How Leaders Can Use Morning Routines to Help Their People be More Healthy and Productive

Brian
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Here we are for episode 76. And Ani, how are you today?

Ani
I'm very good. Thanks. Brian, how are you?

Brian
I am feeling ready to roll.

Ani
Yeah? Why are you ready?

Brian
I had just a fantastic morning. Yeah? Yeah. That's great. I got my routine cooking.

Ani
Yeah. Morning routines. Morning routines. Very important. Something tells me that's what we're talking about today.

Brian
Maybe we should talk about morning routines.

Ani
Last episode, we were talking about resets, and I'm glad that we're talking about morning routines now because I think that those resets are so important. If you didn't listen to last week's episode about resets, make sure you listen to that after this one. Combined with morning routines, I think, are really what are going to help our nervous system. And last week, we were talking about how much change is going on in the world right now, and also how stressed we can be and how good things that happen, bad things that happen, just things that happen cause stress. And now, more than ever, morning routines are so important.

Brian
Yeah, for sure. So really, the focus of our podcast today is really how leaders can use morning routines to help their people become more healthy and productive. But that means everybody is a leader. We're self-leaders also, not just leaders of organizations, but ourselves, leading ourselves, leading our families, leading our community.

Ani
Organizations we're a part of at work. Yeah. Yeah, I really like that message, Brian, that all of us are leaders. I understand what you mean because leaders that are running teams now more than ever, it's really important to have your own morning routine.

Brian
And possibly a morning routine for your team. Yeah. Which is also we have some experience with that. I'd like to share some of those results that we've done with people as well.

Ani
That's really a really good point. That's a really good point.

Brian
So let's just preface this today by saying, a lot of people have a lot of things to say about morning routines. There's been books written. There's whole businesses. Books, written businesses, consulting, so many things. Literally, you do a search on morning routines, and actually, it's interesting when you do a search. I just searched Morning Routines.

Ani
It's actually a huge search title.

Brian
Huge search title. But you know what's really interesting? Wait, the results that come back? The results that come back are almost always the Morning Routines of Successful People.

Ani
Oh, that makes sense.

Brian
How to be successful. I actually want to dig into that a little bit because it's actually interesting.

Ani
People on high performance routines. That's really, I think, why people start to think about morning routine is around high performance.

Brian
Yeah. I want to dig into that a little bit. Just from a Somatic Coaching Academy perspective, though, the way I think about morning routines and the way we think about them here is for me to be a really effective or well-rounded or complete morning routine, it really needs to affect our body and our brain on all three levels, all three levels of our brain. We have a triune brain. We have our brain stem, we have our limbic system, we have our neocortex. And so whatever our morning routine is, if it's going to be a really complete routine, we need to actually address all levels of our nervous system to actually be a really highly effective routine.

Ani
Are you saying that that's different than performance? Or are you saying that's why it's similar to looking at morning routines for high performance?

Brian
I'm saying actually, sometimes they're a little different because what is success, for instance?

Ani
Well, that's a really great question.

Brian
When you say successful people, what do you actually mean about that? What does it mean to be successful?

Ani
People that are beautiful, have lots of money, have fame, status.

Brian
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're actually healthy. I know. It's what I'm pointing out.

Ani
100%, because you and I have both met a lot of people who are out there in that successful people category that are just a wreck internally.

Brian
Yeah, right. From the worldly Western model of success. They might look like they have everything. They have successful businesses. They have a lot of money. I saw their yachts on Instagram. They have a nice car. They have a yacht, all those things. I'm doing my morning routine in order to get the money in the yacht and that stuff. And that's fine. That's great. That's what you really want. That's awesome. Who am I to say? At the same time, from a Somatic Coaching Academy perspective, what we're talking about is a complete life, a complete routine, so that we have the financial abundance that we want. We've also got the physical health abundance that we want, and we have the relationship abundance that we want.

Ani
We're not saying that those things have to be separate. What we're saying is that sometimes the success that we see out there in success land is incomplete because it doesn't include being healthy.

Brian
Yeah. What I think, if I'm going to set up a morning routine, which I do, I do a morning routine every morning, it's really based on this idea of having a complete life. I feel like I have abundance financially and business-wise. I feel like I have abundance health-wise, and I feel like I have abundance relationship-wise. And so, again, we're talking about complete somatic intelligence here at the Somatic Coaching Academy. That's a principle we lean into. So why would we advocate anything less than that?

