A Judean Morning Routine in Israel - Jeremy Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

my very first moments of the day are quiet it's dark outside before sunrise and my wife and six children they're still sleeping the first thing i do in the morning is wash my hands it's an ancient judean practice that's meant to set an intention for the day my first act is purifying my hands work today should be aimed toward hired living that's why the blessing is al-nutilatya dying at the raising of the hands not washing the hands we want to elevate our actions to our higher aims then i dress myself in exercise clothes not only to save time but to send a message to my body to prepare for action first the right shoe then the left starting the day on the right foot and starting the process of waking up from the slavery of morning grogginess for me coffee is key in the morning i'm waking up early and i bait myself with a cup of sweet hot coffee to help me get out of bed you shouldn't tyrannize yourself if you wake up early reward yourself give yourself a treat something to help you get out of bed incentivize yourself every morning though i take my spoon and i scrape off some of the sugar i learned this practice from the pia sets nareby the rabbi of the warsaw ghetto he taught while you're drinking sweet coffee for your body enable your soul just a little bit and take away some of the sugar a small victory for your higher self to start your day for the last year or so since corona i've broken from the orthodox or community practice synagogues are closed so from the get-go in the morning i put my talit into filling on wrapped in a talit with filling wrapped tightly around my arm and crowned on my head it's like i'm cloaked in good it's like being hugged by god and for a moment the infinite and unseeable god is somehow close one villain plays close to my heart the other one on my head straight between my eyes these actions this practice is a form of meditation the box between my eyes aligning my vision in my aspirations with my higher self connecting what i know in my head all the way down to my heart through my hands into my actions a jew lives in a covenant a relationship with god wrapping my fingers that's like my wedding ring my everyday commitment and as we put them we recite the eternal words of the prophet hosea i will betroth you to me forever i will betroth you to me with righteousness and justice with love kindness and mercy i will betroth you to me with emunah faith and you will know hashem then i journal i start my day clearing my mind perhaps a thought an idea or dream came to me at night and i don't want to lose it i have verses mantras like life guidances that are on the first page of my journal just glancing at the phrases for a few minutes aligns me with who i want to be and how i want to live waking up in the morning clarifying your thoughts into words is powerful instead of stumbling into your day you plan out your day and there are three questions you need to answer what do you need to do today what do you want to do today and who do you want to be today if you do that before your day your day will be profoundly different than just snoozing your morning away and stumbling into your day just reacting to whatever hits you if you want to understand more about judean prayer in the morning and meditation and how to start your day you can check out my free ebook called the judean art of waking up hey i can finally talk because my kids aren't sleeping it but i just wanted to show you how dark it is outside right now and right now actually the truth is with the human eye you can already see that the sky is starting to change now a little bit but this is the most special time of the day before the sunrise to not allow the sun to wake us up but that we proactively take control of our time take control of our lives and we wake the sun up and that is the beginning of freedom then i take time to learn to read i try to always be reading but the default in the morning is just to learn the parsha to learn the torah portion reading learning it's what we all know we should be doing but once my kids wake up and the day starts pulling me in a million directions it's just not possible the focus that i have in the morning when everything is quiet is so much better than any other time [Music] now i'm finally out of the house i can just uh show you this is the way we're meant to wake up to actually watch the sun rise and this is the time that i pray for myself for my family for our fellowship for israel for the world but it is to awaken the new day and there's something about our eyes watching the sunrise that gives me at least a certain burst of energy a certain moment of inspiration it's like i'm free i woke myself up i didn't let the sunlight wake me up i took charge of my time took control of my life and now i'm awakening the day that's the way it's meant to be so now you can see the sunrise is bursting over the mountains of jordan here in the mountains of judea and that is a beautiful way to start our day all right the next stage is i'm suited up it's a pretty chilly morning here in the mountains of judea but i got my gloves i got my earmuffs i have my earphones and i go for about a 20 minute run and usually what i do then is i'm listening maybe i'm listening to a previous fellowship session that i want to really enter into my heart maybe i'm listening to jordan peterson maybe i'm listening to a good torah class i'm listening to something interesting so while i'm running i'm also learning and that's a great use of time so here's the thing about the morning run it's cold outside right now i definitely don't want to be doing this my body doesn't want to be doing this i mean the body sort of un untamed untrained it's like jabba the hutt it just wants to sloth around not move stay away from pain get away from suffering just comfort relax we're slaves to that and so in the morning we have to break free and actually take control get a little bit out of