Intro: You're Not Falling Apart

Jody Brooks 0:01

You're not falling apart, you're waking up. If you're somewhere between 35 and 65, life feels like it's cracking open, the identity you built no longer fits, and the future feels terrifying, nobody around you seems to get it. Welcome, I'm Jodie Brooks, and this is Messy Midlife. Because this isn't a crisis, it's a calling to connect. Hello

Welcome & Recap

Jody Brooks 0:29

and welcome back. Firstly, thank you for being here today in this space and this moment of awareness. Today we're talking about the morning. Now before you say Jody, I'm not a morning person, I hear you. And I want to be clear, this episode is not about becoming someone who bounds out of bed at 5.30, glowing with purpose. This is something about much quieter and actually much more powerful. But first, last episode, how did you get on with those four questions? If you haven't listened to episode six yet, pop back when you can because those four simple daily check-in questions are the foundation that everything we're building today sits upon. And if you tried them, even once, even messily, well done. Genuinely. Asking how do I feel right now sounds simple, but it requires something most of us haven't been taught to do. Pause. Turn inward for a moment before turning outward to the day. That pause, that tiny deliberate pause, is everything, and in this episode it's about placing that pause at the very start of your

Your Morning Routine & The Launchpad

Jody Brooks 1:40

day. What does your morning routine actually look like right now? For most people in midlife juggling work, family, aging parents, health stuff, the endless fullness of a full life. The morning is either a mad scramble, alarm, phone, news, email, coffee, rush, go, or it's a kind of low level dread, the weight of the day landing on your chest before your feet even touch the floor. Neither of those is your fault. They just mean that you haven't found what I call the launch pad. Before any rocket goes anywhere, there's a countdown, a deliberate pause, before energy fires. The launch pad isn't the journey, it's the preparation for the journey. It sets the direction. And as I mentioned in episodes 1, 3 and 6, before you set any direction, you need to know where you're starting from. And that is what the morning launch pad is. Your morning is your launch pad. It's the starting location in your personal navigation system. How you begin the day sets the emotional and mental tone for everything that follows. If the first thing you do is reach for your phone and absorb someone else's news, someone else's urgency, the doom and gloom of the world, the overnight emails, while your nervous system registers that as a threat before you've even had chance to choose your own focus. It doesn't know it's Tuesday, it thinks there's a sabre toothed tiger at the door. But if even for five minutes you do something that signals safety, stillness and self-connection first, the whole day can feel very different. I'm sure you've got in the car late for where you're going, every bit of you in a rush, and it feels like every slow driver is on the road, the traffic is worse than normal, every light is red. Now it may well be so, but because you're already on alert it feels much worse than it would normally. And when you get there you burst in, apologising, still rushing, consumed by the stress, and so the day continues. I want to be honest about what my own morning practice actually looked like when I started, because I think the polished version helps nobody.

Jody's Own Messy Morning Practice

Jody Brooks 3:58

When I first began this properly, during what I now call the messy five years, after the toilet cubicle moment, after I'd stepped off the wrong bus, my mornings were chaos. 5 a.m. starts, long drives, a busy diary, back to back appointments, people depending on me, 12 to 14 hour days and a head full of noise, always rushing and never really feeling like I got there. So I started, embarrassingly small when I look back. I would set an alarm ten minutes earlier than I needed, make a cup of coffee, and made one, not a grabbed one on the go or in a flask for the car, and made it with intention, and I'd sit at my dining room table and hold it for about four breaths. That was the whole practice. Just a four breath pause. No special technique, just four breaths, and my hands comforting my cup of intention. And slowly something shifted. Something quiet, just that tiny act of saying before the day has me, I get a moment, a space, a gap, a choice.

Mornings by the Sea

Jody Brooks 5:08

Now, I live by the sea in St. Leniz on Sea, and I want to tell you what a real morning looks like here. There's a particular quality to the early coastal light, soft and salt pale, like the air is still deciding what kind of day it wants to be. Some mornings there's a mist sitting on the water, some mornings the tide is out, and there's just a huge flat stretch of silver. Sometimes I would carry my coffee to the open back door and stand in the air for a moment and just notice the light, the sound, whether there's a wind, what my body feels like standing in it. I'm not meditating in any grand sense, I'm just noticing, and in that noticing I'm meeting myself at the start of the day rather than being swept out to sea by it. This is awareness in practice, the intention to create a pause, a space between stimulus and response. Okay, I said the M word, don't panic,

