Seamlessly weave magic and inject good vibes into your day.
There are two overarching definitions for the word ritual. According to Oxford Languages, they can be paraphrased as follows:
- a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.
- a series of actions or type of behavior regularly and invariably followed by someone.
These five morning rituals, performed regularly and with mindfulness, fall into both categories at once.
Which I love.
Because over time, when you keep showing up in your magical spiritual practice, sacred and mundane come together like two sides of a zipper, fostering an everyday feeling of wholeness, inspiration, and joy.
Then, one day, you realize: magic has stopped feeling like something rarified and uncommon, or something that requires a lot of planning or extra work.
It just feels like life.
Get into the habit of performing these morning rituals and you’ll see what I mean.
You can certainly do just one, two, three, or four of them. But I recommend doing all five.
In all honesty, I do all of these little rituals – almost, like the definition says, invariably – every day.
As you begin to weave them seamlessly into your day, be sure to adapt and fine-tune them to make them your own.
*** Here’s one universal recommendation to keep in mind: do not turn on your phone or switch it off of airplane or sleep mode until all your morning rituals are complete. ***
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Morning Ritual #1: Gratitude Rampage and Program Your Day
When to begin this morning ritual: after you wake up but before you get out of bed.
What it’s good for: increasing your success, magnetizing blessings, and boosting your luck.
How to do it: begin to contemplate all your many blessings. Invoke the Divine in any way you like and say an inner thank you for your comfortable bed, your refreshing sleep, the people and animals you love, the food in your fridge, and every other wonderful thing – little, big, and anywhere in between – that comes to mind. Marvel at your amazing good fortune.
Then, move that gratitude to the day ahead. Say thank you for all the wonderful things that you’d like to experience in your day, conjuring up the feeling that they are already 100% present and true. Then give thanks.
Next, climb out of the covers and make your bed. As you do so, imagine that you are sealing in, wrapping up, and putting a bow on all that magical positivity that you just conjured up.
Morning Ritual #2: Reset the Kitchen
When to begin this morning ritual: while you are waiting for your morning coffee or tea to brew.
What it’s good for: establishing clarity, organizing your inner environment, and creating the space for joy.
How to do it: in the time it takes to boil water or to run the coffee maker, and to wait for your hot morning beverage to brew, unload the dishwasher and dish caddy, rinse and wash any stray dirty dishes, and wipe the counters down. Clean little bits of food out of the sink, clear the table, and otherwise take those simple and easy steps that make the kitchen sparkle.
As you do this, feel that you are clearing your mind, bringing order to your thoughts, and creating the space for a wonderful day to unfold.
Morning Ritual #3: Savor Your Coffee or Tea
When to begin this morning ritual: as soon as your morning coffee or tea is ready.
What it’s good for: centering your mind, grounding your body, promoting mindful eating and drinking, and establishing a sense of calm self-mastery before you get busy with your day.
How to do it: simply savor the taste of your morning beverage.
Tune into your sense of taste, but also tune into your other senses: the scent of your coffee or tea and any other scents in the air, the feeling of the air on your skin and in your lungs, the textures and colors that surround you, the wind moving the trees outside, and the subtle sounds such as the refrigerator and the cars and birds outside.
Whenever your mind wanders from the present moment experience of your senses, fine! Without judgement, simply bring it back.
(Bonus: here’s my favorite coffee, blended with mushrooms for mental clarity and inner balance.)
Morning Ritual #4: Daily Energy Work
When to begin this morning ritual: after you savor your coffee or tea.
What it’s good for: healing and balancing your personal energy for mental and emotional well-being.
How to do it: sit comfortably with your spine straight. (You can sit cross-legged or in a chair.) Close your eyes. Take three long, deep breaths. Then, allow your breathing to be natural but keep your awareness on it. Notice as you inhale, notice as you exhale, and notice the space between the breaths. Also pay attention to how your body feels as you breathe, and see if you can feel the breath moving energy around the body.
Imagine your body as light, and send a root of light straight down into the center of the earth. Imagine the core of the earth like a subterranean sun filled with golden light, and plug into that light. Feel and sense it coming up your root and straight into your root chakra – the area of your body that touches the floor or the chair where you are sitting. Breathe in and out of your root chakra.
Feel and sense that light moving into your lower belly – the sacral chakra. Breathe in and out of your lower belly and feel it relax.
Repeat with your solar plexus chakra (the area above your belly button and below your rib cage), your heart chakra (your emotional center in the middle of your chest), your throat chair (your neck area), your third eye chakra (in the center of your forehead), and your crown chakra (at the top of your head).
Then imagine and sense the light moving up from your head like a trunk of light. Imagine infinity as a giant diamond-white sun at the center of everything. Send that trunk straight into the center of that infinite sun. Sense that diamond-white light moving straight down the trunk and into your crown chakra. Breathe in and out of your crown chakra, and repeat the process with your third eye chakra, your throat chakra, your heart chakra, your solar plexus chakra, your sacral chakra, and your root chakra.
Ask Archangel Michael and Archangel Raphael to completely vacuum your aura of any and all stuck or challenging energies, and to surround you in a sphere of golden-white light, in which only love remains and through which only love may enter.
Breathe, relax, and feel gratitude. Take a little bit of time to bless your life, all the environments you frequent, your loved ones, your vehicle, and anything else you’d like to send blessings to. Also visualize and expand into all the conditions you’d like to manifest and call in. Feel as if these things are already present and true. Smile and feel even more gratitude.
(For help with this, you may like this free guided meditation for daily energy work, or this one. Or you could alternate between the two.)
Morning Ritual #5: Mindful Planning
When to begin this morning ritual: throughout the previous two rituals or just after them.
What it’s good for: arranging your day and priming your schedule for success.
How to do it: when you sit down to drink your morning coffee or tea, have your planner or a notebook nearby, along with a pen. If anything pops into your mind that you want or need to do today while you are drinking your beverage or performing your daily energy work, jot it down so you don’t forget it and you don’t have to keep ruminating on it or reminding yourself over and over to do it.
After your daily energy work, devote some time to simply planning what you will do today. If you discover there are too many things on your list to do in one day, circle your priorities so you know to get to those first. You may also want to put some of the secondary priorities elsewhere in your calendar throughout your week.
There you have it! My five morning rituals. They’ve worked well for me over the past, oh let’s see, 20 or so years. (!?)
Not only have I accomplished a lot, I’ve also gotten a lot better at living my life to the fullest, every single day.
So: let me know if you try these, and how it goes.
Also let me know if you do something similar already, or if you have any other fun morning rituals you’d like to share.
Mahtab says
💖Excellent tips and advices. Even by only reading them, I felt blessings are pouring out of your words, to my world. 🥰
And doing these rituals for the past few days, has helped me to become more organized,( both inside my mind and outside), and savour the joy in simple things, and start my days with mindful breathing and feeling the gratitudes that are multiplying throughout the day!
Thank you Tess, wish you all the best! 💖💖💖,…
Tess Whitehurst says
Mahtab, I love that! Thank you for sharing. ❤️
Mindy says
Tess, I was able to turn things around during those dark lockdown days by saying before I uttered anything upon awakening, ‘today I experience success after success after success and everything goes my way,’ 3 times no matter how good or bad I was feeling and eventually it raised my vibration and good things began to flow my way… then you just want to keep it going. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your good work and intent, I’ve learned a lot. Namaste and thank you thank you thank you!!!
PS, Warmest welcome to California, great to have you here!
Tess Whitehurst says
Mindy, thank you for this lovely comment! I also proactively turned my mood and energy around during lockdown and I appreciate the welcome. ❤️