Build a moment of pause into your morning, before the day begins. Find a way to just be, before words, concepts, plans, or daily demands enter the picture.
Keep electronic devices off or in airplane mode overnight until you have completed your morning practices.
Feel the texture of this early hour of the day. Go outside if you can: Stand, feel your feet on the earth, look up at the sky, feel the temperature of the air, notice the quality of the light.
Bring attention into the simple activities of morning routines - practice being fully with them. Enjoy them.
Body Scan: Awaken into the home of your body - tune into your breath and move your awareness into each part of your body for a moment, just to see what is there today, like switching on a light in each room of your house. This kind of practice is known formally as a Body Scan, in which we move our attention and awareness gradually through the body. It can be done as a full, formal practice, or as a brief, informal scan. Some people like to do a short body scan practice in bed upon waking. If this practice is new to you (or even if not), you may wish to do the full 45-minuted guided Body Scan practice below at least once during your Vigils week in order to become familiar with it. You might then incorporate a brief scan into your waking routine each morning.
Our bodies are made up of the same elements that make up the Earth and the stars. We are an integral part of the cosmos, and the cosmos can be found within our infinite inner depths. That unity of our individual lives with all that is feels somehow closer to us when we sleep and dream, where it lies beneath the conscious surface of our waking lives. The significance of a Vigils practice is to build a bridge between those two worlds of awareness - the world in which we are intimately woven into the web of the universe, and the world in which we get carried down the rabbit hole of daily demands. They are, after all, the very same world, it is only our splintered awareness that splits them apart. A body scan practice upon waking can be that bridge - our waking attention and awareness emerging from the unified wholeness of the dark, silent cosmos within our depths, into the home of the body that will carry us through the day ahead.