Rethinking Meditation

Jody Brooks 6:12

I want to say something about the word meditation, because I know it puts people off. If you're anything like I was, you hear it and picture a perfectly cross-legged figure in a silent room, completely emptied of thought, and think that is not for me. I tried that once and my brain went straight to the shopping list. Here's the truth, and I mean this. For our purpose, meditation is simply noticing. It's the deliberate practice of turning your attention inward and observing what's there. Thoughts, feelings, sensation, none of them is wrong. You're not trying to empty your mind, you're just looking and paying attention to what's there. And if it's the shopping list, then noticing that is still awareness. And that act of looking without judgment, without trying to fix what you find, is where awareness grows its muscle. You don't need a cushion, you don't need a nap, you need a few minutes and a willingness to look. An intention. This is the part I really want you to stay with because it's something I didn't understand for a long time, and I think it might be one of the most important ideas in this whole series.

Your Body Knows First

Jody Brooks 7:27

Your body knows things before your mind does. Seriously, your body has been sending you signals for your entire life. It was sending you signals in the moment of disconnection I talked about in episode four, the fraying ropes, the tight chest in the doctor's waiting room, your body already knew something was wrong long before your conscious mind caught up. And the morning is when the body's messages are at their most honest. You haven't yet built up the day's armour, you haven't yet been performing, and in those first few minutes after waking, before you're fully in the social role of the day, there's a brief, quiet window where the body is still speaking clearly. So here's what I want you to start noticing. Where is the tension? Jaw clenched, tightness across the chest, stomach already churning. These are not just physical sensations, they're information. Your body is telling you something about what's sitting beneath the surface. Where is the heaviness? Some mornings you wake up with a weight that you can't explain, not quite sadness, not quite dread, just heaviness. That's your body carrying something that hasn't yet been named. Where is the lightness, if any, because sometimes not always, but sometimes the body wakes up with a quiet, low level of aliveness that's worth noticing too. None of these sensations need to be solved at seven in the morning or five as it was for me. They just need to be acknowledged, like checking in with a friend. You don't have to fix them, you just say I see you, I hear you. That acknowledgement, that tiny act of meeting yourself honestly, changes the whole day. Now a good friend of mine once described me as crystals and yoga meet science. So here's the science behind why this whole process works. When you take slow, deliberate breaths, particularly when you let the exhale be a little longer than the inhale, you're directly activating the vagus nerve. This is the primary nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, your body's rest and digest state, as opposed to the fight and flight state that stress triggers. Stimulating the vagus nerve through your breath literally tells your nervous system we are safe, we can be present, we can think clearly. And here's what I find truly remarkable about it. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in your entire body. It begins in the brainstem and winds its way down through your neck, into your chest, passing your heart, lungs, through your diaphragm, deep into the abdomen, connecting to the stomach, the gut, the kidneys. It is literally a physical thread running from your brain to your core. And here is the part that stopped me in my tracks when I first read it. Between 80 and 90% of the signals travelling along that nerve go upward, from the body to the brain, not the other way around. Your gut, your heart, your lungs are constantly reporting back, sending data. Your body is not just responding to what your mind decides, it's actively informing it. Which means when you feel that unexplicable dread in the pit of your stomach, or that tightness in your chest before you can even name what you're worried about, that is not you being irrational. That is your body sending a very real signal up that nerve directly to your brain. And when you take a slow, deliberate breath, especially with a long exhale, you are physically changing the signal. You are in the most literal sense talking back to your nervous system. This is physiology, science. Not just yoga, crystals and meditation. Your breath is one of the very few automatic body functions that you can consciously control, which does make it a direct dial into your nervous system. Even five minutes of deliberate breath and stillness in the morning has measurable effects on cortisol, the stress hormone within the first few weeks of constant practice.

The Science: Vagus Nerve & Breath

Jody Brooks 11:55

Which brings me back to the three breath method. Simple enough to remember at seven in the morning when your brain is not at full capacity, not seven steps, just three, because this is about intention, not perfection. So create the space with your favourite beverage, then begin. Breath one is for the body. Close your eyes if that helps, one slow breath, and as you do so quickly scan from head to feet. Where's the tension? Where's the heaviness? Where are you holding? You don't have to change anything, remember, you're just simply noticing. Breath two is for the mind, another slow breath, and you're asking what's already running up there this morning? Busy, quiet, anxious, foggy, no fixing, just an honest look at the weather inside and what the current forecast is. Breath three is for the need. One more breath, and this time the question is what do I need today? Not want, but need. Sometimes a word comes immediately rest, courage, gentleness. Sometimes nothing comes, that's fine. But the act of asking means you're beginning your day as someone who is listening to themselves with intention. Three breaths, maybe ninety seconds, and yet the information in those ninety seconds can orient your entire day.

