Summer Wellness: Why Your Body Needs Something Different This Season

Feeling overheated, exhausted, bloated, or unusually irritable this summer? Your body may not be failing—it may simply be asking for a different rhythm.

Many of us try to eat, exercise, and live the same way all year long. But your body changes with the seasons—and when your daily habits don't change with it, you can end up feeling depleted, sluggish, or out of balance.

Summer isn't about following another strict wellness plan. It's about learning to work with your body instead of against it. Small seasonal shifts can help you protect your energy, support digestion, and move into fall feeling stronger instead of burned out.

If you've been wondering why your body feels different this time of year, this episode will help you see summer through a completely new lens.

🎧 Press play and discover what your body may be asking for this season.

Free Resources

☀️ Download the Summer Foods Guide to discover simple seasonal foods and habits that help you stay cool, energized, and balanced all summer long.

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Chelsea Johnson Ayurveda / The Body Rhythm

Transcript

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Welcome to the Body Rhythm Podcast, the podcast for women who are ready to stop pushing through and start feeling like themselves again. I'm CJ, Ayurvedic Wellness Guide, helping women reconnect to the natural rhythm their bodies have been craving. But it wasn't that long ago that I was exhausted in a way that sleep didn't fix, loaded no matter what I ate, and lying awake at 3 a.m. with my mind already running tomorrow's to-do list. I thought I just needed to be more consistent, more disciplined. I didn't realize that my body wasn't feeling me. It was completely overwhelmed because you're not broken. You've just been living outside your natural rhythm for a long time. Hello and welcome to the body rhythm. So glad you could join me today. Please, if you haven't already, like, subscribe. It would really help. Thank you. Now let's get to it. Today we're talking all things summer season. And I don't know about you, but I love the summer. I love the hot weather, the long days, the warm nights. It's just probably my favorite time of the year. I love go to go to the beach or to the lake and just hang out by the water. I love to be with friends and good food, barbecue, all the things. But what is so important is that we also take care of our bodies during this time because it's easy to get overheated and ignore the signals that the body is a little bit out of balance, a little bit out of rhythm. So I hope this episode helps you with some simple tips to keep cool this summer, have the best summer ever, and then transition into the fall feeling the best that you can. I've been noticing in friends and family that a lot of people are getting sick as we begin to transition from spring to summer. And in Ayurveda, the changing of the seasons is a time of vulnerability for the body and for the mind. And the body is transitioning from spring, from heaviness and groundedness and congestion into the hotter months of summer, into more heat, more humidity, more pungency. And this transition that's happening outside of nature is also happening internally. And as this transition occurs, if we haven't been taking care of our body in the seasonal routines of spring, it can create the conditions that bring, you know, colds, congestion, sinuses more easily into the body. So in Ayurveda, the root cause of disease is not listening to the body. It's why slowing down and listening and creating space is so, so important as the seasons change. Because it gives us an opportunity to create the conditions that make it possible for us to have a greater relationship with ourselves and with our bodies. One of the three causes of disease in Ayurveda is the improper adaptation to the season or to the seasonal change. We have to adapt what's happening externally, and we have to adapt to what is happening internally. And so the changing of the seasons is an opportunity to be expanded. It's an opportunity for our life experience to open and to grow and to expand. It's an opportunity to change from what happened last season and to change where we're going in this next season. Our limitations are our imbalances. In Ayurveda, our limitations are called Vikruti. It's our current imbalances, it's where we find ourselves today based on our own choices, our own decisions, our own agency. Right? But if our current imbalances are from our own choices, that means our next choices, today, tomorrow, the next day, are also our own and our own choices and decisions. And the changes, changing of the season gives us the opportunity to change and move forward and expand and grow and to move out of our limitations. It's an opportunity to feel better in our bodies. And the seasons give us the opportunity to move. The opportunity to see where we've been and where we want to go. And so as we transition from spring to summer, perhaps begin to ask yourself, where have you been for the last two and a half months, the last eight weeks? What has it felt like? And where do you want to go? Where do you see yourself in the next eight weeks? This next summer season? How would you like to grow? How would you like to expand? How would you like to move beyond your current imbalance? Whatever those may be, in the mind, the body, the soul, the emotions, the relationships that you have with