Why meditate in the early morning?

This morning I decided to write down a few reasons (not all) for an early morning yoga and mediation practice. It is most important not to have any attachment or expectation about this. The Aquarian Age is motivated by inspiration not by dogma and rules.

Why meditate in the early morning??

Sadhana means spiritual discipline and in the Kundalini Yoga tradition this is generally taken to mean a daily early morning practice (though it could mean a practice at another time of the day). A commitment made by the mind and body to serve the soul. “A time each day to notice the patterns that lead us away from higher consciousness and to transcend those patterns”

Every 72 hours all of the cells of the body change. Our motivation waxes and wanes, our physical strength and capacity fluctuates but through all the change we have the chance to maintain a regular practice.

In the Kundalini Upanishads 2.5 hours was understood as one tenth of your day (they lived by cycles of nature rather than the 24 hour clock!). It was determined that if you give one tenth of your day to your higher consciousness, your whole day is covered by the energy return.

Before sunrise, typically between 4 and 5 am is a great time to get up (or anyway to have done some kind of practice before around 7.30 – 8 am). The stillness and the cleaner air makes it a great time to breath deeply, cleanse the body and mind and meet the day on your terms. If we get up when it is still dark we need to switch on our own inner light and face our shadow self. The birds start to sing their joyful songs and so we also have an opportunity to uplift ourselves.

The collective ego mind of the world is mostly asleep so there is less psychic interference (after sunrise the mind is less controllable as the energy of the sun is more scattered. The angle of the sun at 60 degrees is ideal)

Metabolism is slower (body temp is coolest at 4 am), and the atmosphere is cooler, therefore there is less heat and less agitation in the mind and body.

If you also have a cold shower whilst you body temperature is at it’s lowest it will not only set you up for yoga with a clearer mind you will improve the bodies circulation. When the body is hit with cold water when it’s temperature is already lower the circulation has to work harder. Blood is forced from the organs to the periphery so that although you may feel cold at first you will feel warm once you start to towel dry. It is more difficult to meditate deeply if your circulation is still in patterns dictated by sleep and feeling drowsy.

In the early morning hours known as Amrit Vela (the time when nectar rains down) the mind is more receptive to thoughts and you have more clarity to assess them. It is a time when, if in bed, we tend to dream more. This is the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep which is lighter. The body is more restless than when in the deeper periods of sleep that came earlier so whilst when you wake up early you think that you maybe tired later the converse is usually true, especially if you increase the energy you get from meditating with others. Some people claim that it’s important to dream and to attempt to analyse our dreams but sleep can also be dream disturbed (which is often simply a psychic detoxification) Good quality sleep is when we ‘sleep like a log’ and awake refreshed with occasional dreams that are genuinely insightful and profound (not that often!).

The Chinese Body Clock shows that the Lungs are at their strongest between 3 and 5 AM therefore activating them through deep and rhythmic breathing during this time is beneficial. Between 5 and 7 am is the time of the colon so it’s good to get the bowels moving early! So that between 7 and 9 we start to build an appetite for breakfast which is the time of the stomach. The colon is also our shock absorber – the dumping ground physically and psychically so subconscious fears that are stuck in the lower 3 chakras can be addressed well at this time.

We need of course to manage our need for sleep so there will be times when we need to rest more. If it’s possible to wake up without an alarm this is ideal but a certain training is usually needed to set a rhythm which is why a group sadhana is ideal.