How I make coffee my morning ritual
In this, the first of a regular series where we explore the rituals and routines of the people who inspire us most, we step inside the deliciously earthy home of Courtney Jade Rose.
Courtney is a yoga teacher (check out her beautiful lotus flow in the video at the end of the story), Ayurvedic practitioner and founder of the High Vibe Agency, a boutique consultancy specialising in bespoke wellness retreats, workshops and holidays. We first met Courtney when she was managing and teaching at Humming Puppy yoga studio in Sydney. Her magnetic energy, vast knowledge and insightful perspectives on life, happiness and of course, yoga, made her the first person we thought of when we planning this section. She also has an exquisite aesthetic we couldn’t wait to capture on film.
“Like so many people in this field, I dabbled with ‘Okay, what's the yogi thing to do every day? I should get up and chant and meditate and cover myself in oil and body brush,” Courtney says. “I tried all of those things and they just felt annoying and like another thing to do. I realised if I'm doing them just because I think I have to, then there's no spirituality there. There's no connection. There's no intuition.”
Courtney’s study in Ayurvedic teachings led her to a different morning ritual or “sadhana” as it’s known in the Ayurvedic tradition. “The wisest spiritual thinkers will always celebrate the teacher within you beyond the teacher outside of you more than anything else,” Courtney says. “It's so much ancient wisdom around listening to yourself that ultimately the teacher within knows better than anything you'll ever read.”
“Ultimately the teacher within knows better than anything you'll ever read.”
Inspired to listen to herself, Courtney found her own groove. “I started to ask what do I need? What do I like? I'd already been through that whole thing that coffee is no good for you, that I should be having hot water and lemon or apple cider vinegar, but the truth is, I hate those things, they don't taste very good! I don't enjoy them. They make me feel a bit weird. So, I thought, ‘Well, I love coffee, so how can I make that feel like a ritual and not something that I'm doing just to get me started?’”
Courtney’s Daily Ritual
“I always start my day the same way. I wake up, enjoy the silence of the house. I go and tongue scrape like any good Ayurvedic practitioner will do, and then I brew some coffee in a French press. I do that deliberately because I like the ritual of putting the coffee in a pot, of pouring the hot water over it, stirring, of pressing it down.”
“While the coffee's brewing, I go to a little space that I've created. It's probably not what most people would think of when you think of an altar space, although admittedly it does have a giant crystal on it! But it's free from a lot of the paraphernalia that I think people think of when you hear the word altar. I light a stick of incense and then I put that in my incense holder – just a cup that was made for me by my best friend that I filled with dirt to hold the incense stick so it's nothing fancy, but very loved.”
“And then I sit and pour my coffee, watch the steam rise off the coffee. I add a little bit of cream to my favourite cup and I take that down to the couch. I watch the incense smoke play and I sit.”
“I sit still and quiet and drink the coffee, and then I’ll usually write after that. At the moment I'm using Elena Brower's ‘Practice You’ journal, although that's a very conscious choice. Always the same. And I just I write and write and then if I have time maybe I’ll read as well.”
“If there's time I might practice. I might move and that could look very different every day. Sometimes I need just a little bit of restorative movement. Sometimes actually I need to fire up into a proper vinyasa and get myself going and then that's it, I go on with my day. It's simple and easy and it doesn't require full body massage or anything like that. It feels authentic to me.”
Courtney practices lotus yoga, a fun, floaty style that almost feels like you’re dancing. “Lotus is a vinyasa-based practice that works with the energy centres of the body and is designed to move the energy up the chakras,” Courtney says. “It has a real dance element to it – you don’t have to be able to dance – but the idea is that you find a real flow in the body and move from shape to shape and loosen up and realise it’s not all that serious, and that there’s fun to be had even in the healing.”
Here Courtney shares a simple flow you can repeat a few times through on both sides to reset, recenter and lift your mood.
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