Ani
Complete, sure.

Brian
It's complete. Exactly. So thanks for joining us. That's our complete podcast for today. Now, let's go a little bit- That would be incomplete. That would be incomplete. So let's dig a little bit more into the idea of morning routine. So I think, and I'm curious what you think about this. I'm so glad. Thanks. I think every really complete and effective morning routine starts with an evening routine.

Ani
Oh, dude, that was my line. 

Brian
Was it? Sorry. Go ahead, then. You take it.

Ani
Every complete morning routine starts with an evening routine. That was one of my key points, Brian.

Brian
So go and build on it. You got it. You got the floor.

Ani
I wake up in the morning, and if I didn't get my act together about what's happening and who I'm going to be, and not just what's happening. Because that's one part. But who I'm going to be and how I'm going to show up when I wake up, all bets are off, man. I am not an easy waker.

Brian
What stuff do you do in the evening that helps you have a better morning routine?

Ani
One thing I do is I know what's happening the next day. You have a plan. I do look at the plan of what's actually going on. But then I will think about how I want to approach those things. I think the high level of intentionality around, like I said, who I want to be and how I want to approach those things is a key part, is the part in being able to then wake up and actualize the life I want to be living.

Brian
Let me ask you this question. When you're doing your planning the night before, because I do the same thing actually, I look at my schedule the night before and go, Okay, where am I going to need to be when thing, just to get a context around that. Depending on what you're doing the next day, does that actually inform your morning routine the next morning?

Ani
It can. Yeah, it can. In my mind, I would like to have this morning routine that's the same every single morning. I do love routine so much, but that's not feasible for my life with the things that I have going on. Sometimes the morning routine does have to adapt. I think that's a key part, actually, to looking ahead because I will, and this has happened before, wake up and be surprised by the fact that I have to drive somebody to school or something. I knew very well, but when I didn't plan ahead, all of a sudden everything gets derailed and things can go off the rails so quickly once I wake up. We still have one of our kids in the house, and I remember hearing throughout the years to do your morning routine before the kids wake up, which is all well and good, and I get it. One of the interesting things I've had happen throughout the years is when I decide I'm just going to do it earlier, people wake up in the house earlier, which also derails me. But when I can think ahead to the night before I can actually really prioritize what's important and plan it in a way that actually works, actually happens.

Brian
Yeah, I love that. For leaders, again, whether you're leading a family or an organization, do you do that? Do you actually look at, and I'm not saying look at your week or your month, but literally the next day to timestamp and get some context around what's happening the next day? Probably good to do that earlier than right before you go to bed. I look at my calendar probably a couple of hours before I go to bed because I don't want to have that carried into my sleep because I have an evening routine that I do, too.

Ani
That doesn't work for me to do it right before bed either. I'll do it about an hour before. Generally, yeah.

Brian
I like what you said, too, about this idea that, am I going to do the same exact thing every morning? Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't work because sometimes you got to wake up and catch a flight the next morning. I think it's a sweet spot morning routine, but the fact is, life comes up. That's why I think about this in the framework of the three parts of the brain. Whatever morning routine I do, I'm including all three parts of my brain. And so the little mantra we have is body, breath, and vision. So I'm doing something that engages my body, especially around... Well, for me in the morning, it feels like loosening my body is really important, and then energizing my body is really important. So when I think about the body focus for me, whatever I'm doing, whatever I'm actually doing, because if you're to watch me, it might look like I'm doing something different-ish every morning, but I'm still following this framework. So I'm doing something body-oriented every morning to help up the blood flow, flexibility, whatever it happens to be.

Ani
When I see it, it looks like you're doing pretty much the same darn thing every day.

Brian
I do have a core part that's the same because I have other things around that that I do. Got you. The core part that I do, it feels great for me. I mean, that feels like it really addresses all three parts of this. That's why I stick with it. The body part. Do you have a body?

