Today I want to share five simple habits that can offer so many benefits to you and truly elevate the overall quality of your life. They cost nothing, only a (very little) bit of your time, might seem like small things to do…and yet they give so much.

Now, as a mutable Sag moon, I do enjoy switching up my routines quite a lot because I never want to feel caged in, restricted, or bored by what I’m doing, so sometimes another modality becomes my go-to for a stretch of time. However, the five things I’m writing about in this article have become absolute staples in my daily life.

I warmly invite you to try all of these out for yourself.

Even implementing just one or two of these can be a game-changer in your life in the long run.

If you feel inspired for a bit more though, you can absolutely enter a brief experiment where you do this entire routine for 21 days in a row and see the kinds of results you experience at the end the challenge.

I love playing games like that because I find that the more playful we are in life, the better we do.

So if you decide to enter this nice little life uplevels game, I created a free workbook for you to use, packed with some journaling and reflection questions, a quick rundown of the habits, and a cute tracker to deliver that satisfactory moment of checking off a habit.

The printable will be available for download at the bottom of the page.

Final thing that I want to share before we dive into the habits:

You can do all these things separately throughout your day or, if that resonates with you, I’ll also be offering how I condense several of them into a single morning routine. There really is no right or wrong here, only what suits you best.

All right, let’s get into it.

EFT (EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUE)

I already wrote a comprehensive article on EFT that’s an excellent learning resource in case you’re not yet familiar with this brilliant modality, so make sure to check that out & grab the free PDF guidebook I offer to really assist with your practice.

For my daily EFT routine, I either tap on an issue I’m working through or simply tap on the points – the latter alone already nourishes the flow of energy, and I find that I just always feel so much better afterwards.

So if I’m not tapping on a specific issue, I’ll skip the measuring and go straight to tapping the points without saying anything out loud. I sometimes skip the 9 Gamut series in this case too, depending on what my intuition is telling me I need when I reach the end of the tapping sequence.

SOMATICS: HEEL ROCKING AND HIP ROCKING

Somatics have been a total game changer for me when it comes to my health, my nervous system, and just my overall well-being. I will definitely write more about this at some point, but for now, let’s touch upon the two exercises I do daily.

You can do either of these in bed or on your yoga mat, and you can absolutely wear loose, comfortable clothing. The main thing to keep in mind is that you want to do everything in the laziest way possible. In somatics, we are never pushing or straining ourselves.

The heel rocking and hip rocking can be done one after the other or separate (as I do in my condensed morning routine I’ll be sharing at the end of the article).

Okay, let’s look deeper into each of them.

Heel rocking is an amazing tool to relax your body and turn on the parasympathetic nervous system. Aside from being a brilliant, nourishing movement to support your body daily, this is also something I highly recommend doing whenever you’re feeling anxious.

For heel rocking:

• Lie down on your back, with your hands resting by your side, palms facing down.
• With your feet about hip width distance apart, first flex the feet and then point the toes
• Continue to flex and point your feet, slowly at first to get a hang of the movement, then speed it up
• As you speed up, you will feel your whole body bobbling – let it bobble
• Take slow, steady breaths (keeping them natural), relax your jaw, your shoulders, your belly, and keep the heel rocking going for about a minute
• When you’re ready, come to a pause; let your feet splay wide and remain in this position for a few more seconds for your body to integrate the movement you have just completed

Hip rocking is wonderful for releasing your hips – this is the place in our body where so much stress and trauma gets stored it really calls for the extra dose of love.

For hip rocking:

• Lie down on your belly, bend your elbows and place your hands under your forehead; I like to include a gentle Jalandhara Bandha here, a version of the throat lock, where you bring the chin slightly in to elongate the back of the neck (kind of as if you were creating a double chin) – this will also make resting your forehead on your hands more pleasurable and assist in opening the lymph passes at back of the neck
• With your feet about hip-width distance apart, begin to gently rock your hips from side to side, then slightly pick up the pace
• Relax your shoulders, your belly, feel your body heavy against the floor and the skin on your lower back sliding with the movement
• Continue with the hip rocking for about a minute
• When you are ready, bring your body back into stillness and feel yourself sinking against the floor
• Pause here for a few moments to integrate the movement

Do each of these for about a minute. I find that to be sort of a sweet spot, but you’re always welcome to listen to your intuition on how long you perform each exercise.

If you need a visual of the practices, they’re included in this Youtube short I made of my morning routine.

5 MINUTES OF SILENT MEDITATION

This is one of the things where people often don’t see what the benefit is – what could come out of just lying there in silence and stillness for five minutes?

Honestly, I used to follow that line of thought too.

For me, meditation was always something that either took much longer than that or was in a guided format. It was almost as if…something had to happen, something had to shift, for me to actually feel like I’d done a meditation.

But once I started to just be with myself for five minutes every day, those shifts I might not have seen immediately started rolling in.

By practicing this simple 5 minute silent mediation, you will feel more connected with yourself, have more mental clarity, and it will be easier to hear your intuition on a daily basis.

There really is no wrong time for it either.

Doing the mediation in the morning is a great way to set up for your day.

If you practice during the day, it can serve extremely well to free yourself of the mental chatter, kinda step away from the automated stories running through your mind, and become more in tune with yourself.

And in the evenings, it’s such a relief to clear away all the stuff that had piled up in your waking hours (and it can be a great foundation for the affirmations & visualization practice I’ll outline later on).

