A healthy morning routine – especially the first 30 minutes after you wake up – is a key part of the day for you to give your body what it needs to support your health and healing.

If you find that you wake up and race straight into an endless list of tasks, helping others, and rushing through the day without a minute for yourself, then this episode is for you! 

Recovering from stress and trauma starts with taking care of you. 

Here I share my morning routine as an example (and a work in progress!). I cover 5 things to include in your morning routine that I’ve found make a real difference — things that are backed by research as well as my own personal and clinical experience.

1. Start With Intention, Not Your Phone

It’s important to have awareness and a plan for when you first wake up, because otherwise you might grab your phone and start scrolling through emails, social media, or text messages. That just puts you on a path driven by whatever’s in front of you, and it takes you off track right from the start of the day.

Instead, I encourage you to have a plan to do what’s going to serve you first thing in the morning. That may be to connect with your healing intention – whatever you are working on for your health – or with a goal you’re working toward in your personal or professional life. 

It can also be a time for mental and physical clearing, letting go of thoughts, worries, and fears, and reconnecting with your purpose.

This might look like a prayer, a meditation, or an inspirational quote you keep by your bed so it’s handy the moment you wake up. This doesn’t need to take long – five to ten minutes is plenty. It’s just enough to connect with yourself, your body, your intention, and even your spirituality before the day begins. 

Journaling is another nice option here too – writing about your intention, or writing out your fears to let them go before returning to what you want to attract into your life.

2. Go Outside

The second thing to do is to go outside, if at all possible. If it’s extremely hot, freezing cold, or unsafe in any way, you can do this indoors instead. But being out in nature is especially valuable because it exposes your body, skin, and eyes to sunlight, which helps reset your circadian rhythm. 

When we’re out in sunlight, our hormones and every cell in our body registers that exposure. Even having a little skin exposed, or sunlight reflecting on your face, is beneficial – just not looking directly at the sun.

I also like to pair this with grounding, either with bare feet on the ground when it’s safe, or with grounding shoes, which let you experience grounding while still wearing footwear. I personally put on my grounding shoes and stand in the grass in my yard, soaking up sunlight, nature, and grounding all at once. 

Even 5 minutes helps; 10 or 20 minutes is even better. This resets your circadian rhythm, which in turn helps reset hormones like cortisol and melatonin, and even affects things like how well your body absorbs nutrients – I recently read about its effect on iron absorption, and I suspect we’re only beginning to understand how deeply our circadian rhythm influences our whole health. 

Humans depend on light – sunlight, full-spectrum light – and on grounding from the earth to regulate our bodies and nervous systems. While you’re out there, you can walk your dog, stretch, or meditate. And if going outside isn’t possible, sitting by a window still lets you get sunlight in your visual field.

3. Move Your Body

The third piece is getting in some exercise or movement – I aim for 10-20 minutes every day. This can vary day to day, but I especially focus on core strengthening, balance, and overall strength. I usually do my core work on the floor, often while playing fetch with my dog, for at least 10 minutes. 

When possible, I add other strengthening like bicep curls, triceps work, and squats, which support muscles, bones, and balance – all important for preventing falls. Cardio matters too, and you can fit it into certain mornings or another time of day during the week.

4. Get Protein

The fourth thing I recommend is protein, and for me that means a protein shake. 

Over the years I’ve found a clean, non-whey protein powder works best for me, since I’m intolerant to whey and dairy, and so are many of my patients. Dairy/whey is known to be inflammatory in general. 

I avoid protein powders with added sugar and choose either a non-GMO pea protein or a bone broth protein powder. 

I make my shake with filtered water rather than milk, then add 1 teaspoon of organic flaxseed oil for healthy, anti-inflammatory fat that also smooths out the shake’s texture. 

I also add collagen powder and creatine powder, which support joints, bones, muscles, skin, and brain health, along with a powder to support healing leaky gut. We’re all at some risk for leaky gut and I’ve healed myself from it in the past and want to keep it that way. Click to see the exact products I use.

5. Non-Toxic Self-Care and Lymph Support

After my shake, I move into the bathroom for showering and brushing my teeth. I strongly recommend working toward non-toxic products wherever possible — for your hair, body, teeth, and skincare – while still choosing products that are genuinely effective. 

While I’m washing my face and applying moisturizer, I also take time to support lymph flow. I gently massage above the clavicles, under the jawline, as well as my forehead, cheekbones, and chin. 

It all fits naturally together, that the key with creating a routine you can remember and follow.

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Consistency Over Perfection

That’s 5 things I include in my morning routine, and I’d love to hear what you’ve added to yours. 

In my book, Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health, I talk about how fine-tuning a daily self-care routine – starting with mornings – is key to getting through the marathon of each day. It’s also what I recommend for helping you to recover from stress and trauma, and to start on the path of recovering from whatever health issue(s) you may be dealing with.

This isn’t something you perfect overnight; it’s something I continue to learn, tweak, and adjust over time, out of a genuine commitment to my health and to sharing what works with you and with my patients.

What matters most isn’t what we do occasionally, but what we do consistently, every day – not just on weekends or vacations. Even if you start small, implementing just a few of these ideas, you’ll likely notice a difference in your energy, mood, focus, and productivity. 

Even though this routine takes me thirty minutes to an hour, it helps me get more out of the rest of my day and enjoy it more along the way.

I can’t wait to hear what you notice as you start building these ideas into your own morning routine. 

I want you to know that recovering from stress and trauma and optimizing your health is absolutely possible. There are more and more ways to support healing that don’t require expensive treatments and can help you avoid medical procedures. 

For this, it is important to address the underlying causes of health issues by working with a practitioner who can help you look deeper to uncover the root causes of your health issue, and help you to prioritize what to address first, so that you are finally able to break the pattern. 

And that’s exactly what I do in my one-on-one practice, and online programs. 

In my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health, I explain exactly how stress, trauma, toxins, and a lack of recovery, can keep us stuck in “stress mode” and lead to various health issues, including leaky gut, food sensitivities, bacterial overgrowth, autoimmunity, and susceptibility to infections. I also teach you how my individualized approach to recovery makes all the difference.

Start by taking my Stress Type® Quiz to understand how stress is impacting you today, and then follow my Stress Recovery Protocol and C.A.R.E. Method to support your body and nervous system to heal using diet changes, and natural approaches including time in nature. 

If you’re dealing with HPV and want to prevent cervical cancer, I welcome you to join me over on Instagram @drdoniwilson and on my website at clearhpvnow.com. You can download my free HPV Recovery Guide and watch videos of women who’ve implemented my HPV Protocol and found freedom from high-risk HPV. I want for you to feel hope that you can heal too.

If you’d like to get a better sense of my approach, I welcome you to join my next free How to Get Rid of HPV online workshop where I help you to create a plan to get HPV out of your life for good. From there, you might choose to join the Heal HPV Kickstart Program, for the initial steps of my protocol, including diet changes and supplements, over the next 30 days.

Or you can begin with the comprehensive Say Goodbye to HPV Program, which includes everything you need to implement my full protocol and to address all eight susceptibilities to HPV, including helping you to resolve underlying emotional stress and trauma. 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to my office. My team and I would be happy to connect with you and help you. Click here to set up a call with my team.

Thank you, everyone, for listening in to this episode of How Humans Heal and learning all about taking care of you to optimize your health. If you haven’t already subscribed, I welcome you to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. 

We look forward to connecting with you!

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