Ani
Body. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Yeah, I'd include the body in your morning routine. Now, one of the things that I tell my folks, Brian, a big thing that comes up for our clients that I've served is consistency is so hard for folks. So one of the things I've done to really give permission granted is move your body. That's the point. Not that you have to consistently do the same thing, because once you start to just give yourself permission to move your body every day in the morning, all of a sudden, that can open up more consistency, more routine, and things like that. I will generally exercise in the morning as a part of my moving my body. Excuse me. And that's a part of what I'm doing right now. Can I say this? Because I think from how I'm conceptualizing morning routines, that potentially is a little bit different than how you conceptualize morning routines, because otherwise, everything I'm going to say may not make sense. One of the things I think is important for setting your morning routine is really going in alignment with your purpose.

Brian
Well, that's the V part. What's that? That's the V part.

Ani
No. For me, how I approach my morning routine is all about, am I getting myself into my purpose state? So I will move my body almost every single time. And if I am in my morning routine and that doesn't feel like what is going to help me to align with my purpose, my felt quality purpose, then I might shift it because the number one thing that's important for me is helping to get my soul's agenda state, my feeling quality state.

Brian
Sure. Yeah, it totally makes sense. I think I would just say, too, here, so moving your body, yes, and not moving your body and watching the news. Or reading your emails. Or reading your email, or checking your text, or checking your Voxer. I think that might be your morning routine, and it might be the morning routine of, quote, unquote, successful people, but we're not talking...  That's not a complete morning routine from a somatic intelligence perspective. It's that because we're disconnected from the body when we're checking our email. And so part of the morning routine idea with somatic intelligence is bringing everything into alignment so that my body, when I'm using my body, I'm sensing into my body. I'm feeling what's going on in my body. It might feel tight, it might feel loose, it might feel energy, it might feel sluggish, I don't know. But we're sensing into those interoceptive states and proprioceptive states in our body when we're moving our body.

Ani
We actually believe that in order to be the person that we want to be in the world, you need to start by centering in yourself. And so as soon as you open up your emails, your text messages, you get involved with your phone, the news. People wake up and they're checking their phones in bed to check the news. As soon as you do that, you're putting yourself in a reactive state instead of a responsive state. And so come from your center and be responsive as long as possible within the day. And then we actually are leading our lives. We are leading the day. We are leading our teams. Otherwise, we're actually coming from a place of reactivity.

Brian
Yeah, exactly.

Ani
Right away. And we don't even know it sometimes.

Brian
So even for leaders that have a lot of responsibility is to get up and just check your email first thing actually is destabilizing and very difficult then to be effective and productive the whole day. Whereas, what Ani is suggesting we do is just wait on that and get your nervous system tuned up. Really get stabilized, get a foundational amount of purpose driving inside of your system, and then you can meet the day. Then everything in the day actually becomes... You meet it with your purpose, and you're going to do that differently than if you meet it being destabilized. Kind of thing. Yeah.

Ani
Can we talk about breath?

Brian
Sure.

Ani
We'd start with body. For me, Brian, I use breath actually as my compass, I guess, because what I do with my body will be informed by how I can get into the breath state that I'm looking for. Does that make sense? Sure. So I will take some time for quiet, which I'll talk about with vision, and breathe there. Also, a big part of my exercise is about my breath. So I actually won't do weights and stuff like that and routines and stuff in the morning, but I will go for my run or my walk. And a big part of that is because of the meditative nature of it. By moving my body and getting into the breath, it's really key. So breath is really, really key with morning routine for me.

Brian
Yeah, and me as well. So the same thing. When I'm going through my morning body movement practices, I'm always coordinating the breath along with that. And the interesting thing about the breath is that, and we do a lot of this training in our core centering program. The idea that the breath has direct linkages into the limbic system in our brain, which is our emotional regulation centers. So breath and emotional regulation have a lot to do with one another. And oftentimes, you've heard people when they get upset, they say, take a deep breath, and that's a great idea. Go for a walk. However, it's like imagining you're just going to go into the weight room and try to lift the heaviest weight that you can lift the first time. Whereas if you train regularly in the weight room, then you can go in and perform really well in there. So that's the idea of incorporating breath every day into your morning routine. It actually helps to create more emotional regulation, whether you realize it or not. I think we can all agree here that as a leader of an organization or a family, life is a lot better when everyone around us, and including us, are emotionally regulated.

Ani
That goes back to being responsive rather than reactionary. When you're training your system, your nervous system, to be in a place of responsiveness, and you can do that through the breath.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. Body and breath. Okay, you want to take the last bit of the framework?

