GOOD MORNING: wake up to your best days
In our quest for the best possible wake-up and start to our day, we need a multisensory approach that draws us out of slumber and kickstarts our body clock. Here, Russell Jones, author of Sense, shares simple ways to feel good.
Research from the worlds of neuroscience and behavioural psychology has uncovered the amazing extent to which we’re affected by arbitrary factors in our environment. Like the fact that coffee tastes sweeter if you drink it from a red mug. Or that we perceive time to pass more quickly if we’re in a blue room with slow music playing. These kinds of neuroscientific insights into how our senses and emotions interact can allow you to enhance your mornings – and improve how you feel at the start of every day – in a scientifically proven way.
See the light
It is evolutionarily ingrained in us to be awake, cognitive and energetic in daylight and to rest and recuperate at night. If it were possible to wake up under a beautiful blue sky every morning, we’d be better off. A study at a sleep laboratory in Colorado took a group camping in the Rockies and measured their circadian rhythms and levels of melatonin, the sleep hormone. Back in their electric-lightfilled homes, their morning burst of the hormone melatonin was kicking in about two hours after they got up, causing them to be groggy for the first few hours of the day; a condition called ‘sleep inertia’.
In our normal daily lives, we can’t always camp under the stars or rise with the sun (nor would we want to). We can, however, get close to the real thing with the help of a light-based alarm. Researchers in the Netherlands tested light alarms with different intensities on people who were complaining of sleep inertia; the effect on their hormones was not quite as pronounced as with natural light, but symptoms of sleep inertia were greatly reduced, and the subjects woke up feeling more positive and energised.
Sound down
They say we are born with only two innate fears – falling and loud noises – in which case, the stimulation of an evolutionarily wired fight-or-flight mechanism with a loud alarm clock seems ill-advised. According to the renowned sleep scientist Charles Czeisler, even the slightest sounds during the night are registered by our resting minds, forcing us to transition into a lighter level of sleep. This is something that we can use to our advantage. Rather than a loud bleeping, the best alarm might be gentle birdsong and voices, increasing in volume over twenty minutes to transition you into lighter sleep states. This would be so good, in fact, that I created the ‘Rose Garden Alarm’.
It’s on the Sense website (sensebook. co.uk) if you’d like to try it.
Train your senses
I came across an exercise as a child (in a ‘ninja training handbook’) that still resonates with me. It was all about training the senses, using them to assess the world around you before you open your eyes. It’s a good thing to try, not just if you’re striving to become a stealthy warrior; sense-training exercises are common in mindfulness and behavioural therapy as they make you present. Give it a try: While you lie in bed, try to sense what the weather is like outside. What distant sounds can you hear? What smells can you notice? What can you taste? How do the bedsheets feel? Take 30 seconds or so to get your senses working, and you’ll start the day feeling more focused and connected.
Consider your threads
We behave and think in accordance with what we’re wearing. This is all down to a phenomenon called ‘enclothed cognition’. The term was coined by Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky from Northwestern University; their study showed that people wearing a lab coat performed better at tasks that tested their attention than when they were wearing the same thing, but thought it was an artist’s smock. How does this apply to you? Identify how you’d like to behave and feel today, then choose an outfit or an accessory that will be beneficial. For instance, for confidence research shows black is the colour people most often associate with confidence, intelligence and sexiness. Red came second for confidence, but it was also strongly associated with arrogance. Or choose something symbolic to you, like your father’s watch, to make you feel more grown up. Whatever meaning you place on individual items can be used to your advantage, not just changing how you feel, but enhancing how you think.
Spritz on scent
Applying a splash of your favourite scent in the morning is a practice going back as far as time itself. For centuries, the primary function of perfume was to mask unpleasant smells and show social status. In more recent times, a survey by the Sense of Smell Institute, in collaboration with The New York Times, asked women the reason why they wear fragrance: the answer was pleasing themselves and boosting their self-confidence. This effect is backed up with scientific evidence that shows fragrances do make you more confident. Researchers in Japan showed that women were more self-assured in their body language when they were wearing perfume than when they weren’t.
Eat smart
As you swan into the kitchen, smelling good and dressed to impress, create a sensory prescription that will encourage healthy decisions. First, turn the lights on bright and keep music soft, which studies show encourages healthier food choices. Then, consider your crockery: researchers at Oxford University discovered food tastes better and richer in a porcelain bowl, when compared to the same food in a plastic one. So grab your heaviest bowl out of the cupboard. Once finished, you will hopefully be feeling bright, well fed and ready to go out into the world.