Eight Spirit Rituals To Start Your Day

A bad morning makes for a bad day. Waking up after pressing the snooze button five times and then rushing out of the house with no breakfast is no way to start your day. We all know that, but it’s much easier said than done! Most people have a tough time feeling motivated in the morning. If you want to have better mornings, but you just don’t know where to begin, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for eight spirit rituals to start your day.

The Perfect Morning

Everyone has a different opinion for what makes a perfect morning. Waking up before the sun rises to run five miles may work for your partner, but perhaps you prefer lighting a candle and listening to some music. Since all of us are unique, there isn’t one catch-all perfect morning. But there are some basic principles of how to start your day right.

If you want to have a good morning, you must connect with your spiritual core. Your spiritual core is where your true self is, where your life’s purpose resides. So, starting your day by connecting to your spiritual core will help you live your purpose each day. 

Another key to a great morning is a routine. A routine doesn't have to be extensive; it can be as simple as saying a prayer before breakfast. But these spirit rituals can transform your life. Consistency is the most important element, as we’ve said in a previous article about spiritual morning routines:

“Your waking hours are precious, and by utilizing this time with a spiritual morning routine, you get to set the tone for how you will show up in the world. Perfectionism isn’t the goal when it comes to your spiritual morning routine; consistency is. A spiritual morning routine will allow you to start each day with a positive outlook. You may not be able to control how your day will end, but you are in control of how it starts.”

Every morning, take at least a few minutes to connect to your spiritual core, however you’d like. Even if you don’t love schedules, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a meaningful spiritual morning routine. You can change it up from day to day. What you do doesn’t matter as much as how you do it.

The Skylight app is here to help you start your day off right. It’s free, and it has hundreds of spirit rituals to try. These include affirmation activities, journaling prompts, yoga flows, and guided prayers, all led by wellness experts. We’ll highlight just a handful of those in this article.

Morning Spirit Rituals: Affirmations and Journaling with Sade Jones

Affirmations are a great way to manifest goodness in your life, boost your self-esteem, and give you a sense of control. In “Spiritual Self-Care: Affirmations,” wellness coach Sade Jones shares ten of her favorite affirmations that you can listen to and repeat to yourself in the morning: 

• My life is a blessing.
• Spirit is always guiding me.
• I feel the power of divine love.
• My spirit is whole.
• I open my heart to the guidance of God.
• My spirit and courage are unwavering.
• My energies are in harmony with the universe.
• I am a beautiful soul.
• I am aligned with my higher purpose.
• I acknowledge God in every creation.

Journaling is another great way to start the day off feeling centered and hopeful. The spirit ritual “Journaling: Morning Routine” is also led by Sade Jones. Here’s why she loves journaling in the morning: 

“When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check social media and I check my emails and I scroll for a bit. And then after that, it's just go, go, go. Yes, I eventually journal and I eventually meditate, but I wanna get into the habit of promoting peace and stability first thing in the morning. I wanna give my first few minutes of being awake to God in the morning. And when I don't, I feel the difference. When I don't give Him those first few minutes, I feel frantic during the day. I'm a little more anxious than I wanna be. I'm not centered.”

Complete the spirit ritual in the app to access Sade Jones’s five morning journaling prompts. You can reuse these prompts each day, because every morning you wake up a different person than you were the day before.

Morning Spirit Rituals: Yoga with Rehl Clarke

If you like to start the day with movement and exercise, the free yoga flows on the Skylight app are calling your name! Rehl Clarke is a certified yoga instructor who uses movement as an invitation to connect with God. Three of her flows which are particularly suited for the morning are outlined here.

“Yoga for Devotion” is a 15-minute flow with some difficult poses and movements to wake you up and get your heart beating fast. The purpose of the flow is to commune with God. In the video, Rehl Clarke shares:

“Devotion is such a deep word and has so much meaning to it. In yoga, there is a common word that most yogis are familiar with called bhakti. Bhakti is the devotion to a supreme deity. Today our flow is going to be focused on being devoted within ourselves, and being devoted to God. There's a little quote I wanted to read. It says that, ‘Bhakti is devotional worship directed to one supreme deity. Bhakti involves cultivating a spirit of unconditional love.’ Yoga is all about love. God is all about love. And when we are devoted to God, we can feel God's love, and we can share that love with other people.”

