Starting your day off with meditation can help you focus, provide clarity, lower anxiety, and help to quell the urge to rush through your day. Instead, we start the day with intention and attentiveness to being present. 

You can do the following morning meditation on your own or with others. The goal is to intentionally hold space. After the meditation is finished, it is helpful to write down anything that may have emerged while meditating. 

Sitting in stillness and silence is a discipline one must learn and practice. Starting your day with twenty minutes of meditation is ideal, but most of us need to work our way up to that amount of time. Try starting with five minutes on a timer and adding one minute a day until you are at twenty minutes. But also know that any increment of time is a worthwhile endeavor. So if you are able to spend five, ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes in the morning, that is great. Each of us will have a time that works best for us. 

The meditation consists of two parts. Start by praying the Lord’s prayer and then continue with the Be Still prayer taught to us by Fr. Richard Rohr.  

Part One | Modified Lord’s Prayer

The God who meets us in the stillness.
Let Your name remain holy.
Bring about Your kingdom.
Manifest Your will here on earth, as it is manifest in heaven.
Give us each day that day’s bread—no more, no less.
And forgive us our debts. 
As we forgive those who owe us something.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Part Two | Richard Rohr’s Be Still Prayer

Step 1 | Breath in for five seconds; breathe out for five seconds and then say, “Be still and know that I am God.”
Step 2 | Breath in for five seconds; breathe out for five seconds and then say, “Be still and know that I am.”
Step 3 | Breath in for five seconds; breathe out for five seconds and then say, “Be still and know.”
Step 4 | Breath in for five seconds; breathe out for five seconds and then say, “Be still.”
Step 5 | Breath in for five seconds; breathe out for five seconds and then say, “Be.”
Step 6 | Breath in for five seconds; breathe out for five seconds. While sitting in silence, repeat the breathing until the end of the timer.
Step 7| Once the timer goes off, close your time by saying “Amen.”