I’ve been doing stretches in the morning.

This post is about that and a new meditative technique. It’s uh, the title.

My trainer, the incredible Christina, saw there were some exercises where I was limited by mobility, not strength. For a pistol squat, at a certain point I couldn’t go lower without tumbling over.

So, at the end of October she challenged me to do a set of stretches every morning for 30 days. It’s based on these from the Strength Side guys.

• 1:30 Seiza
• 1:30 Squat
• 1:00 Downward Dog
• 1:00 Crab
• :45/side Long Lunge
• :45 Horse Stance

Not too much! Too much doesn’t get done.

I’ve been using this on most mornings as a way to be silent, mindful, meditative and fully inhabit my body instead of jumping into a million thoughts and todos.

After I get the coffee brewing, I do these stretches before cooking breakfast. I’m doing it this way to take advantage of something I learned from my book club inspired reading of Atomic Habits by James Clear. I am setting up a chain where the obvious thing to do while the coffee brews is to do these stretches. Not look at all the slack messages from India that have piled up in the night. Not check my calendar. Not check the news. Just do my stretches while the coffee brews. This is actually working for me as a way to create a good habit. It feels great.

Just one thing is irritating though.

My timer going off on my phone after 1:30 is jarring. Setting the timer again is disruptive and lets me look at notifications. Midway through a stretch I find myself tapping the phone to see how much time is left (as if it matters!).

So I switched to just counting and it’s going great. One one-thousand, two one thousand…

Turns out if you just count and concentrate on the counting, you can get all the way up to 90 just fine. Turns out that counting helps me focus and be single-minded – it’s a meditation technique.

When I’ve finished counting and stretching, I find myself loose and ready and centered. I can eat, clean and get kids ready easily. I can thumb through notifications and Slack messages and make sure I’m ready for the agenda for the day. But I’m doing it because I’m done with what I wanted to do first in the morning.