Keeping Your Cool In The Heat Of Summer

Summer Self-Care Guide

Cooling Your Inner Fire

Summer turns up the heat in more ways than one. Longer days, brighter sun, and warmer air stir something universal in us: passion. In Divine Spiritual Wisdom, this is the season of Mars, the planet of fire, drive, and intensity. It shows up in our energy, our appetites, and, when it runs unchecked, in our tempers.

Mars, Stress, and the Body

Stress and cortisol are closely linked to heat and the element of fire. When we’re under pressure, the body responds the way it would to actual heat: quickening the pulse, raising internal temperature, and priming us for fight or flight. This heat isn’t only physical. We carry emotional heat too: frustration, anger, and urgency that build the same way a hot summer afternoon builds toward a storm.

Cooling the Inner Fire

Harmonyum works to balance fire and water in the body, cooling internal heat before it manifests as short temper, agitation, or physical overload, particularly in the liver, the organ most associated with fire in the body. It’s no accident that we describe an irritable, quick-to-anger person as having “a bilious temperament.” The phrase comes from bile, produced by the liver, and it captures something real. When the body’s fire runs hot, it shows up in the mood.

A Harmonyum session brings that fire back into balance, restoring calm to both body and emotion, so summer’s intensity can be felt as vitality rather than volatility.

If this summer has you feeling overheated, physically or emotionally, a Harmonyum session can help restore balance from the inside out.

In addition, having an effective regular practice between your Harmonyum healing treatments is a great way to check in with yourself daily and support your internal balance.

Seasonal Technique

Sitali Pranayam, the Cooling Breath

Sitali Pranayam is a beneficial breath for cooling and calming the inner fire, whether that is from stress and emotions like anger and frustration, or literally feeling your body is warmer and skin is irritated.

POSTURE: Sit in a comfortable position with the spine straight. Close your eyes and focus in and up between your eyes.

HAND POSITION: Hands are either relaxed on the lap, or you can spread the fingers and touch the fingertips of both hands together at the level of the solar plexus (between heart and navel). This hand position seals in the energy, so it can be contained and used for healing.

BREATH: Inhale through a curled tongue, as if you are sipping through a straw. Hold the breath for as long as possible. Exhale slowly through the nose. Continue the breath cycle.

TIME: Continue for 3 – 11 minutes.

END: Inhale deeply, hold the breath and shake the hands vigorously overhead. Then exhale and relax.