5 Significant Benefits of Morning Meditation & 4 Videos to Get Started

Morning meditation can be an excellent way to start the day. It can provide freshness and a positive outlook to the day ahead, as well as get you into in feeling energised.

After waking up from deep sleep, mornings are a time where our brains are free and ideas can flow, but we don’t usually give them the space to.

It is very common for people to hit the snooze button or simply scroll through their phones as soon as they wake up. By doing so, you’re adding distraction to your morning and you might be missing out on the brain’s true potential during the start of the day.

Requests, interruptions, and unexpected surprises are likely to greet us when we scroll through our phones first thing, yet most of these things, as urgent as they may feel, can usually wait another hour.

Your creative brain is the most awake in the mornings, but you have to train it to be okay with less stimulating activities when you start your day.

This is where morning meditation comes in. By having an activity to turn to you can remove other temptations. Focusing inwards while acknowledging how you feel and what you want can have a huge positive impact not only on the day but your life in general.

Start your days grounded, refreshed, and energised by setting the conditions for a successful day.

If you struggle with early rises or would like to tap into the world of meditation, here are our tips for getting started with morning meditation, the benefits, and how to incorporate it into your routine.

What is morning meditation?

Morning meditation is the practice of bringing attention and awareness to your inner self and the circumstances surrounding you in the mornings with the aim to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.

“When we start our day with a morning meditation, we are giving ourselves the best opportunity to be fully aware, fully awake, and fully alive before ‘doing’ anything,” writes the popular mindfulness and meditation app headspace.

“You can almost think of meditation as a morning stretch for your brain.”

Morning meditation doesn’t have to be completed at 5am. You can practice it whenever you wake up and make it part of your routine, whether that is before the sun rises or after 10am.

Read more: 5 Valuable Reasons Why You Should Consider Meditation

5 benefits of morning meditation

Here are five benefits of meditating in the mornings:

1. Can help produce more alpha waves – A study found that meditating in the morning can help boost the production of alpha brain waves. Alpha waves are produced when the brain is relaxed and not processing much information – such as first thing in the morning – and are beneficial because they may help boost inspiration, make you more creative and possibly even help treat depression. While meditating at any time of day can be advantageous, this benefit is especially applicable for morning meditation.
2. Decreases stress and regulates emotions – Meditating in the morning can help you get into a positive headspace. “Meditation alleviates stress and anxiety by reducing cortisol and epinephrine, which helps to regulate blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing patterns,” Dr. Kristen Willeumier, a neuroscientist whose research focuses on neurobiology and neuroimaging, told Well+Good.
3. Helps you become more focused and productive – Meditation “serves to create a whole-brain synchronization that enhances creativity, learning, focus, and attention,” Dr. Willeumier told Well+Good. While the purpose of meditation isn’t to make you more productive, it certainly helps or brains to bring sustained attention with clear intention to tasks throughout the day.
4. Provides clarity of thinking – Taking the time to look inwards through meditation can promote perspective taking. Studies have also found that meditation can bring structural changes to areas of the brain responsible for cognitive and emotional processing.
5. Enhances learning and memory processes – meditation can increase the grey matter in your brain, which is associated with improved working memory and can help in skilled decision making.

Related: Meditation For Sport: Why and How to Understand the Power of Your Mind

How to start a morning meditation practice

If you are new to meditation, a guided practice is probably the best way to start a morning meditation routine. Just like a muscle, the mind can be trained.

While meditation might seem hard or uncomfortable at first, especially if you’re not used to spending time acknowledging your thoughts and feelings, the more you practise the better it’ll feel.

1. Start by finding a comfortable place where you can practice meditation.
2. Choose a time and make meditation a priority.
3. Sit comfortably and somewhere where you can be relaxed but keep your back straight and wear something comfortable.
4. Begin your meditation with a handful of deep breaths to arrive in the moment and find calm.
5. Lightly focus on something in front of you and follow the meditation.
6. Be consistent and grateful for allowing yourself the time to acknowledge your thoughts and feelings.

“By creating a regular morning practice, we are cultivating peace of mind and happier relationships where we are kinder and less judgmental of ourselves and others,” explains headspace.

Mindfulness meditation is defined as a fully present attention to everything experienced in the moment – whether that’s physical, emotional, spiritual, mental or perceptual – and accepting each aspect with compassion.

You’re not trying to control the mind, but to create the right circumstances which allow you to observe the behaviour of the mind and slowly start to understand it.

Source: Benjamin Wedemeyer on Unsplash

Clearing obstacles to morning meditation

Mornings are usually the one part of the day where you encounter the least distractions or excuses, which makes them an ideal time to meditate. Besides, meditation can be done pretty much anywhere, regardless whether you are at home in bed or travelling abroad – you can always take this habit with you.

1. Time: you always have time for the things you choose to prioritise. Morning meditation doesn’t need to take hours and hours, even five minutes can be enough. If you care enough, you can make time for it.
2. Restlessness: your mind might feel like it’s full of clutter and ready to get on with all the tasks that need to happen, reluctant to pause. It’s normal to feel frustration while meditating when you first start, so try to shift your expectations and focus on incremental improvements.

If you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing, a beginner’s guided meditation is probably the best place to start.

Guided morning meditation

This 10-minute morning meditation can be your guide to starting your days grounded, refreshed, and energised.

Try this 10-minute guided morning meditation to start your days with inner peace and relaxation.

This 5-minute meditation practice is intended to bring energy into your day.

Mini meditation. Your morning meditation can be as short as 1-minute long. Try it out:

Let morning meditation become the foundation to your days.

Read More: 7 Benefits of Meditation