It was sheer chance, but it worked. Punita Khandelwal,* 32, a highly stressed chartered accountant based in Delhi, got hold of a tape of ocean sounds and played it while having breakfast one morning. And relaxed instantly. “The feeling of calm stayed with me all through the day,” she says.
Most of us would do much to wake up feeling happy and ready to take on the world. Yet it can be achieved easily enough. We talked to health and lifestyle experts, as well as busy professionals adept at juggling demands on their time, to bring you a prescription for a good morning.
1. Turn on the music
Make your morning musical, like Khandelwal did.
Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint
About a decade ago, Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of Wisconsin, and her colleagues made waves with the discovery that listening to Mozart improved people’s mathematical and spatial reasoning. Even rats ran mazes faster and more accurately after hearing Mozart than after being exposed to white noise or music by minimalist composer Philip Glass. Some experts think that music boosts brainpower simply because it makes listeners feel better, both relaxed and stimulated at the same time, and that a comparable stimulus might do just as well. Apparently, music helps bring on a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay as well. And morning is a good time to start positive, before the day can get you down.
Ayurveda too swears by it too. Ayurveda claims the doshas (vata, pitta and kapha) can be balanced by music therapy.
2. Meditate, in many ways
It’s not just for the spiritually inclined. “Meditating for just a few minutes, especially in the morning, right after you get up, can help clear the mind,” says Rama Ranjit Mehra, functional medicine practitioner at Ranjit’s Svaasa Wellness Boutique Spa Haveli, Amritsar, and Svaasa Wellness, New Delhi and Bangalore. “It helps in balancing the body channels, replenishes the mind energy and energizes the vital forces of our body,” she claims. And adds: “Our minds are in a constant state of thinking and, contrary to what most people think, it is most aggravated when we wake up. Which is why it’s no coincidence that heart attack rates are at their highest in the morning, just after waking.”
There’s scientific proof of the benefits of meditation: A 1960s study by Akira Kasamatsu and Tomio Hirai, physicians at the University of Tokyo, found that alpha waves in the brain became amplified in 48 Zen masters and their disciples during meditation.