When Mornings Are Chaos: Alternatives

Jody Brooks 13:32

Some of you are probably listening to this in a lunch break, or last thing at night because the morning genuinely is chaos. I'm not here to add guilt to your already full plate. This podcast is not more toxic positivity or a miracle ten step program to change your life in a week. It's a journey to create the space. Set the right starting point, the route and the destination will follow. I talk a lot about the iceberg. The tip is just the visible part, and it's what lies beneath the surface that counts. The same is true of all these practices. It's not the method you can see, it's the intention working quietly below the surface that really matters. So if more time in the morning doesn't work for you, or sitting quietly with a drink simply isn't possible, try one of these variations. Just three breaths in bed before you start the day, before you reach for your phone. Thirty seconds, that counts. Stand somewhere for two minutes before the day starts, a window, a doorstep, or even outside before going into work. Just notice the air and your body in it. Attach it to something you already do. Three breaths in the shower, on the walk to the station. You're not adding time, you're adding consciousness to time. The practice is not the method, the practice is the intention. Any of these done with genuine tension is a morning practice. Or if it's done during the day, it's still an awareness practice. Before I close, this one's important. You'll miss some days, some mornings the day will be on fire before you've even taken a single breath. You'll go a whole week without stopping, and then you'll go back to it. And that's completely fine. Remember this is about intention, not perfection. What we're building is a faithful practice, not a flawless one. The sat nav doesn't scold you when you've gone off route, it just recalculates, and you do the same. Three breaths, any morning, even a broken morning. That is enough. That is the practice. This week, just one morning, before you do anything else, before you check the phone, before the day has you, take three breaths. Ask your body, your mind, and your need. You don't have to write anything down, you don't have to get it right, you just have to pause, look and listen. And if you want to go a little further, bring the four questions from episode six into it. How do I feel right now? What am I grateful for? What would make today good? What truth do I want to learn today? Ask them after the three breaths while the drink is still warm. That is the whole complete morning practice. Five minutes. You'll feel it not immediately, but faithfully over time.

Next Episode Preview: Christophe Morrow

Jody Brooks 16:46

Next episode, I'm bringing you someone whose story stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it. His name's Christoph Morrow. He's a Navy veteran who came home from service carrying things most of us can barely imagine. PTSD, Tourette syndrome, and a life that had fractured in ways that seemed irreparable, and through his own fierce, unglamorous, hard won journey of awareness, he became an author. What I want you to hold between now and then is this practice we've been building, these small morning moments of noticing, three breaths, the willingness to turn and look. It's the same foundation Christoph found his way back through. Different circumstances, completely different scale, but the same essential act being willing to stop and ask what's actually here. That is what awareness can do, not just in quiet mornings by the sea, in the darkest moments a human being can face.

Connect With Jody

Jody Brooks 17:49

Before I go, one more thing, and this one is personal. If anything in this episode has stirred something up in you, if you've had a moment of recognition, a question, or just want to share what your mornings actually look like right now, I would genuinely love to hear from you. Not in a comment box, not in a like or a share your actual voice. At the top of the show notes you'll see a button that says connect with Jodi. Click it and you can leave me a message or a voicemail directly from whatever app you're listening on right now without going anywhere else. Tell me what your mornings look like, tell me what shifted or what hasn't yet. Tell me what you need. I listen to every single one and they genuinely shape where this podcast goes next. Your voice matters. This is a conversation, not a broadcast. So until next time, stay curious, keep noticing, keep listening, and keep coming back to yourself. Thank you for spending this time with me on Messy Midlife. If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear it today. You can find the show notes below and more resources at authenticcoaching.me. And just a little gentle reminder, Messy Midlife is here for information, reflection and personal growth. It isn't a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or any other professional healthcare support. If you have concerns about your physical or mental health, please reach out to a qualified professional. Until next time, take good care of yourself. And remember, midlife might be messy, but it's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect.