waking early
We are all wizards these days.
I enjoy imagining all the faff that would have been saved if Harry, Ron and Hermione had a phone in addition to the wand. The library research marathons that would have been bypassed with Google! The time that would have been saved by a Zoom call instead of messing around with bloody owls!
But, subject to the irritatingly incontrovertible principle of Yin and Yang, these superpowers have come at a cost: the loss of basic human skills.
The ability to sit still in silence.
The ability to tolerate the weather.
The ability to wake up at sunrise feeling good.
Recovering these basic skills, which have become modern superpowers, is my work. This is Zen. This is Tao.
I sometimes feel almost embarrassed by how basic my work is. It’s like I’m giving high-powered executives potty training.
The Master Habit
‘It is said that a samurai should rise at four in the morning, bathe and arrange his hair daily, eat when the sun comes up, and retire when it becomes dark.’
— Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure
In my work, the most important basic human right to recover is waking up early at sunrise feeling good.
How you wake sets the tone for the rest of the day.
So simple. The sun is inviting you with all its warm energy and light to get up. Your mind and body enjoy meditative and movement practices to excrete stagnation from your energetic system, just as they enjoy a timely morning poo. It is natural.
Yet also so complex. Why? Because modern Westerners have inhaled colossal swathes of nonsense that pollute their ability to live in alignment with nature.
This article details my time-tested methods for overcoming this nonsense so you can wake up on the right side of bed every day.
Recommendation: Rather than trying to be disciplined for your whole day, start with just the first hour. Focus all your energy on that golden hour.
Boring Health Stuff
Let’s get the boring health stuff you know already out the way.
Sorry, I know many people want a magic trick that lets them otherwise maintain every aspect of their lives. But I unfortunately care too much to lie.
Here are the best ways to mess up your morning routine together with an estimation of the effect out of 10. Of course, these numbers are vague as the effect of each is dose-dependent, but it’s good to give an idea.
Drugs & Alcohol: 10
Late Bed (past 11pm): 7
Excess Social Media, News, Netflix: 6
Excess Caffeine (particularly after 4pm): 5
Working Over 8h per day: 5
Sugar, Gluten, Dairy: 3
Alcohol is the biggie. After years of experience, I’ve come to see that even a couple of drinks can have a big effect on energy levels. Sobriety is the strongest predictor of consistency in my students.
It’s in giving up all of the above that I am able to consistently wake before 4am with no alarm clock. However, I am professionally boring and don’t expect my students to have as little fun as me. 80% attention to the above is plenty for a breezy 6am wake-up.
Structure
‘We need structure at first. Too many people hear about spirituality and they think they should just live intuitively. If you drove a helicopter for the first time using only intuition, without having learned the structure, there would be a big problem!’
— Shifu Shi Heng Zuan
Going with the flow and living spontaneously sounds lovely.
I suspect it worked when we were hunter-gatherers or living in the mountains in ancient China.
Living in martial arts schools in China where food, wake-up bells and training are provided at regular times and distractions are few, ‘going with the flow’ of the environment works (although, truth be told, too many on arrival expect to be magically transported to enlightenment without any effort and get nowhere; but let’s save that rant for another time).
Alas, if you choose to live in modern society, full of all the unnatural temptations specifically designed to exploit weaknesses in your neurobiology, ‘going with the flow’ is a recipe for mindless impulsivity.
This unintentional approach leads many to spending mornings in life denial as they tussle with the snooze button and fry their nervous systems with as many nervous system frazzlers as possible: coffee, news, email and social media, preferably all at the same time.
If you want to enjoy the excitements of the Western world while retaining your sanity, structure and discipline are required to safeguard you from the tug of temptation.
The key? Organisation.
My ‘discipline’ derives not from chest-beating motivation but cool, systematic organisation.
Let’s get practical with two key rituals.
1. Space Clear
'When you go to bed thinking, ‘Ugh … I still have to do those things but I’m too tired,’ you retain this gloomy feeling in your consciousness all night.’
— Shoukei Matsumoto, A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind
Your morning ritual started last night.
The success of your morning ritual is determined not by revving yourself up in the morning but calmly laying the ground in the evening.
Wind down by dropping the following before bed:
Six hours out: stop caffeine.
Four hours out: stop working.
Three hours out: stop eating.
One hour out: stop watching screens.
Set aside the last half-hour of your day to wind down, even if you’re up late and it means going to bed later. You’ll make the time back in sleep quality.
If you’re a modern human, your busy mind won’t like to do something so seemingly pointless as sitting meditation. However, a semi-meditative space clear ritual is a nice substitute that is involved enough to placate the busy mind without stimulating you.
Kick off the fun with a warm shower or, if you’re feeling indulgent (and you have full permission to be), a bath.
