Do You Have a Morning Ritual?

Happy start-of-every-day to you.

For the first time in my life I’ve had the strength of character to create a morning ritual that has lasted for months. I want to tell you how I do it, in case you are in a position I held for decades, of wanting to do a few important things daily—yoga, for instance—but having no time.

For years I was too busy getting by, working at my art and paying the bills, to think about something as frivolous as a morning ritual.

So I want to acknowledge my privilege to be able to do this.

I’m an early riser. The first thing I do every morning is creep out into our common area and unroll my yoga mat. I light a candle, turn on music, and set a timer for 20 minutes. Twenty minutes is not much time for yoga, but as I see it, 7 days x 20 minutes = 2 1/3 hours of yoga a week. That’s a better average than a 1-hour class weekly.

The minute I step on the mat I acknowledge my gratefulness to be alive another day, to be healthy, to have a home, and to have been given a mandate. I acknowledge the six directions, my ancestors, the spirits of all beings of earth, and so much more.

I don’t follow a yoga tape or an online video. My routine is similar day to day, although some days I do more stretching, some days more strengthening, some days more mindfulness.

At the end of the session I spend a few minutes meditating. During that time I recite a mantra I’ve written for myself, which is rather long, usually 11 sentences. I have it memorized.

The reason for a mantra is this: first of all, you have the power to manifest what you want. It’s not magic, it’s hard work. But the magic doesn’t hurt. And where you put your energy is what you materialize, so why not put your energy toward what you really want. If you decide to write a mantra for yourself, list how you want your life to look as if those dreams have already come to pass.

(I googled “mantra” and “substack,” and I found newsletters for millennial male mantras, body-image mantras, poetic mantras. There’s a daily mantra podcast.

Lauren Sanders

offers a mantra for you every couple of days &

E. Jean Carroll

has this very short post called “What’s Your Mantra?” )

After yoga I put a teakettle on to boil. I measure coffee into a small French press. To the coffee I slice fresh ginger and add about 1/4 tsp of dried lion’s mane, which sounds like a wonder-fungi although I don't see these powerful results personally, not that I recognize. Sometimes I add other things like cardamom or reishi mushroom I gathered from the woods on the farm.

I keep a washcloth in the kitchen, and right about this moment I fold it into quarters and pour boiling water on it. Then I drip some drops of infused oil onto the cloth, and I wash my face with oil. A long time ago I quit using soap on my face. I learned about face-cleaning from Nadine Artemis’s book Renegade Beauty, and I confess that I have ordered her Best Skin Ever, which was made extra-appealing by knowing that Alanis Morissette uses it. Then I realized that I could make my own cleansing oil. So I do, by infusing the best oils available with botanicals that I gather.

Washing my face with botanical oil and warm water makes for a lovely moment.

I take herbal supplements at this point, so I don’t forget them. Stephen Harrod Buhner’s herbal protocol for chronic Lyme disease is the only thing that keeps me stepping high. Almost every time I take the four herbs I think, what would I have done if Buhner hadn’t figured this out? Let me again offer big gratitude for the life and work of Stephen Buhner.

I carry my coffee, along with my journal and a pencil, out to the back deck, overlooking the pollinator garden, where I have a bench. While I write I face the morning sun and also I’m barefoot.

This is my favorite time of day.

The entire time I am sitting I am interacting with the wild world. I watch hummingbirds foraging for nectar in coral honeysuckle and turk’s cap, and I’ve even seen them at the roses. Blue-tailed skinks slink past. Cardinal parents launch their fledglings. A hawk sails into a nearby tree. I see a new swamp mallow has opened in the night. The sun also rises.

This week Carolina wrens are raising another brood in the eaves near where I sit. Yesterday one of them landed eight feet away, leaped for a 1/4-inch larvae on a yellow marvel-of-Peru flower, and proceeded to eat the worm. The birds pay almost no attention to me after months of sitting with them.

When I tell you the last part of the morning, you’ll know how lucky I am. I walk for two miles. I usually walk the same way, past the pond dam, because between the beavers, the alligators, and the birds, something is always happening. Soon enough there will be emails to answer, social media posts to make, classes to prepare for, and always a few manuscripts in some stage of undone-ness. I try to not think about any of that but simply enjoy being human in a peaceful, country place.

These precious moments of peace and rest guide my day.

Do you have a morning ritual? I’d be interested in hearing about it. Do you mind sharing it with all of us in the comments?

A starry starry field of helenium.

Farm Report

We’re in an in-between-season lull where the permanent inhabitants of Red Earth Farm—including me—carry on normal routines as fall comes on. Kites have flown back to South America. The purple martins are long gone. Swallows have quit circling and gathering. Hawks and kestrels have not yet arrived from the northlands.

Out at the arbor, scuppernongs are fully ripe. Pears are falling. Goldenrod is blooming.

The other night I was wakened by a horse galloping past the window. I checked to see if I was dreaming, then I leapt up, since the horses were supposed to be in their night-pasture. Our most beefy horse, Lakota, had pushed his way through a weak section of fence. So Raven is working on fences again.

Cole starts are in the garden, thanks again to Raven.

All the limbs that fell during Hurricane Idalia have been picked up, piled up, and burned at the fire pit.

The hurricane dumped 6-plus inches of rain, and when the weather cleared, the bay had filled with water and become a mosh pit for frogs. Yesterday morning we broke the pattern of our days to pull on boots in pre-dawn darkness, wade through the pasture where knee-high helenium looks like a billion stars shooting from the ground, and go sit at water’s edge immersing ourselves in the sound therapy of frog-cry. Some of the frogs sounded like cymbals, some like horns, some like congas, some like washboards, some like gourd banjos—all of them hollering at the top of their lungs, Over here.

Here, here, here, here, here.

The moon, half full now, was overhead, and sometimes it shone through the trees around the bay like a spotlight and baptized one or the other of us in its pearlescent, frog-loud light.

Peanuts are ready in the south of Georgia, and my peanut pathologist friend Albert Culbreath supplied me with a pile of vines. We’ve been eating a lot of boiled peanuts.

Unpublished/Unfiltered

First light on my oiled face.

First light in my eyes.

First light across the north pasture.

First light on the silver scalloped edge of a dragonfly wing.

Three ibis flying out of the bay into the first light.

Writing Prompt

For me the day starts with…