By: Brent McBlain
The Golden Hour
Every morning, before caffeine or screens, the body performs its own quiet miracle. In the first hour after waking, your nervous system and hormones move through a natural transition — cortisol rises to mobilize energy, testosterone and oxytocin peak, and the vagus nerve begins its daily rhythm of connecting and calming.
This is the golden hour for healing: a short, sacred window when your defenses haven’t yet assembled, and your authentic emotional self can still be heard.
Only when we are in a calm physiological state can we convey cues of safety to another.” — Stephen W. Porges, The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory
During this hour, the brain hasn’t yet shifted into the analytical mode that organizes, filters, or avoids. The body is still whispering the truth it processed through the night — the grief, the longing, the fragments of memory. This is when trauma work, reflection, or simply sitting in quiet presence is most accessible.
The Golden Hour and Trauma Therapy
Therapies that rely on body awareness — like EMDR, somatic experiencing, and other trauma-informed approaches — are most effective when the nervous system is open and less defended. The first hour after waking offers precisely that. During this time, the brain’s limbic centers are more accessible, and the prefrontal cortex — the part that intellectualizes, rationalizes, or suppresses emotion — has not yet taken over. This is why EMDR sessions scheduled early in the day often access deeper emotional memory with less resistance. The golden hour becomes the bridge between the sleeping and waking mind — a time when memory, sensation, and emotion still speak the same language.
“If our nervous system detects safety, then it’s no longer defensive. When it’s no longer defensive, the circuits of the autonomic nervous system support health, growth, and restoration.” — Stephen W. Porges
When we align therapy with this natural openness — before caffeine, before performance mode — we are working with the body’s rhythm rather than against it.
Why Before Coffee
Caffeine is not the enemy, but it changes the chemistry of access. It raises cortisol, accelerates heart rate, tightens muscles, and can push a trauma-sensitive nervous system into mobilization before safety is established.
“Mindfulness requires feeling safe. Because, if we don’t feel safe, we are neurophysiologically evaluative of our setting, which precludes feeling safe.” — Stephen W. Porges
For many survivors of high ACEs or chronic stress, coffee transforms emotional openness into rigidity or irritability. It can close the gateway to tears — the very language of release. By waiting until after the golden hour for caffeine, you allow the parasympathetic system to do its first task of the day: reconnect you with yourself.
Hormones and the Morning Window
Men: Testosterone peaks in early morning and declines 20–25% by late afternoon. This natural surge supports emotional strength and repair if it isn’t overridden by excess sympathetic arousal. For older men, whose hormonal amplitude is lower, delaying stimulants helps preserve balance and gentleness.
“Testosterone levels were 20–25% lower at 1600 h than at 0800 h.” — Brambilla et al., 200
Women: Women experience their own morning hormonal rise — a subtler rhythm of cortisol and testosterone that interacts with menstrual or menopausal cycles. This early calm allows the endocrine and nervous systems to synchronize before external demands. Avoiding caffeine until later reduces anxiety spikes and supports steadier energy across the day.
The Polyvagal Perspective
The vagus nerve acts as the bridge between physiology and emotion — shifting between defense and connection. The golden hour is when the ventral vagal system (safety and social engagement) is easiest to access.
“If our nervous system detects safety, then it’s no longer defensive. When it’s no longer defensive, then the circuits of the autonomic nervous system support health, growth, and restoration.” — Stephen W. Porges
By beginning your day here — in safety, not stimulation — you prime your entire system for connection, compassion, and regulation.
How to Practice “Rise and Cry”
- 1. Wake quietly. Sit or stand near light or nature. No screens, no coffee.
- 2. Listen to the body. Notice sensations before thoughts — heaviness, warmth, tears, or stillness.
- 3. Breathe and allow. Gentle breaths or stretching help the vagus nerve bridge safety and activation.
- 4. If tears come, welcome them. This is the body integrating the night’s work.
- 5. Close with care. After the wave, have your coffee, journal, or step into the day — grounded instead of armored.
Walking in the Forest: Expanding the Golden Hour
The forest walk extends the golden hour by shifting the body into deeper regulation. As one study found: after forest immersion participants showed significantly lower salivary cortisol, a decrease in electro-dermal activity (a sympathetic marker), and an increase in heart-rate variability (a vagal marker) (Frontiers in Psychology, 2024).
Breathing forest air means inhaling not only oxygen-rich fresh air, but also tree-emitted phytoncides — aromatic compounds that research suggests support mood, immune function, and nervous system calm (New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 2023). In the golden hour, where your body is already primed by hormonal rise and nervous system openness, the forest environment deepens access: it helps your body settle into safety, slows defensiveness, and lets the emotional material — the ache, the loneliness, the small tears — surface with less resistance.
Stephen Porges reminds us, “Our nervous system is not merely within us; it is between us and our environment.” This reciprocal relationship with nature means that when we walk among trees in the early light, we are not only breathing forest air — we are being breathed by it. It co-regulates us, restores balance, and gently invites the body to feel.
Why It Matters
When we work with our daily biology — cortisol awakening, hormonal peaks, and vagal readiness — we reclaim the body’s original timing for healing.
“Neuroception evaluates risk in the environment without awareness. It is not a cognitive process; it is a neural process.” — Stephen W. Porges
The nervous system already knows when to open. “Rise and Cry” simply honors that wisdom: to feel before you think, to connect before you caffeinate, and to start each day not by pushing forward, but by coming home.