Next, close the day energetically and set the scene for the morning. Tidy your room and finish any housework such that you go to bed with an internal ‘job done’ status. Lay out your clothes and practice equipment. Prep your food. If you practise in the morning with a video, load it on your computer.
While I was at Goldman Sachs and had less time, I was more obsessive about minimising every tiny piece of friction. In one period, I even went as far as putting tea in my thermal flask with boiling water and putting toothpaste on my toothbrush. It gave the feeling that I could wake up and be magically transported on a treadmill through my morning ritual.
I journal in the evening, combining internal self-reflective stuff with time to centre ahead of the upcoming morning.
Intention: You go to bed (1) feeling restful, with the day energetically completed; (2) with a clear intention of what you will do in the morning; and (3) with your space set up to minimise sources of friction of decision-making to lay a clear path through your morning routine.
The decks should be cleared so that you can do nothing but nourish your soul for the first hour on awakening.
Exercise
Write out your Space Clear Ritual.
Example: 9.30-10.30pm: Open practice video on laptop > incense + music > tech shut down > Shower + teeth > Room tidy + housework > Lay out clothes > Reading > Journalling
2. Wake-Up Ritual
‘The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.’
— Rumi
What time should you wake?
I defer to the sun, who suggests sunrise as a good option. In more concrete terms, 5.30ish am in summer and 6.30ish am in winter is a good starting point.
If you want to carve out quiet time for inner work that too often gets brushed aside during the busy day, it’s got to happen in the early hours.
For me, the quiet magic in the 4-6am air has become sacrosanct for meditative practice, which is infused with an entirely different quality at this time. Of course, this means sacrificing the conventional ‘fun’ that goes with the evening hours, but I got bored of that some years ago when my internal meditative party outstripped it in enjoyment.
The Golden Rule
There is one rule... one rule above all to ensure you are consistent with your morning practice.
The Golden Rule: No inputs (social media, news, messaging, email etc, food) until your Wake-Up Ritual is complete.
Stay true to the Golden Rule and your practice will never be derailed by distraction and busyness.
When I created reliable space away from the influence of shallow tech input by my intermittent mind fasting experiments, I came to view tech as being akin to a brain-frazzling drug.
Consider morning consumption of tech before meditative practice in the same way you might consider drinking alcohol before driving.
If you are, like me and to my eyes 95% of human beings, prone to mindless tech use, use app blockers such as Stay Focused (Android), Screen Zen (iOS) or Cold Turkey Blocker (Mac/Windows).
The End of Snoozing
I call it the Wake-Up Routine and not the Morning Routine as it begins immediately on waking and not after 30 minutes of fumbling with snooze.
There is a time for thinking, listening to your emotions and spontaneity. Early morning weekdays are not the time. The early morning is a time to not think and just do the simple things to clear your mind and body. Enjoy the simplicity and freedom that comes with simply following a plan.
In one memorable experiment during a hyper-yang phase I went through a few years ago, while combining the dangerous ingredients of preparing for a week of hardcore Kung Fu training at Shaolin Temple Europe and listening to a David Goggins audiobook, I got into the habit of waking and, within ten seconds of getting out of bed, starting a round of 300 burpees, which I would complete within 23 minutes.
Sure, this ultra-yang approach was unbalanced.
But it didn’t leave any space for excuses to creep in.
Exercise
Write out your Wake-Up Ritual. Examples:
My current routine: 4-7.30am: 5m Massage Brush > 5m Cold Shower > Tea > 5m Mǎ Bù (Horse Stance) > 30m Zhan Zhuang (Standing Meditation) > 1.5h Qi Gong & Tai Ji > Breakfast
Regular example: 6.30-7.30am: 2m Cold Shower > 20m Qi Gong > 10m Meditation > 10m Journalling > Breakfast
Massage brush (shaking and slapping the body are equipment-free substitutes), cold shower and Ma Bu are my favourite three ways of waking up the body. No more coffee required.
‘But I Don’t Have Energy’
Change your story.
It’s not ‘I don’t have enough time to practice’ but ‘I don’t have enough energy because I don’t practice.’
Practice gives and doesn’t drain energy.
Look at the people around you who have the most energy. They are invariably those who are active.
Ruminating in bed and mindlessly using technology are energy activities. Everyone has energy — most just squander it.
But if you’re still struggling, try a sleep holiday.
One week of no caffeine or intoxicants and 9+ hours sleep.
I know you’re too busy with all your important obligations. But if you can understand that this busyness is a projection of your own mind, you can take responsibility and bend the rules.
I’ve been travelling a lot recently and have felt exhausted. I took a sleep holiday and by day three I was waking without an alarm by 4.30am. I do this a few times per year. A wonderful reset.
