Wake Up, Get Up!

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to work this one out!

For a few years, whenever I could, upon waking I would lie in bed in the morning waiting for the elusive moment when energy would arrive, hoping for that internal green light before getting up, that spark of vitality that would say, now you’re ready. Sometimes it would come through yoga nidra or deep rest, but most of the time it didn’t.

What I’ve finally discovered is that energy rarely comes simply from staying still. Much more often, it comes through movement.

Just getting up, no matter how groggy, dull, heavy, lethargic, tense, or unmotivated I feel, and moving the body — going to the gym, a run, yoga āsana, dancing, a walk — this is what actually shifts the system. Usually within half an hour to an hour something completes itself. The body wakes up, the mind settles, the energy starts to circulate, and suddenly I’m in my day rather than waiting for it to begin.

This simple realisation has genuinely been a life changer!

Looking back, school taught me routine and early rising, though I always got up begrudgingly (not realising the value of early rising!). In my twenties, I had regular jobs that required getting up early (again, fairly begrudgingly!). In my thirties, I was a disciplined yogi, rising early for sadhana, often before dawn. In my forties, I’ve tried a different approach, allowing longer rest in the mornings when I could, working later into the evenings as a self-employed musician and yoga teacher. And yet, I’ve come to see that this rhythm — waiting for energy to arrive or for tiredness, heaviness, or old sensations to resolve before engaging with life — has often been a quiet disservice.

I was using mornings, stillness, and even subtle pain or discomfort as healing enquiry.

Is my body ready?

Has this healed yet?

Should I stay with this sensation a bit longer? 

This was sometimes helpful to heal old resurfacing trauma. I realise now, however, that with the best of intentions, what felt like healing or sensitivity was often just replaying old grooves.

Particularly ones formed in my teenage years, where lying in bed, ruminating, feeling heavy or tense in the belly, and amplifying the mental layer became familiar territory.

Movement, on the other hand, brings me into a present-time body rather than a remembered one. Rather than suppressing anything, it integrates it. Energy that might otherwise pool in the mind or the gut begins to move through the whole system. I’m no longer using stillness as a diagnostic tool for whether I’m “ready” to live — I’m choosing to live, and letting the body organise itself around that choice.

Feeling heavy or slow in the morning is normal. The myth that bouncing out of bed is a sign of good health has never applied to me, and holding myself to that expectation was detrimental. Energy, for me, is something that emerges through engagement, not something I can wait for passively.

The same insight has applied to my relationship with the spine. For a long time, I thought that to be a “good yogi” meant always sitting upright, perfectly aligned, elongated, and composed. Over time, I’ve realised that the spine is naturally meant to move through rhythms, curves, flexion, extension, softness, and rest. After periods of concentration or activity, my body often wants to curl forward slightly, knees drawn in, spine rounded, a gesture of integration rather than collapse. This isn’t poor posture I realise now — it’s intelligent embodiment.

Alignment absolutely has its place, particularly in meditation and certain practices, but insisting on it all the time is not only unnecessary, it can be subtly violent. A healthy spine is a responsive spine, one that can organise itself differently depending on context, fatigue, emotion, and phase of the day. Being embodied means allowing that variability rather than overriding it with ideals.

The deeper thread running through all of this for me is trust. Trusting the body’s intelligence, trusting movement, and trusting that energy arises through participation, not perfection. Letting go of rigid expectations about how mornings should feel, how energy should behave, or how a “good yogi” should sit.

So now, when I wake up, unless I’m healing something specific, or my body needs rest, I get up. I move. I let life meet me in motion.