Whether it’s your iPhone alarm’s shrill cry, chugging a strong cup of coffee or piling onto a busy tube, mornings can often feel like the opposite of calm. We get it. Waking up early is hard, especially during winter when it’s dark outside, but if you wind down before bed to prepare your body for sleep, why not show yourself the same kindness in the mornings?

TikTok and YouTube are awash with 5am morning routines that squeeze in workouts, journaling and side hustles all before breakfast. But for non-morning people, these early morning routines might as well be advanced rocket science. It’s just not going to happen.

You don’t have to wake up at 5 to have a calm morning, but studies show that routines can help reduce anxiety. “Starting the morning more peacefully can mean that we are much more productive in the areas we want to be,” says health expert and acupuncturist Ross J. Barr. “One of the best things you can do for yourself to encourage peace is not look at your phone, laptop or iPad for the first 45 minutes of the day. The moment we do, we start to become reactive to external factors like work emails, news, social feeds etc. instead of being proactive in our own lives.”

Calm morning routine

“We start to run on cortisol the moment we look at our phones,” Barr continues. “For both good and bad reasons, it will often dictate what you do next regardless of what you had in mind for yourself. Even if all you do is eat breakfast and have a cup of tea and take a shower, it will ground you in a completely different way. It sets an intention for the day that you will be responsible for how you feel, not others.”

So, it turns out that having a calm morning is as much about what you avoid as it is about what you do. Whether you’re a morning person or you snooze your alarm 8-10 times a day, we’ve curated a realistic calm morning guide to kickstart your day right. Pick and choose which of the quick tips below you think will help make your mornings feel more mindful.

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