The 5am Club
Can starting the day at 5am change our life?
This week, The Guardian reported on the cultural phenomenon much touted on social media, of The 5am Club. The idea is that if we train ourselves to get up early, we have more time for self-care activities, such as exercise, yoga and meditation and thereby feel better and achieve more throughout the rest of the day. They quote work/life balance author Tim Ferriss’s “Win the morning and you win the day” slogan. Many celebrities who advocate a good morning routine also mention that they practice Transcendental Meditation.
Those of us who have practised TM for years are very familiar with early mornings as it’s the best way we can comfortably fit in our meditation before the house gets busy and the work day starts. The Guardian reporter who tried rising early had mixed results and sensibly concluded that it’s not when you get up that matters so much as what you do with the extra time that you have. If we start the day early with the idea that we’re going to meditate yet we haven’t really learned how to meditate we could end up wasting that precious time.
One of the great things about learning Transcendental Meditation with the Meditation People is that you learn a specific technique, tried, tested and scientifically researched, which you’re taught thoroughly. TM is a simple thing to learn but it’s also very specific and for maximum results you need a trained teacher to sit with you and take you through the process several times and then explain clearly how it works. When teaching TM, we’re able to very clear about what correct meditation is so that you’re not sitting at home after the course wondering whether you’re meditating or not.
As practitioners of TM, we have the extra bonus of knowing that while we may get up a little earlier than our non-meditating friends to do TM, we’re doing something valuable with our time. TM not only feels like a nourishing thing to do for ourselves but allows us to start the day with a clearer mind and clearer thinking ability. It’s just so useful!
We teach Transcendental Meditation online monthly and in person three times a year at our beautiful Brighton & Hove venue.