5:45 a.m. blues

As obvious as this may sound to some of you, I’ve made a discovery: feeling sluggish and fuzzy-headed at 5:45 in the morning is not the problem, but the symptom. The problem? Not changing my evening habits to compensate for getting up earlier.

The first three days of last week went quite well, but then I stayed up too late on Wednesday, which made Thursday morning’s alarm rather unpleasant. And somehow, Friday  wasn’t any better. Yesterday and today weren’t so great either, which is mostly because I let the weekend throw my sleep schedule off even more. Good thing I’m staying at 5:45 for a few weeks before moving back to 5:30.

I’m feeling a bit frustrated at the moment because it seems like three weeks of work just went right down the drain. On the other hand, I’ve learned a few things:

• “Sleeping in” on the weekend can no longer mean getting up after 9. Eight might still be too late, but I’m still figuring out what works best.
• Reading poetry, essays, and short stories after I’m in bed is fine, but novels are now verboten. I get sucked into them far too easily and loose track of the time.
• Supper at 8 doesn’t work well when bed-time is 9. Seven thirty is ok, but 7 is better. And having leftovers to pack for the next day’s lunch means a few extra minutes for yoga the next morning.
• Having clothes set out, mat unrolled, and cd in the player is actually more of hindrance than a help. It takes a few minutes for me to work up to physical and mental coherence, so having to dig clothes out of the drawer in the morning means I’m a little more ready to do yoga than if I’m just pulling on what’s at hand. And besides, I rather like the snap a mat makes when you shake it out just right. It’s like a call to prayer.

And while I’ve heard that it’s inadvisable to do yoga in bed because the surface is so soft, today I found that it helped me wake up. So from now on, if I hit the snooze, I’ll do a twist. I keep my alarm clock on the far side of the bedside table, which is just far enough that I can’t reach it if I’m lying on my back. So when I hit the snooze, I’m on my side already and can just let my hips rotate out to get a nice twisty stretch. Then, of course, I have to do one in the opposite direction, then pull my knees into my chest. This morning I followed this with staff pose and a forward bend, and by the time those electronic birds started chirping again, I was wide awake.

Unfortunately, I’d already hit the snooze twice before I thought to do this, so I didn’t have time to actually get on the mat. One step forward….