Fleabag’s Sian Clifford’s 30-second morning routine is especially worth doing during lockdown

With quarantine continuing for the next six weeks, our days don’t have the routine they once did. It’s not unusual to wake up and feel a little disorientated; our new ‘normal’ isn’t normal at all. Starting the day on the right note, as it happens, is trickier than it might have been. But Fleabag actress Sian Clifford has shared some advice we can all get on board with      

Sian Clifford is familiar to many thanks to her brilliant breakout role as Claire in the acclaimed Fleabag, and on an episode of the Thanks A Million with Angela Scanlon podcast, she’s revealed a little more about how she centres herself before a new day begins – something that is of a real benefit during lockdown.

Sharing the new morning routine she has developed, the actor, alongside talking about the show’s success and the pressure that comes with that, says she takes around 30 seconds each morning to do an emotional and physical self-scan; a “check-in” with herself.

“I’ll always have a little check-in with myself,” she says. “I might do that in bed. I might do that whilst I’m having some warm water. I might do that as a meditation. So that’s one of the ingredients. I just take a moment to notice how I’m feeling.

“Before I check my phone, before I engage with anyone or anything outside of myself, I just do all sorts of scans. It might be – well, it will be – all of these, but a physical scan, an emotional scan and just noticing what’s going on with me.”

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A post shared by ANGELA SCANLON (@angelascanlon) on Apr 21, 2020 at 1:10am PDT

Consistency, she tells Scanlan, is key to making this work even in lockdown, leaving room to be really honest with yourself about how you’re genuinely feeling – and learning more about your triggers.

“I find the more regularly I do that, and I’m all about consistency over, say, doing this once a week for an hour, I think it’s better if you do have these tiny little moments throughout your day. And when you start doing that, you open up a dialogue with yourself that’s quite profound, to be honest.

“You start learning things about yourself. You start noticing more subtle things and how your body’s communicating with you. That’s what I do, not in a heavy way. It’s just a really light 30 seconds. Sometimes I’ll take longer. Or I’ll move my body in some way or gaze out the window.

“I find it so therapeutic, just observing the flow of nature is just so important for your mental health… it allows you to let go of the petty things that really, really don’t matter. I’m doing that and it actually really helps calm and ground into my day.”

Main photograph: @THR