Ani
I was just saying that a sense of quiescence. You were pointing back when I was talking about purpose to vision. I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this. For my vision place, I usually I don't get super visual. For me, it's more of a felt quality anchoring for my vision to get in touch with my purpose. And that happens through a state of quiet. So no matter what I do for my morning routine, there will be some pause, quiet, some meditation aspect to it every single time.

Brian
Yeah, exactly.

Ani
It's after that your mind can rest and really be focused.

Brian
Yeah. So when I teach this more deeply in programs, it's actually BBV3, that there's actually three ways you can think about vision. You can think of vision, like actually what you're doing with your eyes, where you're looking; visualization, what you're imaging; and then throw in as vantage, which is what you're focusing on. So for you, your vantage is to go into that quiet state, to bring in that sense of quiescence. Yeah.

Ani
And that, to me, anchors my purpose. Yeah, right.

Brian
That's a complete, from a, again, somatic intelligence perspective, that's a complete somatic intelligence morning because you've got all three of those parts in there. And then that's training your nervous system, be able to meet the day in a way where you can be responsive, not reactive, because you have a higher level of intuitive, interoceptive experience going on where you can really better align what you're feeling and how you think and what you decide to do.

Ani
From a high performance standpoint, visualization of what's coming, like what you're going to do that day, it can be a really important success tactic. It's a great place to do it, to actually visualize whatever it is that you're going to be doing that day and see yourself doing it exactly how you want it.

Brian
Exactly, yeah. There's all kinds of ways you can tap into that last bit of the visualization. All of them are effective. It just really determines what goal, what you're looking for, what outcome. How do you want to set up your day? Because that's really what the morning routine is all about. It's like, how do I want to set the tone for the day? The tone for the day. Is today a day where it's important that I'm very calm and settled? Is today a day where it's important that I'm excited? For instance, when I travel and teach, and I'm teaching all day long for two days, it's really important to me to feel like I'm energized, to really show up fully. That's a promise I make to everybody in the room. I say, Hey, I'm going to give you everything I have today. I'm just going to show up fully. All I ask is that you participate. Just ask questions. There's always a great tone during the course of day. Those morning routines, my intention is to be energized during the day. Other days where I have maybe some meetings that are a little more serious, let's say, then my intention for that day is probably going to be calm and settled and curious and be able to listen.

Brian
Again, for me, depending on what I'm doing, I'll set the tone differently for the day, and my morning routine will shift a little bit. But what won't shift is body, breath, and vision. That's a part of the framework of everything that I do. I'm just using that to create that tone. Does that make sense?

Ani
Yeah. You said you wanted to talk about morning routines for teams.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. So it's a few years ago, actually several years ago now, we were hired by the third largest lime manufacturing company in the world. And so we got hired locally. There was a mine and processing center in our area here in the Adirondacks that reached out to me as a PT. They found me somehow. I mean, that's actually a long and very cool and interesting story, but we don't have time to do here. It's one of those universal, synchronistic situations. Anyway, they called me and asked me if I could come up and talk with the manager of the production team about injuries that they're having on the production team. In the mining industry, there's something called MSHA. But OSHA, which most people understand, that's the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They make sure that in the working world that people are safe. In the mining industry, it's called MSHA. It's a different organization, and they're way more strict than OSHA is, because in the mining industry, people could die. It's like there's a lot of heavy equipment, all that stuff. They had a very high incidence of what they call reportable injuries. In other words, people getting injured on the work and then not being able to come back to work the next day.

Brian
That's called a reportable injury. In the mining industry, those reportable are big dings on their MSHA rating, and they get fined on those things for every day someone's out for longer. It costs a lot of money. In other words, they have people who have reportable injuries. They were having way more than they wanted to have. They brought a PT in and said... Actually, it's funny. They had just purchased a video program of a morning stretching program, and they said, What do you think of this? I looked at it and I laughed. I was like, I can't. If you guys want to do this, go ahead. If you're asking me to consult on it, I think this is not probably going to work. It was a woman in a middle-aged woman, very pleasant to look at in tights and leotards with music. They're going to put this video on for a bunch of miners. Not miners like young people, but men that have been digging in the rocks and breaking rocks for their whole life and working on machines and using diggers and backhoses and that yukes, driving these massive. I'm like, I don't think so.

