately, it depends on you. I was in a place for a long time where any intense exercise in the morning was exhausting and made me feel like crap. Walking and sometimes stretching were good for me. Whatever it is, I recommend doing some form of movement. That could be as simple as rolling on a foam roller, yoga, stretching, whatever it is. That is movement.
Breath Work Makes The Dream Work
Number two is breath. You know I’m a huge fan of breathwork. I try to make a concerted effort to do some form of breathwork every single morning. I’m going to show you the breathwork pattern that I have been doing every morning. I like this one. It is called the Bliss Breath. The bliss breath happens through the nose only. You probably want to blow the snot out of your nose before you do this. Keep your mouth closed, and then the exhale through your nose is forceful and the inhale is more passive. You are focusing on the exhale. I do that 50 times and then hold my breath for as long as it feels good to hold it. I repeat that four times. 50 bliss breaths times 4 with a top hold in between.
When I say top hold, you are holding out your breath at the top of the inhale. I love this because it gets things flowing and gets that energy moving in the body. When I’m doing this, I focus on the intention that I want for the day, whether that’s joy, happiness, peace, focus, whatever it is. Anything floating through me that I don’t feel is serving me, I try to imagine blowing it out with those breaths. If you don’t want to do the bliss breath, that’s okay. Taking a bunch of deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth can be powerful too. Reminding yourself to breathe early on in the day will help you breathe better throughout the day. That’s number two and that’s breath.
Stillness Of Mind, Strength Of Body
Number three is stillness. I always love to bring even a little bit of meditation into my morning routine. I like to do the breathwork first and then finish off with a meditation. After doing that bliss breath with the top hold four times, I try to sit for about five minutes and have a quiet meditation. Sometimes I have music on but I like to do a five-minute meditation, try to be still, connect to that central channel that runs from the top of the head through my root and into the ground and focus on that grounded feeling.
Sometimes when I have a little more time, I will do a Joe Dispenza meditation. I purchased this meditation off his website. It is called the Morning Meditation. It is about 23 or 24 minutes. It is like a visualization meditation where you connect your intention of what you want to an elevated emotion. Sometimes I will do something business-related. I will try to connect to something I want in my business. It will be more of a personal goal or something that I want to feel in my body.
Essentially, what you are doing is you are visualizing it like it is happening now and connecting an elevated emotion to it. This is what Joe Dispenza teaches. If you have read the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself or You Are the Placebo, he talks a lot about that in these books. Those are great books. I highly recommend them. I love his meditation. He has quite a few on his website. That one I like because it is a bit shorter. A lot of his is 60 minutes or more, which I have a little bit of trouble committing to, but a 23-minute is nice. Sometimes I will do that breathwork and go right into that stillness.
Wake Up With Temperature Therapy
The fourth thing is temperature. You can also call this Hot Cold. There is nothing like a little bit of hot cold therapy or cold therapy or hot therapy that will bring you into your body and wake you up into your day. I do this in a few different ways. I have a cold plunge. It has been rock solid, frozen because we had a 2 or 3 weeks of cold weather. I wasn’t able to manage it and it froze solid. I wasn’t able to use it. Honestly, I didn’t want to use it because it was minus fifteen. In the future, when it gets that cold, I’m going to drain it. I was not able to the ice off so it froze solid.
I picked it out on the weekend. I waited for the temperatures to warm up and then went in there with my pulaski. I broke all the ice up and emptied it. I’m ready to fill it back up. Sometimes I will do a plunge in the cold pool and then get into a hot shower. If you don’t have a cold plunge and you are not crazy like me, you can do a hot-cold in the shower. This is great for the lymphatic system. It gets that blood flowing and it wakes you up. If you have a sauna, you can do that as well. When I have a little bit more time, I will do a sauna early in the morning.
Get Your Body Into Gear With Light
I find heat to be quite energizing but a lot of people find heat to make them more tired and relaxed. That might not be appropriate for you, depending on how that makes you feel. That cold hot shower where you are rotating between cold and hot every 30 seconds for 5 or 6 times will wake you up. Number five is light. There is nothing like seeing the outdoor natural light first thing in the morning. That will kick your circadian rhythm into gear, especially if you can watch the rising sun on the horizon. That light that goes into your eyeballs is going to stimulate a whole bunch of hormones in your body.
When I’m good about getting up and doing walks, this is where I can kill two birds with one stone because I’m out there walking, getting my movement, and getting the light on my face and in my eyes. If you live in a Northern climate like me, there are days when you are in the dark times. It doesn’t get light out until 8:00 or 8:30. You can get a simple SAD light off of Amazon or from some other manufacturer that essentially is a bright light that mimics the light of the rising sun, and then you can sit in front of it for 5 or 10 minutes. That can help.
The thing that I’m doing while I’m not going through my walk is I’m looking at my vitamin D light. I wear a goggle. My vitamin D light is a UVB light and quite bright. I let it go into my eyes a little bit before I put my little goggles on. That stimulates me to wake up as well. That light piece is important. That is what I call my morning routine menu. If I try to stick to a schedule or routine, I usually rebel against it. I have those things on my menu and choose from them depending on the day. If I can get them all done and that feels good, I will do it but that is not always the case.
The other thing I will add is I don’t always have time for this because sometimes I like to read with a cup of coffee in front of the fire. I have a little bit of a hard time sitting in the morning. I’m more of an on-the-move person. I like to walk, do the trampoline, do breathwork meditation, cold plunge, or the hot-cold shower. If you want to stick to your morning routine, you need to give yourself time. I don’t want you waking yourself up with an alarm to do this. The great thing about owning a business is you can start work when you want. I make a habit of not starting my day earliest 9:00 AM.
I rarely start my day before 9:00 AM in terms of appointments unless something is going on. I will record with a show host who lives in Europe so in that case, I might be doing an earlier recording. For the most part, I try to give myself lots of time. I go to bed early. I wake up when my body is ready to wake up and usually, that is around 5:30 or 6:00 AM.
Typically, I’m not starting until about 9:00 AM, at least with appointments. That gives me lots of time to get everything done that I need to do. It is important not to rush into your day like checking emails and all those reactive tasks. If you are like me who don’t love structure and routine, then create a menu of things. Each morning, you can select from that menu, whether it is 1, 2 things, or a bunch of them. I find that works for me so that might work for you too.
Good luck with your morning routine. Let me know what you decide to add to it or if you found any inspiration from this episode, you can shoot me a direct message on Instagram. My handle is @KendraPerryInc. I would love to chat with you. If you love this episode or show, please leave me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. I read all of them and I greatly appreciate them. It is the best way that you can support me for free if you are getting a lot of value out of this show. Thanks for reading. I will see you again where I help you become wealthy AF.
Important Links:
- Oura Ring
- Morning Meditation
- My Journey with Kambo Frog Medicine – Previous episode
- Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself
- You Are the Placebo
- Joe Dispenza
- @KendraPerryInc – Instagram
- Apple Podcasts – The Wealthy Coach
