Five morning rituals to get you moving

If advertisements through the ages are to be believed, starting your day right means heading to the instant coffee jar (gag!), buying a limp-looking bacon and egg muffin (spew!), or plopping a tablet in your water (argh – choking!).

We may be living in the age of inst-grat, but we can surely do better than that. So what are some more forthright options?

Making your bed may seem a bit military academy, but it’s actually a great way of setting your intention for the day: to not be sloppy. Saluting the sun with your perineum also has its fans, but is useless in winter. Personally, I like to go for a sunrise walk. My boyfriend Frank has a shower that he turns to cold for a minute at the end, for some dopamine-squirting whoopin’ and hollerin’. I asked friends who seem to particularly have their act together what their own morning rituals are.

Jane, yoga instructor: oil pulling

“I would love to perform a whole Ayurvedic routine in the morning, which would mean rituals like yoga, breath work, cleansing your face, dry body brushing and scraping your tongue, the list goes on. As I’m time-poor, the thing I always come back to is oil pulling.

It’s probably something that Gwyneth Paltrow has written about on Goop, but it comes from ancient Indian medicine. You put oil in your mouth – often it’s coconut oil, but it’s supposed to be dependent on your unique dosha, which is your constitution type in Ayurveda. You swish it around for about 20 minutes, and the idea is that it pulls bacteria and toxins from your mouth. After 20 minutes of swishing, during which time I guess you could practise mindfulness, you spit it into a tissue and pop it in the bin. Don’t spit it into the sink or it could clog the drain.”

Drew, festival promoter: 5 Tibetan rites

“My morning exercise routine is a stretching routine that has been around for thousands of years, developed through yoga and meditation and conscious breathing with movement. It’s basically five different stretching movements that put a lot of work on the spine. They also open your heart and they let a lot of oxygen into your body. They help you feel revived and alive, increasing blood flow to your organs, your muscles and your mind. It’s also very meditative. You do them 21 times each.”

Mena, from Human Thriving blog: Sticking to a savoury breakfast

“One of my biggest hacks for having a great morning routine, but also an awesome day, is to have a savoury breakfast. Most people has a sweet breakfast, whether it’s a fruit juice, some bread and jam, cereal, maybe even oats. All of those are sugars and they are starches that just create these huge glucose spike that will just make you very hungry throughout the day and leave you without any energy within two hours, creating cravings. So, for me, having a savoury breakfast focused on protein, such as eggs with turkey. You can add some vegetables.”

Peter, kettle bell trainer: five-part routine

“Every morning I wake at 5.15am. Out of bed, straight onto the salt and lemon water, which I prepare the night before, to rehydrate myself. When you’ve been sleeping for eight hours without any water, rehydrating yourself is a priority. Next thing, scraping the tongue, brushing the teeth, getting rid of any bacteria that might be left from overnight. After that, it’s outside into the open air for 25 deep inhales and exhales to switch on the nervous system. While I’m doing that, bare feet on the earth, usually naked or in my jocks, I do some morning movements consisting of stretches, squats and push-ups. Then I get dressed and listen to hip-hop in the car to get my brain and vocabulary switched on again.”