A Morning Gratitude Routine For Mind, Body & Soul Connection

Alison Serour shares her soulful and spiritual approach of applying morning gratitude to the daily routine with her family.

The First Thoughts In The Morning

What is the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning? Is it a list of daunting tasks? An anxiety-filled situation that hasn’t resolved yet? Or perhaps you lie in bed wanting to go back to sleep?

Many spiritual teachings and philosophies highlight the importance of “first thoughts” and teach how you can use these first thoughts to set up your entire day.

Morning Gratitude For Soul Connection

We live in the material world, but we also have a soul. Your soul is your source of life energy, it charges your body with the necessary means to stay alive. Think about it, even when you sleep at night our body still works—your heart beats and pumps blood and oxygen through your body all night long. During this time that you are sleeping, it is your soul that reaches up into the spiritual atmosphere above and recharges with light.

Your soul then comes back in the morning with whatever spiritual energy your body needs to keep on with its routine functioning for your day to day life. This connection between your mind, body and soul is crucial to your daily ability to function in this material world.

As the soul comes back into your body, there is an important window of time when you can receive “first thoughts” as messages from your soul. These soul-whispers happen as you are first waking up, during the time that your body is re-adjusting to your material surroundings and can contain the much needed answers that you have been asking for. 

To re-connect with your soul as you wake up in the morning can be a powerful gratitude practice. There are many ways to embrace this as a part of your life, depending on your culture, religious background or community.

Morning Gratitude Extends Throughout The Day

I try to consistently create a routine that helps me honor my soul and connect to my first thoughts.

The first moments of my mornings don’t always work out as I hope; my husband leaves early each morning, I am a mom of 4 working full time—so there is a lot of activity going on in my home in the mornings to say the least. For better or for worse, I don’t always get to practice a full morning gratitude routine in the quietude that I dream about.

No matter what plays out as my day begins, I find it important to keep reminding myself that my morning consciousness effects the rest of the day and desire to share that energy infusion to my husband and children as well.

My children can be my greatest teachers. Just recently, as my 4 year old woke up, I was cuddling him as he was still in his sleepy state of mind. I used it as an opportunity to remind him of the “sharing nature of his soul” and whispered sweet gems of wisdom like “you are so sharing”, “you love to share”, “lets thank your soul that supported you to come into the world today with the opportunity to share and give light to others” as morning affirmations into his ear. After these precious moments we continued our morning with a beautiful flow and when he got to pre-school the first thing I saw him do was share one of his favorite toys he had brought with another child in his class.

Read more: In another article, Alison explains how to help children to relax by playing “meditation games”.

I was so pleasantly surprised because most mornings are all about what’s “mine, mine, mine”. It warmed my heart to watch him. I knelt down and told him how proud I was that he was sharing and reminded him of the special whispers from earlier as he was waking up and greeting his day.

There were a few other instances that day when I noticed he opened heartedly shared with his siblings, his dad and I as well. I attribute this 100% to morning whispers and I now am motivated to continually give him, my husband and our other children morning gratitude affirmations when I can. I also try to notice when he is sharing and then make sure to point it out to him and connect the dots of his sharing back to the morning affirmations as well as reminding him of the sharing nature of his soul.

From this experience, it truly confirmed for me that the addition of gratitude as part of my morning routine is truly life-changing.

Read more: Keeping a gratitude journal is a great way to start practicing and expressing gratitude. However, explore how to start living a life of gratitude besides writing down lists.

How To Start Your Gratitude Morning Ritual

Here are some suggestions I have learned (compiled from different spiritual teachings and influenced by my own personal practice of Kabbalah) to get you started with your gratitude morning routine:

1. Upon waking, acknowledge that your soul is coming into your body and thank your soul for giving you this day for opportunities to do your spiritual work.
2. Have a notebook by your bed to write down your first thoughts. As they come through, entertain the possibility that they may be messages for you from your soul. (You may want to also begin a practice of writing down a question the night before and keeping it by your bed so when you wake up in the morning you can write down any answers to that question you may have received.)
3. Look in the mirror as you scan your body and say out loud “I love you” and “Thank you” to each body part. This is very powerful! Especially great for boosting confidence fast, your body listens to your positivity. (Read more: Discover how to practice self-love with these small acts of kindness.)
4. Close your eyes and think about three things that you are grateful for. Meditate to send light to those places in your life that you have a deep sense of appreciation for.
5. Practice with a guided morning meditation—maybe with the ones I created:

Discover hundreds of free guided gratitude meditation practices that create a readiness to show appreciation and focusing awareness on things to be grateful for—ideal for the morning.

As you begin to incorporate small steps in the morning to acknowledge your soul’s journey and the mind, body, soul connection you have together, the possibilities of positive side effects are endless.

Read more: If you often wake up anxious, stressed or ungrounded, you might want to read how to create a healthy morning routine.