Brian
My guess is it's probably not going to land well. They said, Well, what do you think you could do? I said, 'Well, I think I can design a program that's better. I said, And I think I could do it in under 10 minutes. Would that work for you to do with your teams in the morning?' They're like, Yeah, we could do under 10 minutes because they don't have a lot of time in the morning. They get in, they punch the clock, they do a quick meeting, they get to work because productivity is so important. I actually went on site and followed the guys around for a while to see what they did, to see how they moved, how they turned, what they drove, where they sat. I talked with them about what they felt like in their bodies, what tight muscles. I actually did a little screening with them. Then I went back to my little laboratory and created a 10-Move morning movement routine that took eight minutes long. It became what we called the eight-minute dynamic warmup. It had all three parts. It had a body part, a breath part, and visualization part. I took it in, and I trained everybody on it.

Brian
I trained some team leaders to do it with their people. Within six months, their reportable injuries went to zero. They calculated how much money... I don't exactly remember the numbers, but saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars year after year after year. It worked so well that they actually sent me around North America and Canada to train all the other facilities in North America and Canada on this eight-minute dynamic warmup. I would go out to these places for a week or 10 days or something and train everybody on the routine and then go through and do assessments with all the workers to modify for them and make sure it was going to work for them and that stuff. It was interesting because not all the plants adopted that morning routine equally. Some plants really got into it and their reportables dropped off, and other plans didn't get into as much, and they didn't see as much of a change. We definitely saw that adding in morning routines to the work teams on this body, breath, and vision framework had really important and positive results on the team's productivity, on their health, on their ability to connect, all those sorts of things.

Brian
Then they kept bringing me back to actually keep up-leveling on nutrition. We did a lot of mindfulness practices with these guys. We wove them in in ways that made sense for them. It was a really fun ride to do that with that. Since then, the CEO changed hands, and they changed their focus a little bit around health and wellness. And the people I've talked to that still in the system, I've seen a massive, again, increase, again, in the injuries just because the leadership hasn't actually advocated for morning routines anymore in that process. We've seen a whole roller coaster of how effective it is when you do these things and how you actually lose those effects when you don't do those things. We also added these routines, and not just for the manufacturing teams, but also in the office teams as well. Both the admin teams and in the production teams.

Ani
We've seen graduates of our Level One program, create and run core centering morning routines for their teams or to help lead teams in morning routines. I mean, your story points towards safety and manual laborers, but no matter who, whether you're trying to loosen up your body or you're really just trying to have better meetings and more productive, light-hearted team camaraderie and engagement. We've seen morning routines for all of those things.

Brian
Yeah, they set the tone for the day. As the leader in your organization, you set the tone for the day. What tone do you want to set for your teams and for your organization so that your people step into that tone? As a leader of our organization, it's important for me to set my tone for the day and Ani to set her tone for the day so that we can actually set that tone for our teams, for our contractors, for our faculty that do a lot of work with us as well. We see this in teams that we work with as well as consulting.

Ani
Yeah. I hear about all kinds of crazy stuff that happens with teams every single day, Brian, in my work with clients that I'm working with and stuff and teams that I'm working with. We never have problems on our work. We have the smoothest team around.

Brian
So grateful for our faculty and our team. Just amazing.

Ani
It's so smooth. I'm sure that a part of that, a large part of that, is because of our consistent practice with our morning routine and how we show up.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. If you're a leader who's like, My God, I would love to be able to set a strong tone, whatever that tone is, every day in my organization, then, Hey, consider joining us for our next core centering training, which is happening at Kripalu from May 18th to 22nd. We do core centering also virtually throughout the year, so you can just check out the link for that on the page. But for yourself, or send one of your key deputies or key directors to learn how to set up these morning routines for your teams and for your programs. You don't have to lead these for yourself. You can send someone who can actually learn to do this, and then they can turn out and lead your teams, be able to set that tone every day. At a minimum, as a leader, you need to have your own morning routine that is complete and holistic, and then also develop that for your teams as well. Yeah.

Ani
It doesn't have to be weird. We get this question way less than we used to, but what are people going to think? People are going to think it's great, and they're going to thank you for it. That's what they're going to think. Yeah. Great example, Brian. Thanks for sharing that with us. And thanks for listening today. We will see you next week. Take care. Bye-bye.