I’m a meditation teacher and I know meditating in the morning makes some people sleepy—here’s a three-minute practice that will help you feel energised instead

Meditating first thing can be an unexpectedly risky business because it can make you feel groggy when you’re trying to wake up.

It’s something I experienced when I first started meditating, too, and it’s far from ideal when you fall back to sleep and run late the rest of the day.

Most guided visualisation meditations encourage relaxation, but a closed-eye practice—focusing on calming the mind and body through nervous system regulation—probably isn’t what you’re looking for in the morning.

The good news is, there’s more than one way to meditate.

By shifting from a relaxation practice to techniques that promote awareness and attention, we can still begin the day feeling grounded in the present moment, as well as feeling energised and ready to embrace the day.

Here’s the one technique I recommend to every client to help them start the day right. When you wake up, instead of putting a guided meditation track on and closing your eyes again, try this instead.

My three-minute morning meditation practice

This practice isn’t about changing your breathing or trying to relax your body, it’s about noticing things as they are in the moment.

• Sit upright in your bed and keep your eyes open.
• Start by noticing three things you can hear. Maybe it’s the traffic outside or the chirping birds.
• Shift your focus to three things you can see. Maybe it’s the first time in a while you’ve really looked at the picture frame beside your bed or the sun peeking in behind your curtains.
• Finally, move your awareness to three things you can feel—the softness of your pyjamas or the support of your mattress.
• If you like, you can close your practice with three gentle breaths.
• Then it’s time to get up and start your day.

Why this morning meditation practice works

While techniques that focus on slow breathing have been shown to activate the body’s rest and digest response, this practice is all about training attention and so it doesn’t have the same relaxing effect on the nervous system.

By paying attention to sensory input—the three things you can hear, see and feel—we fire up parts of the brain responsible for attention and alertness, so we’re less likely to feel sleepy, and more likely to feel energised and alert.

When we think of meditation, often the image of a person sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed and focusing on their breathing comes to mind. Yes, that is part of meditation, but in reality, meditation is simply about awareness. Just noticing what’s happening around you is meditation in itself.

Three minutes of this practice is enough to help you start your day on a mindful note. Think of it as a warm-up for the day, and save your closed-eye guided meditation practice for your evening wind-down.