Take Your Morning Coffee Outside!

Drinking your morning coffee outside is one of many small ways to rewild your life and connect with nature. Not all changes we make to add nature back into our lives are large changes. A series of smaller changes can accomplish large things.

Personal Rewilding is, in part, about making conscious decisions that elevate our daily routines to something more meaningful. One easy option is to consider taking your morning coffee outside – or tea, water, whatever your ritual may be!

Take Your Morning Coffee Outside - the surprising benefits of taking your coffee in nature.

Vary Your Routines

When taken inside, our morning routines are built on a sense of constancy that rarely varies. The setting, the weather, our comfort, even the direction of our thoughts, tends to follow the same pattern. We slip into worldly concerns, anxieties, personal dilemmas…

Having your morning coffee outside establishes variety. Every day outside is new or different in some way. It may be sunny or cloudy; hot, comfortable, or tepid; breezy or calm; humid or dry. 

There will undoubtably be something different to see, smell, and hear. Sunlight on treetops, clouds colored by the sunrise, the scent of dewed earth, birdsong in the garden, the sound of rain – each of these can provide a new channel for your morning thoughts, a chance to reset your routine.

Allow your mind to awaken in a new way – the fragrance of coffee, the feel of fresh air on the skin, the sound of the world waking up. It feels a bit like a holiday, a change from the everyday.

It takes us beyond ourselves and places us amidst the larger natural world.


"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take your morning coffee outside - the surprising benefits of drinking your morning joe in nature.
Take Your Morning Coffee Outside - the benefits of drinking your morning coffee in nature...

Absorbing the Benefits of Nature

We take coffee (or tea, or soda…) in the morning in an attempt to energize our bodies and minds for the tasks of the day. We rely on the chemical attributes of caffeine to bring us new vigor and drive.

We depend on coffee to do what nature herself can help do to the human body. Being in nature has abundant natural benefits to the body and mind. Boosted energy, an improved mood, and mental clarity are among the chief of these, all things we try to get exclusively from our cup of joe.

We’ve discussed some of the benefits of walking in nature elsewhere on the site, but a few of the benefits that are pertinent to our morning routines include:

  • A feeling of contentment
  • Mental clarity and balance
  • Improved mood
  • Lowered blood pressure
  • Reduced stress or anxiety

From this list you can see that not only does nature help to provide much of what we desire from our morning cup of coffee, but it also helps to counteract the negative effects of caffeine – namely increased blood pressure and heightened sense of anxiety.

Taking our morning coffee outside can simultaneously lift our spirits, energize us, and put us into a more productive and healthier frame of mind.

Aside from these measurable effects, starting with your morning coffee outside gives you a dose of fresh air and sunlight that your body uses to regulate things like your sleep cycle and absorption of vitamin D.

Drink your morning coffee outside! The surprising benefits of drinking a cup in nature.

"Though I cannot flee
From the world of corruption,
I can prepare tea
With water from a mountain stream
And put my heart to rest."

-Ueda Akinara

Starting Intentional Change

Aside from all the benefits listed above, the very best reason to take your morning coffee outside is as part of a larger lifestyle change. It is a single step in a larger process.

Personal Rewilding is not a one-size-fits-all experience. Its purpose is to build a life that is more connected, more meaningful, and less harmful to the environment. While taking your morning coffee outside doesn’t feel like a sea change, it is an intentional decision to bring yourself closer to nature and to disrupt some of the routines that tie us to a life lived by script.

It is one step in a route to live simply and appreciate simple pleasures.

Every moment that we can remove ourselves from our technologically dominated lives and focus on living “in the moment”, becoming mindful not just of our surroundings but of our large and critical place in it, is a movement toward a wilder and more genuine experience of life.

While you’re at it, don’t forget to compost those coffee grounds or tea-bags for your garden! They make great compost for the next generation of fruits and vegetables.