By all means, if you feel called to do the 5 minute silent mediation more than once, then please do so. Once really is the minimum here.

So how I like to do this particular meditation practice?

My favorite is to lie on my yoga mat, either in Savasana or with one hand on my heart and another on my belly. You can also do the mediation seated if that feels good to you.

Once I’m settled in comfortable position, I place my attention on my breath – not really changing anything about the breathing pattern, simply observing the air flow in and out.

If my mind is especially quiet, I can fully release the attention on the breath and simply be.

On the other hand, I find a lot of thoughts rolling through my head, I either double down on focusing on the air flowing in and out of my body – or I imagine the energy from the Universe illuminating me from above and permeating every cell of my body.

Meditation is a very personal practice, and the more you engage in it, the more you will find your own personal style and preference for it.

LYMPHATIC HOPS

Lymph support is such a game changer in overall wellness. Lymph is the one that carries all the gunk from our body and detoxifies us, so it’s important to give our lymph flow some assistance – it doesn’t have a pump mechanism of its own (like our blood, for instance). Instead it’s mainly our respiration that moves lymph…and you can support it with something as simple as jumping.

Since I don’t have a rebounder (if you do, hop right on), I don’t really perform actual jumps. That can create a lot of unnecessary strain on the knees, especially when doing so on a hard surface.

Instead, I do something that is just as effective (because it creates that necessary vibration in the body), except much, much safer:

I bounce on the soles of my feet.

Basically just lifting my heels up and then bringing them back down.

Studies showed that just two minutes of bouncing/hops flushes the entire lymphatic system and triples the number of white blood cells in your immune system for an hour.

I bounce for one minute minimum (this is also where I recommend you start for the first month or so), but most of the time I set the timer for two minutes…

…and then enjoy just how good I feel afterward.

You can do this several times per day, although I really would recommend starting smaller to avoid experiencing any stronger potential detox symptoms like headaches.

EVENING AFFIRMATIONS & VISUALIZATION

One of the biggest life hacks ever is to be mindful of what content you offer your mind before going to bed. This is the time of day (along with right upon awakening) that our subconscious mind is the most open and easiest to plant seeds into.

I could probably write an entire book around how our subconscious programming and the content we consume determines the quality of our lives, so to keep it short:

When you’re in bed and getting ready to fall asleep, ditch all thoughts except the ones that affirm what you want to experience in your life.

Even if you don’t do any other work around neuroplasticity and rewiring your subconscious beliefs, this alone will bring a massive benefit into your life.

It’s also said that the last thought you have before falling asleep is the one you’re subconscious mind runs on repeat. Now I don’t know about you, but I would very much prefer to have something good rolling through my mind…

So what’s my go-to process for this?

I start with affirmations. Silent ones that I repeat in my head. I usually do this with a Mala, repeating my chosen affirmation for the night with every bead.

You absolutely do not have to repeat your affirmation 108 times like I do. Honestly, you can even skip the affirmations altogether and just do the visualization practice I’ll outline next. However, I have found affirmations to be incredibly helpful…even if you say them to yourself just a few times.

When I first started out, I used to repeat them while I was brushing my teeth. It made sense since I was already doing something, so why, instead of letting my mind run wild with thoughts, wouldn’t I chant something good in my head?

You can do something similar, too.

There are so many ways to incorporate affirmations into your life (not just in the evening routine, but throughout the day as well) and you’ll soon find your mind reach for that kind of content over just the random chit-chat we often have going on up there.

Now, an important thing to note here:

Yes, simple repetition will over time reprogram the subconscious mind. But if you can evoke a positive emotion and really imagine experiencing what your affirmation signifies or being the person you are affirming yourself to be, then your mind will respond far stronger and far faster to that desired reality and absorb it as your new subconscious program.

Let’s return to my routine…

Once I go through my affirmations and actually settle in for sleep, I’ll bring to mind a scenario that I would like to experience. It can be a material manifestation, it can be a state of being that I wish to embody, or it can be just the version of myself I desire to be.

My recommendation is to dream up a short snippet of that desired life, feel into it as much as you can, and really imagine yourself in that scenario. Be that person. Feel what they would feel. See what they would see. Smell what they would smell… You can employ as many senses here as you wish to truly immerse yourself in the experience.

Because the subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined. It’s going to fire the same signals as if you were actually living that reality right now.

So enjoy it.

Enjoy it as if it truly is already real.

And then gently let yourself be lulled into a deep, nourishing sleep.

MY CONDENSED ROUTINE

As I mentioned before, you can absolutely do all of these things separately throughout your day.

Personally, I like to merge them all (aside from the evening affirmations) into one routine that I do in the morning. This is what it looks like:

• EFT
• (Here is where I usually like to do my morning yoga practice, so if you do already have a movement practice of your own, feel free to insert it into this place)
• Heel rocking
• 5 minute silent mediation
• Hip rocking
• 2 minutes of lymphatic hops

FREE 21-DAY CHALLENGE PDF & JOURNALING PROMPTS

We’ve gone through everything & now comes my favorite part!

I loved, loved, loved creating this cute pdf workbook/guidebook for you! It has everything you need to prep you for the challenge, keep you on track, and also bring awareness to the shifts that have happened once you’re done with the 21 days!

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask them below & if you do decide to implement these practices in your life, I would love to hear all about the amazing benefits you experienced because of them!

With love,

thecelestialblonde

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