A slightly less challenging option is “Yoga for Intentions,” a 13-minute flow. Incorporating this flow into your morning routine will help you set your daily intentions, as Rehl Clarke describes:

“Setting daily intentions with God is such a powerful thing because it can help us set goals, achieve goals, and to become a better person. Setting intentions can help us be happier, can help us overcome things. And especially when we set an intention with God, we are able to rely on God and turn to a higher power to set goals for ourselves that we can overcome. So, as we're practicing today, I want you to think of a daily intention that you can set today with you and with God that is going to carry you throughout this flow and throughout the rest of the week.”

“Yoga for Gratitude” is twenty-seven minutes, so it is great if you’re looking for something longer for your morning exercise. In this flow, you’ll use breathwork to connect to your center and express gratitude. Rehl Clarke shares:

“When we have gratitude in life, life is just way more enjoyable. It's fun. We have more of a positive outlook on life because we can take the little things, or the big things, and be grateful for them. When we incorporate God into that, and we are grateful for God and have gratitude for God, we can overcome our trials a little bit easier with the help of God by our side. Gratitude brings us happiness, peace, reassurance. And although gratitude isn't gonna cure all of our life problems, it can, for sure, help us overcome trials or difficulties that we are faced with.”

Morning Spirit Rituals: Prayer with Kelly Boys

Kelly Boys is a mindfulness trainer who shares over ten guided prayers on the Skylight app. Listening to these prayers is useful when you want some inspiration or when you’d like to pray with a specific intention. Morning prayer is a centering practice where you talk to your higher power and ask for help for the coming day. We’ve copied the transcripts of three of her guided prayers here.

Prayer for Blessing

Spirit, I need a blessing today. I ask for your presence to fill me and show me good things. I ask for a touch of grace in my life. And I ask for a blessing. I've experienced joys and challenges in my life, but in this moment, what I'd love most is a blessing of safety, of fullness, satisfaction, of guidance and protection, of beauty and joy. May I discover how deeply and truly I am held by your presence, held by the grace that surrounds me. May I be blessed in ways that allow me to bless others from the riches of the heart. May my heart overflow with this knowledge. And may it multiply in my life as I share it with others. I also pray for a blessing for a loved one, for an acquaintance, and for a stranger I may encounter today. Feeling an inner smile. I'm allowing this inner smile to radiate from my heart, and to help me feel interconnected with all of life as I open to receive this blessing.

A Prayer on Your Purpose

Spirit, I'd love to live a life of purpose that's aligned with my deepest values. Please help me to know what my deepest purpose is, the purpose that arises naturally as a calling in my life. If there's anywhere that I've gone off track, help me to reorient, come back on track and to find my purpose, knowing all the while, we're never truly off track and that each step we take is meaningful for our journeys and yet I long to be in tune with a song that is mine to sing, so I pause for this moment to listen, to open to presence, listening for what my calling is, breathing in, breathing out, and tuning in inwardly, listening for my calling for my purpose, noticing if a word or image arises. As I listen and feel my way into this inquiry, I open to the unknown future that's ahead of me. I commit to doing this practice of deep listening and I commit to act on what my inner knowing tells me. Listening to the guidance of Spirit, whether it's through nature, through this still small voice in my heart, through encouraging words of others. May this prayer for purpose bear fruit now and in the coming days and months.

A Prayer of Joy

Spirit, I long to be more deeply connected with a natural joy that arises in the heart. I can sometimes forget to even inquire or meditate with the natural joy that is placed as a birthright within me. Please help me to remember the feeling of joy, the feeling of happiness that springs right from the heart uncaused, that's natural and intrinsic to who I am. In this moment, I tune in inwardly and open to the possibility of joy springing naturally straight from the heart. When I find it difficult to tune in and connect with joy, help me to remember moments of deep bliss or moments of feeling really truly okay as I am, and may those memories help my heart open to the joy that's present right now in this moment, help me to welcome my sorrow, grief, sadness, knowing that as I welcome that more fully, I'll know joy more deeply. Help me to look for moments throughout my day where I can have tiny moments of pleasure or joy that I intentionally cultivate allowing this joy to grow in my heart naturally, living it, feeling it day to day.

Spirit Rituals for a Great Morning

Do you feel inspired to start a spiritual morning routine? With the Skylight app, you’ll never run out of new spirit rituals to try. And once you’ve stuck with a morning routine for a while, you may find that you actually look forward to waking up!