Check all the boxes with this 5-minute morning meditation

Create heart coherence, ground yourself, clear your energy, and stimulate your vagus nerve in under 5 minutes.

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How to do it

Finding time to meditate is a daily challenge. Here’s a way to incorporate four incredibly valuable practices in one meditation, all under 5 minutes:

1. Settle in

• Find a place to sit quietly, preferably with your feet on the floor.

• Begin by taking a few slow breaths.

• You can set an intention or express gratitude here if you’d like.

• Do this for about 30 seconds or so.

2. Transition to heart focused breathing

• Place your hands together at your heart center

• Find a slow breath that feels comfortable to you (around 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out is ideal for creating coherence).

• Focus your intention on your heart center and imagine the breath moving in and out of this area.

• Activate a feeling of love, appreciation, or gratitude while you breathe. Focus on a memory, person, or place that evokes one of these emotions.

• Continue heart focused breathing for about 2 minutes.

3. Transition to clearing

• To clear, pull the breath in through the top of your head, all the way down your body, and out the soles of your feet.

• If you’re familiar with the chakra system, work the breath all the way down through each chakra: Crown (purple), Third Eye (indigo), Throat (blue), Heart (green), Solar Plexus (yellow), Sacral (orange), Root (red). I like to imagine the color of each chakra as the breath passes through.

• Do this 3 times. This should take about 1 minute.

4. Transition to grounding

• To ground, pull the breath from the soles of your feet all the way up through your body and out the top of your head.

• Imagine your breath fountaining out the top of your head and creating a protective bubble around you.

• If you’re familiar with the chakra system, work the breath all the way up through each chakra: Root (red), Sacral (orange), Solar Plexus (yellow), Heart (green), Throat (blue), Third Eye (indigo), Crown (purple). I like to imagine the color of each chakra as the breath passes through.

• Do this 3 times. This should take about 1 minute.

5. Transition to vagus nerve stimulation

• Place the middle finger on each hand behind each ear lobe in the shallow indent of your jaw.

• Slightly lift your chin upwards.

• Begin a vagus nerve breath. Breathe in slowly then breathe out using a raspy “Darth Vadar” breath. (Almost like you’re loudly whispering “Haaaa”).

• Repeat 3 times. This should take about 30 seconds.

Finish by saying a few closing words of gratitude.