our comfort zone and go running get the body flowing get the blood flowing and according to the neurological study that i'm familiar with you need about 15 to 20 minutes to really break a sweat and to really let the active ingredients in our minds come out dopamine serotonin endorphins all of that help us focus help us feel good and they can all be activated naturally through exercise so every morning 20 minutes listen when the weather's really miserable so i have an elliptical inside and instead of listening to the fellowship in the mountains i can listen to something or watch something on my phone but 20 minutes of physical activity is an absolute must for me all right friends i just finished my run and now i'm by our pool and probably what's the most important part of my morning routine and that is immersing myself in this freezing freezing cold water and so there's an ancient judean tradition called the mikvah and what's happened over the last 2000 years is the mikveh has turned into sort of a warmish pool in the basement with fluorescent lights an elderly man eating tamtam crackers but the original mikvah was in the jordan river it was in the waterfalls of engetti the water is freezing the water comes from the german mountains and the natural mikvah was immersing yourself in cold water now in recent years i've discovered the incredible benefits of cold exposure therapy now i'm a person that kind of just wakes up and i usually have sort of a bad feeling maybe an anxious feeling a nervous feeling a heavy feeling and in some ways that's my body saying something is going to go wrong it's just like a like in a mode of being nervous and maybe for thousands of years that really helped me protect myself from tigers and snakes but today it's just annoying and who wants to live with that feeling by putting yourself into freezing cold water your body actually something terrible is happening to it i mean falling into freezing cold water 10 000 years ago that's the end of you you die your body and your primitive brain they don't really know much more trauma than entering into freezing cold water and if you stay in long enough your brain sends out everything it can to help you survive falling into cold water it's like tricking your brain serotonin and dopamine endorphins everything is sent out to help you survive you start breathing really deeply and you oxygenate your body and then what happens is when you come out your body was like we thought something bad was gonna happen and we were nervous something bad really happened you were in freezing cold water and then you come out and your body's like oh we survived and that bad feeling it turns off and the pain and the kind of discomfort that you feel in the cold water that's just a purifying process that's how i interpret the feeling now it's energizing it's empowering it's purifying and perhaps that really is the secret of the ancient mikvah helping us really reset our minds and start our day strong because let me tell you we don't just go out of egypt once a year on passover we need to get out of egypt every single day and we're locked inside our bodies and my body looks at this water and it does not want to go in and then i reassert control and something beyond my body call it my soul my mind my higher self my spirit overcomes my body and i take control again i liberate myself from my body as i go into the water and when my body's calling me to go out of the water i stay in the water once again reasserting my control and coming out of the water after three or four minutes you feel like a million bucks and that's an amazing way to start your day okay so i just got out of the freezing cold water it's so cold i mean i woke up this morning and there's frost on my windshield so the water has just been um just had time to just get ice cold overnight here in the mountains and when i get out of the water i was in there for a little more than three minutes now i come out and my body is so grateful to be out of the cold water and then right at that moment right as i'm kind of warming myself up with my towel and my body feels just so grateful to be out of the water that's when i align my thoughts in my mind and my heart and i just have moments of gratitude where i i give thanks for my life for my family for today for all the blessings i have in my life and it's really the only time where i feel like my body my soul my spirit my heart my words my intentions they're all fully aligned in gratitude and let me tell you how could you start your day better than that shalom my name is jeremy gimpel a few months ago we started an online seminar teaching life-changing biblical wisdom revealed from the original hebrew and straight from the mountains of judea with global instability on the rise more and more people are turning to god realizing now they don't exactly know where to look for guidance the bible says the guidance will come from the land of israel what started as an online seminar has grown into a global fellowship with hundreds of members from over 30 countries we are participating in fulfilling prophecy as we learn the bible through the eyes of prophecy with a focus on what it's telling about us in our lives today what you will discover is that the wisdom transmitted thousands of years ago is speaking directly to us in our time right now instead of learning the bible as a religion it's the torah of israel the living guidance of god so please join us for our next online gathering and get access to the full library of teachings that the land of israel fellowship is offering join now and get an audio series on the prophecy encoded in the book of joshua absolutely for free just click on the link below or email fellowship at the land of israel.com i don't know how you found this video or what compelled you to click on that link but i don't believe in coincidence and i would encourage you to take the next step on your journey toward the land of israel i hope to see with the land of israel fellowship shalom you