96 | Establishing Your Morning Routine and Breathing Techniques!

Were you a Gator fan this week?

Yes. I am a Gator fan this week.

Hard not to be.

If y'all can... I've been a Gator fan the past few weeks. Once we beat y'all, it's kinda like, I want y'all to do as well as you can.

Yeah. Thanks. Alright.

Yeah.

Is that more for me?

No. It's for the Vols.

Okay.

Because, like, listen, if y'all do better...

No. I'm saying over the last few weeks, is that for more for me? I mean, rarely does a Vol fan say that.

No. I mean-

Does that mean you really don't hate us unless you play?

Yeah.

Okay. That's fine.

If we didn't play y'all consistently, I'd probably feel the same way that y'all that I feel about, like, Mississippi State or Texas A&M. I don't really care.

Yeah.

It's just the fact that y'all beat us, like, 15 years in a row or whatever that frustrated me.

So Okay. I get it.

Yeah. There you go.

Nice. Well, welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. Today, we are- we're gonna talk about, maximizing your morning routine, and we're actually gonna talk about some guided breathing as well. So, I'll give you an example of my morning routine to help you establish your morning routine. I think a morning routine is crucial to develop so that you can maximize your day.

For me, my morning routine is everything. And when I get out of that routine is usually where things just don't go as well for me that day. So I'm a creature of habit and I try to be disciplined and my morning routine is everything to me. So I'm gonna walk you through that, I'll tell you why I do the things that I do and hopefully this helps you develop your morning routine. So if you don't have one, the first thing is you need one.

You need to have a morning routine. If you look at any- anyone that writes books on success in terms of, you know, business, you know, where they maximize their time, where they're sometimes even the most productive, it is that morning routine and coming out of that right into to your workspace. Whether you're a mom, whether you're a working dad, or a student, maximizing your morning and setting the course right, I think just helps you establish your mind for the day, your spirit for the day. So let's talk about that morning routine. What do I do?

So when when you wake up in the morning, one of the most important things that you should do is pause and reflect on where your body's at. How are you feeling? How was the night of sleep? How much rest did you get? How restful do you feel?

Kind of check-in with what we would call your nervous system and just kind of sense of "hey, did I did I recover? Am I feeling restored?" And what this helps you do is just helps develop this sense of awareness, this self awareness. Now there are devices like an OURA ring that helps provide data. So if that's helpful for you, you can you can look at that OURA ring.

But I choose I choose not to, look at my OURA data, especially in the morning because I just don't want it to influence that morning, routine. Now if for whatever reason, I just know, "hey, I'm not doing well, I'm not recovered," or I feel like my body is fighting something, well, then sometimes it's helpful to validate that on the OURA ring so I can be a little more gentle and mindful of how I treat my body that morning. But for the most part, I'll spend a few minutes and I'll just reflect on how my body's doing, really try to avoid getting on any device, any, you know, phone, iPad, any electronic. And so what I do is after a couple minutes, I'll get up, I'll grab my headphones and I'll head to the kitchen.

At this point, I usually do 2 things, I make a pot of yerba mate which is a tea. It's technically an herb, but for all intents and purposes, we'll call it a tea. And I'll make a pot of yerba mate, and then I will get a big, fill up a big, Stanley of electrolyte rich water. And then I'll head out to my sauna, so I have a barrel sauna in the backyard. So I head out to my barrel sauna.

At this point, it's already been preheated from a timer, from the night before. So it's very warm, so I'll get in and I will, on my headphones, I'll play 2 things. The first I'll play are called Brainwaves, it's a Brainwave app. And in this Brainwave app, I will, play, there's a certain, tone frequency called morning coffee. That's what it's called.

In essence, it's specific brainwaves to help slowly wake up the body through brainwave frequencies. So I'll play that in the background and then on top of that, I'll play worship music. So for the next, 20 minutes, I will be very intentional with scripture reading. I will spend time in worship and in prayer, and this is a very intentional spiritual time for me, where I'm getting my spirit right, my heart right. I'm praying for the day.

I'm praying for my family, praying for my office team, praying for patients and, for people in my life. And so just an intentional 20 minutes. At this point, the sauna is about 200 degrees, so it's pretty toasty, and so I'm sweating profusely at this time. So then I will, go into my cold plunge. So I have I have a cedar barrel cold plunge.

So open that up. It's at 37 degrees, so I'll get in, which at this time feels incredible, and I'll grab my yerba mate. And I'll sit there for about 5 minutes, and I'll just really just kind of focus in on listening to my body, calming my breath down at this point, you know, because in the sauna, your heart rate elevates, your breath typically elevates with it because of how hot it is, then at this point in the cold exposure, I'll really kind of shut everything down and just slow my breath down, not think too much, really slow my mind down and just sip some tea and just enjoy the cold environment. After 5 minutes, then I'll get back into the sauna, and I'll almost repeat the same session again. And then if morning time allows, I'll go back into the cold plunge and and end off on that.

So that's a very routine day for me. So that's that's just about every day. Rarely does that- does that- is that missed. At this point, I go into the house and get everything ready for the day and head off to work. But that that time, that hour, whatever it is, is so good for my soul, it's good for my mind, it's good for my for my body, and there's a lot of things that you can be intentional with.

So one of those is if you look at that morning routine, starting your day off with awareness. Hey, how do I feel? What's going on with my body? And just being self aware. Another part of that morning routine is hydration.

