For a while, my "morning practice" was ninety minutes long. It included pranayama, a mantra, a journal page, an oil massage, a cold plunge (once), and — reader, I am not proud — a small rectangle of matcha in a specific bowl. On the days I did it, I was luminous. On the days I did not, I was ashamed.
The problem with a ninety-minute practice is that a real life is not always ninety minutes long before the first meeting. Some mornings you have a call at 7. Some mornings the toddler is awake at 5:47. Some mornings you slept badly and the body simply says: no.
So I built myself a smaller thing. A thing I can do in the five minutes between opening my eyes and opening the laptop. A thing so small I cannot in good faith skip it.
The practice, in four small movements
1. Water — 60 seconds
Before you look at your phone. Before you look at anyone. A full glass of room-temperature water, drunk slowly, with the quiet acknowledgement that the body has been asleep and now is not. If you can, put a small pinch of salt or a squeeze of lime in it. This is not medical advice. It is a way of noticing that you are here.
2. Breath — 90 seconds
Sit on the edge of the bed. Feet on the floor. Nine long breaths. In through the nose for a slow four count, out through the nose for a slower six. If you lose count, begin again. Losing count is not failing the practice; losing count is the practice.
3. Mantra — 60 seconds
One line. Just one. Say it silently on the exhale, nine times. Some mornings I use the traditional:
Om Namah Shivaya.
— I bow to the consciousness within.
Some mornings I use something plainer, something in my own words: "I am here. I have enough. I am willing." Pick whichever feels less like a lie today. Both are prayer.
4. The doorway — 60 seconds
Before you leave the bedroom — or, if you work from home, before you open the laptop — stand for one long breath at the threshold. Touch the doorframe if you like. Say, silently: "May whatever I meet on the other side of this door meet a version of me who is not in a hurry."
Then walk through.
Why it works, at least for me
The ninety-minute practice was training me for a life I did not have. The five-minute practice trains me for the life I do have — the one with the toddler and the calendar and the small ache in the neck. It is not glamorous. But it is portable, and the practices you can port from a hotel room to a friend's guest bedroom to the airplane bathroom are the practices you actually keep.
Some rules, if you would like them:
- Do not add a fifth thing. When you feel tempted to add journaling, oil massage, matcha — resist. The whole point is that it stays small enough to be non-negotiable.
- If you miss a morning, do not "make it up" in the evening. The point is not the minutes. The point is the doorway.
- Do it before the phone. Every time. This is the whole revolution.
— a small practice, offered plainly.
take what is useful. leave the rest.