84 | My Morning Routine as an Herbalist/Nutritionist Working from Home

0:00 Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. So today, I wanted to answer a question that was submitted for my upcoming monthly Q&A call. This is a call that is open for people who are in a bunch of my different programs, and the idea is that people can submit questions about anything that's vaguely related to being in practice and, you know, that sort of thing. So the question was if I could share a little bit about my morning routine. And I was thinking, you know what, it might actually be good to share this more broadly because I have some thoughts on the topic that maybe will be helpful for other people.

0:44 So first of all, this is a kind of a sensitive subject for me because I am a morning person. I love mornings. I wake up ready to go. My brain is super fresh in the morning. It's my best time of day. And I know a lot of, you know, businessy productivity types of people are really into the morning routine and talking to people about their morning routines. And a lot of these people I know have kids, like small kids, and they've got these complex morning routines that take at least an hour or two. And I'm just like, what in the world? Do you have a nanny? Is your spouse or partner just 100% in charge of the children, while you do your morning routine?

1:30 Because I tell you what, as soon as anybody in the house is awake, especially if you're planning to have some nice quiet time, the first thing that happens in our house anyway is that somebody wakes up who's not normally up at that time. So anyway, I just feel like there's a lot of. Privilege and unrecognized labor that goes into making time available for a morning routine that maybe isn't accessible to everyone, and especially those who have caregiving responsibilities. So I want to answer this question two ways. One way is, if I were just living in a little utopia and I didn't have any caregiving responsibilities, my day was 100% my own without, you know, other commitments or things like that, what I would do would be, I would like to wake up.

2:19 I would like to start preparing my morning tea. And while it is steeping, I would like to do a meditation for 10 minutes and move my body for 10 minutes, like a stretching or yoga session. And then I would like to drink my tea while I journal or write or do something creative with my art supplies or something like that. And then I would like to eat breakfast. And then I would like to go for a walk with my dog. That would be, you know, again, without any outside influence, that's what I would be doing in the morning. And then maybe I'd come home and putter around and, you know, pick things up, clean up a little bit, whatever. In reality, in reality, what happens is I have two kids, they're homeschooled, they are here a lot.

3:03 And as soon as they wake up, I'm in sort of like, make everybody breakfast, figure out who needs to go to which class and help so-and-so with their homework that needs to be done by today and this, that, and the other. There's different crises and situations that need to happen. And I have work things that I need to do at some point during the day. The easiest time for me to do this work things is when the kids are asleep. And they usually sleep later than I do. So what actually happens is I get up and I try to get some work done in those early morning moments. If I'm up pretty early, I can usually do some mindfulness practice and move my body a little bit and get some work done. But that's not always what happens.

3:48 So anyway, typically I'm doing a little bit of work before breakfast. And then as soon as people start getting up and moving around, I'm making breakfast for me and whoever is awake. The one thing that I do consistently every single morning, rain or shine, sleet or snow, So I'm like the USPS over here is walk the dog. So instead of trying to be vaguely resentful and irritated that I don't have a normal morning routine, I have just shifted to say like, OK, the dog walk is my morning routine. That is my morning anchor. It does incorporate aspects of moving my body because I live in a very hilly town.

4:28 So, you know, there's a lot of a lot of up and down going on on the dog walk. Also a lot of sniffing, but still. So I do get to move my body. I do get to go outside and get some fresh air. And that's nice. Sometimes I'll listen to a book or a podcast while we're walking. But the main thing that I do in order to kind of. Set my day up, is there's two things that I do on the walk. One of them is that anytime I see anybody, I often walk through a university campus that's right near my house. And a lot of times, students are on their way to their first class or whatever. I don't know what they're doing, actually. They're wandering around campus when we're walking. And I see the maintenance people a lot. They're out driving around and doing whatever they do.

5:08 So anytime I walk past somebody or see them, I wave, I have a waving relationship with the maintenance people. I always try to think something nice about them. So I'll think like, you look amazing today or day, whatever. I just think I try to think something really nice about each person that I see. And for me, that just helps my day go better because I feel like I'm just really looking at each person I pass and thinking something good about them. That helps me feel better. So that's one thing I do. And then the other thing I do is that while I'm out walking the dog, because I'm picking up his poop anyway i have a bag so i try to pick up trash just a couple pieces of trash as i'm wandering around i don't live in like a filthy area with trash everywhere but there's always something you know water bottle or a whatever so i try to do that and i just feel like if i've done nothing else today i've thought some good things about people and i've, made the area that i live in just a teeny bit nicer for me and other people.

6:06 And so that's it. That's my entire morning routine. And it works for me. There will be a day, someday, maybe in like a decade or something, that I can have a more complicated and leisurely morning routine. But for right now, my 20 to 30-minute walk with my dog serves the purpose of helping me feel like, okay, even if that's the only thing I do all day, then I feel like I've done something good and it starts my day off in a way that I want it to start off. So that's my answer for whatever it's worth. I would love to hear about your morning routine or lack thereof if you too feel like it's hard to make it happen or maybe you don't have as much consistency, different days or different or whatever.

6:50 Maybe there's like a teeny tiny thing like my dog walk where you can just slide it in there and feel like it's a ritual that supports you. So that's my favorite refrain when working with clients and myself on these types of things is like, okay, how can we lower the bar so that it actually is doable and serves the purpose, which for me, the purpose of a morning routine is I just want to be intentional about how I'm approaching the day. So there you go. I hope that's helpful. Let me know if you have any questions that you would like me to answer here on the podcast. You can go to intheclinic.com and submit your questions there. Or you can go to camillefreeman.com and sign up for my newsletter, which is for practitioners. It goes out every Thursday.

7:34 And when you sign up for that, you'll get an email from me. You can respond to that if you like and ask a question for the podcast as well. Okay, I hope that was helpful. I will talk to you soon and I hope you have a great day. Bye.