So we wanna be, consuming a ton, first off, a ton of electrolyte rich water and it's great to add an element pack or if you wanted to add some electrolyte drops in your water, this is a great time to just drink anywhere between 24 to 48 ounces of water, so really hydrate well. And then hot or cold exposure, so the hot exposure for me is for detoxification purposes, for stress resiliency, it's for slow steady fat burning. So there's a lot of benefits there. It's also just where I can get a loan. But if you're thinking about a sauna, it is a- it could be a really cool space that you can just kind of escape to and appreciate in a house that you may have a a few kids, or you just don't wanna wake up the family, by blaring, you know, worship music and and praying.

So, for me, that barrel sauna is that place for me. And then the cold exposure is really, helping, establish a healthy and and strong nervous system. So you're really you're really creating nervous system resiliency here. There's a lot of benefits when you look at Wim Hof, and what he was able to do and see through research how he was able to, you know, use his conscious brain to change his autonomic nervous system, which was super fascinating. So with breath, cold exposure, you know, he was able to improve his immune system, on the spot on the, you know, increase adrenaline on the spot, which was really fascinating when you looked at how that impacted his overall health, especially when he was injected with e coli and his ability to handle that infection far surpassed the control study because of his ability, how he trained his body on a day to day basis.

So we're training with hot cold exposure and breath work. We're training our body. We're training our nervous system. We're training how we're responding to stress. And so through this stress resiliency, training, you're then more apt and able to handle stress throughout the day.

So, you know, there's reasons for that hot and cold exposure. Maybe you don't have a sauna, you know, maybe you don't have a cold plunge. So what could you do instead? Well, I think you could still start with that intentional time in the morning, find a place, to get your your heart right, journal, pray, worship, meditate, and then, go into the shower. You know, now we're getting into the latter part of November.

It's a great time to be exposing your body to cold. So go and expose your body to a cold environment, something that you can handle well for a couple minutes where you're just sitting there and letting that cold water run over your body as you're just trying to calm that nervous system and shift your mind from pain and torture to, "hey, this is- I'm okay. This is good. This is good for me." So most people have a shower in their home so you can absolutely use this, unless, of course, you live in like Super South Florida or other parts of the world where it's warm right now.

So you may need to find another option, but most people have a shower and they can they can definitely expose themselves to to cold environment. Regardless, other things that you can do, that I practice in the morning would be breath work, so specifically like Wim Hof style breathing is a fantastic way, of improving your nervous system's resilience, carbon dioxide, tolerance is what we call that, and through that, your oxygenation oxygenating your body very well. So I would encourage even, you know, finding some type of breath work that fits- fits your your, lifestyle. For me, Wim Hof, is great. I think that kinda 30, power breaths, with the pause, exhale, pause, inhale is a is a great method for for strength and and act and activity.

But then sometimes you need to calm our body down, and that's where more like box breathing is really, really good. One way if I'm giving you a kind of a way of like resetting, if you need a reset. So if you're anxious, if you're depressed, if you need- if you need to reset your mind, your spirit, a mental reset, a really good way to do that is through a box breathing. But not just box breathing, but box breathing with an increased second in each round. And so what box breathing is, and I'll walk you through it here, is where we inhale through the nose for 4 seconds, we hold our breath for 4 seconds, we exhale through our nose or mouth for 4 seconds, and then we hold our breath for 4 seconds.

The next round will try to go to 5 and we'll go 5, 5, 5, 5. The round after, it will go to sixes and then sevens and eights, nines, and tens, and then back down to 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. This is, a, maybe 7, 8 minutes breath work session and what you're doing is slowly building carbon dioxide tolerance, which has incredible health benefits to immune system health, to nitric oxide production, to oxygenation of your of your cells and tissue. But even before this podcast, I did a box breathing session on my way into the office today. So it's a great reset. It's a great restart.

So what that would look like for you, and I'll show you, if you are a listener, you can jump to our YouTube channel and and watch. But I'll usually, sit up nice and tall and, cross cross my legs and sit up, where, you know, my chest is tall and I'm getting good breath, and I'll breathe in right through my nose really deep 4 seconds. I'll hold my breath at the top for 4 seconds and then exhale for 4. Hold my breath for 4, and then repeat and moving to 5 seconds, and then I'll hold my breath for 5, exhale for 5, hold my breath for 5, and then move to 6. Once you get to about 8, 9 seconds, it's actually pretty difficult to be able to go through that whole box breathing session.

In essence, you had- you have one breath and when you're at the 10 second mark in 40 seconds. So, you're only breathing, you know, 3, 4 breaths in about 2 minutes. So we can- it can definitely challenge you a little bit, but it's a great way to build stress, resiliency, carbon dioxide, tolerance, and overall change your mood. It's amazing when we when we breathe and oxygenate our body how we feel after. So if you don't have a morning routine, establish a morning routine.

It will help you set the course of the day. It'll help get your mind right, your spirit right, your heart right. I would encourage prayer, meditation, worship, and journaling. I encourage some type of stress resiliency training through hot or cold exposure, and I would I would encourage you to be very mindful of how your body feels that day and either, hey, I can push it hard and I can maybe do a couple sauna and cold plunge sessions, or I need to be gentle to my body. And it's okay if I just hang out outside in a 100 degrees, it doesn't have to be 200 degrees, and then just relax and be mindful that, "hey, my body's not in a good place today and I need to be gentle to it."

So I hope that's helpful. For me, this may just be a challenge to you to say, "hey, we need to do better in the morning to establish our day." People around us deserve it. They deserve our best, so produce your best by establishing a morning routine. So hopes that hope that adds value, to your life, to your health, and thanks again for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast.