First Light - Why Sun is still the Best Medicine
- David Yates
- Apr 7
- 4 min read
The Daily Reset: How Sunlight Realigns Body and Mind.
There are mornings when the world seems to begin again.
Not metaphorically, but quite literally. Somewhere over the Atlantic, high above the cloud line, suspended between continents, a thin line of gold begins to stretch across the horizon.
It starts as a whisper. Black turns to deep blue, then to violet and then, slowly, the edge of light breaks through.
I’ve seen this countless times. I’ve crossed oceans in darkness and watched the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept. Every single time, I feel it. The hush, the pause, the turning of the Earth beneath us.
Sunrise is always a special sight.
Out there, in the vast stillness between continents, with no cities, no clutter, no reference points, sunlight becomes more than just light.
It becomes a beacon, a guidepost, a companion.
It’s always darkest before the dawn and for me, that’s always felt like more than an observation.
It’s a truth you can live by.
The Body Responds Without Permission
What fascinates me still, after all these years, is how predictably the body responds. When the sun crests the horizon, no matter where you are in the world, something changes.
You wake up.
Cortisol rises, melatonin production stops, your core temperature climbs, the entire system reorients. This isn’t about mood or mindset, it’s biochemistry.
Ancient, hardwired, and quietly powerful.
You can try to control it at home with blackout blinds and alarms. You can pretend you’re immune to it with caffeine or willpower, but the truth is, the moment light hits your eyes, your body knows.
The day has begun.
The Forgotten Clock
Modern life has done its best to forget this.
We now cross continents in hours, not days, but our bodies haven’t evolved to keep up. It’s relatively common knowledge that it takes a full day to adjust for every hour of time difference when travelling.
That biological reality shapes aviation regulations around crew rest and duty hours, rules designed not for convenience, but for cognitive sharpness and safety.
Much like lorry drivers are limited by mileage, pilots are limited by time, especially across time zones. These limits exist because the human body, quite simply, can’t override its own clock without consequences.
And while most people aren’t crossing multiple time zones at 35,000 feet, the same principle applies on the ground. Shift work, late nights, constant screen exposure, it all pulls us out of rhythm unless we understand what the body needs to reset.
Even if you never leave your time zone, you’re still subject to the drift. The modern world is slowly pulling us away from the natural self-regulation our systems once relied on.
Many wake under artificial light, well before sunrise. We work indoors, eyes fixed on screens instead of sky. We flood our bodies with stimulation to keep going and then wonder why sleep becomes elusive, moods unpredictable, energy unstable.
The answer is simple, the body doesn’t run on hours and minutes;
It runs on light.
Morning sunlight resets the body’s internal clock, what scientists call the circadian rhythm. Without that daily anchor, everything begins to drift: sleep, focus, appetite, recovery. Even emotional stability.
That’s why sunlight is showing up more and more in conversations about well-being. Neuroscientists like Andrew Huberman talk about the “light diet”, exposing your eyes to natural light within the first 30 to 60 minutes of waking to initiate your body’s natural rhythm.
For those of us who live in the sky, none of this is new. We’ve felt it, trusted it, and been regulated by it, often without even knowing.
Rhythm, Not Routine
Sunlight is not a productivity hack nor a self-improvement strategy or a biohack. It’s a rhythm.
It’s what helps bodies and minds remember when to act and when to rest, when to release energy and when to restore it.
When to speak and when to be still.
In resilience training, we talk often about “sustainable performance,” but nothing sustains us like this rhythm. Especially the kind that comes from nature, not pressure.
A sunrise doesn’t rush. It doesn’t need to be forced, it just happens, predictably, every day, even if we don’t see it.
A Sky You Can Count On
There’s something quietly comforting about that.
For me, flying long-haul, sleep has always been fragmented.
Jet lag, time zone shifts, midnight wake-ups to start a briefing at 2am, but the one thing I can always count on, more than caffeine or strategy or sleep apps, is that the sun will rise.
When it does, my body will respond. It’s like the tide, like breath, something older than memory.
It’s never darker than just before sunrise.
That phrase has echoed through centuries, as far back as the 1600s, the English theologian Thomas Fuller wrote, “It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.”
He was writing from a place of spiritual reflection, on Pisgah, the biblical mountaintop where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land he would never enter.
A moment of clarity, not arrival. A glimpse of what’s coming, even if we’re not quite there.
The science is just as compelling as the darkest moment of the night really does come just before dawn, not sunrise, but the earliest point when light becomes detectable.
Interestingly, even dawn has layers:
1/ Astronomical dawn, when light is just beginning to reach the upper atmosphere
2/ Nautical dawn, when the horizon becomes visible
3/ Civil dawn, when life can resume without artificial light
Three names for one quiet promise: the light is on its way.
You don’t need to be in the sky to feel it, you just need to open the curtain, or step outside, maybe sit on a garden step or wall and listen to the world around you for five minutes.
Let your body remember what it’s known for millennia, let the sun recharge your solar cells.
In a world full of urgency, confusion and noise, the first light of the day remains one of the simplest and most powerful ways to reset.
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