yourselves and with others, right? This is getting in touch more with ourselves. This is having greater relationship with ourselves and in turn having greater relationship with our beloved, with our family, with those around us, with our coworkers. So let's talk a little bit about some summer foods. Some foods that you can begin to incorporate into your routine that don't require a big change in what you're doing, right? So summer foods are foods that are meant to keep our digestive fire going, but not over-inflame us, not become a huge bonfire, right? So they want to keep things kind of cool, but still a little bit hot at the same time. So things to include would be melons, right? If you go to the farmer's market, there's all kinds of melons out right now, although seasonally they're better towards late summer. But these would be cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, right? They the melons have more water in them to help keep us cool and they're easy on digestion. We also have the berries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. These are excellent for summertime. They're excellent as a meal, a light meal for dinner. Actually, that's what I did last summer, and what I've started doing as the weather is heating up where I am is chopping up some berries that I've gotten at the farmer's market, putting a little bit of olive oil on it. I have a beautiful blueberry vinaigrette that I've made and then drizzling that on top, which has been very delicious and a very light dinner, which my digestion has really responded to. So, some other things would be limiting beef. Beef tends to be more heavy on the digestion. It takes more digestive fire to consume and metabolize. Same thing with brown rice. Brown rice is excellent and amazing, but it can also be really draining on the digestive system and require a bit more fire to digest fully. So during the summertime would be an excellent time to incorporate more uh jasmine rice, more basmati rice. Uh, fresh fish, salmon, trout is excellent during this time of year. Um, coconut oil, ah, my three favorite oils for summer: coconut oil, ghee, and olive oil. So, coconut oil is a great addition to your cooking regimen because it's cooling, but it's still watery, it's oily, it's great for the internal and external body. So, if you're using coconut oil as you cook, I would say use the refined coconut oil because it doesn't have that coconut flavor that can get into the food if you use it. And then if you use the coconut oil to massage the body, organic coconut oil is amazing. The coconut oil is light on the body, it's cooling, it's that perfect summer oil, right? It makes you think of tropical vacation. And all you have to do is massage the arms a little bit. Maybe you massage the chest and massage the legs, right? And so you're um caring for the body externally and internally. And then an amazing thing about massage with a coconut oil is you're naturally soothing the nervous system as you're doing it, which is a great benefit. And it feels really great as well. Coconut oil, too, is a great option if you tend towards heartburn, indigestion, loose stools. These are all clues that your body is running a little bit more heated and needs a little bit more cooling. So coconut oil can really help. Also, uh aloe vera juice. I love to start incorporating in the summertime. I put about a tablespoon of aloe vera juice into some water or into some diluted juice, and then I drink that. Excellent, and it helps the digestive system and gets things moving in a gentle way. Summer is also a wonderful time to start incorporating coconut water into your routine. And I know I couldn't stand coconut water when I first started drinking it. I just thought it tasted horrible without all that sugar. But I've adjusted to it and now I love it. It has a natural sweetness to it, and it helps keep the body cool in these hot summer days. So think about incorporating the coconut water into your routine as we move through summer. Summer is also a time to start reducing salt. Why? Salt increases water in the body, and we want to decrease that excess water in the body. So we want to reduce things that have extra salt in them. Things like uh canned soup, for instance, can have a lot of sodium. Things, uh frozen food meals tend to have a lot of extra sodium. Um, spice mixes and uh like McCormick packets tend to have extra sodium. So just tend to watch how much salt you're intaking. For fruits, apples are great in the summertime. Uh, stewed apples are wonderful, especially if your digestion tends to not have a lot of fire naturally. The raw apples can aggravate it a little bit more. Uh, limes are excellent at this time of year. A little bit of lime spritzed in your water. Excellent idea to help keep the body cool. Pineapple is a great late spring, early summer fruit to incorporate. We also have broccoli, cauliflower, peas, green beans as vegetables. And in Ayurveda, they would say don't uh have too many tomatoes during the summertime. But let me tell you, I have a garden right now full of fresh tomatoes that I cannot wait to eat. And I'll keep an eye on my how's my digestion going as I'm consuming the tomatoes. Just watching out for the heartburn, the indigestion. And maybe as I use the tomatoes, put a little bit of cooling spice on it, like some dill, maybe a little good olive oil or some coconut oil. Right? So there's ways that we can begin to balance these more heating foods to adapt them to the season. If you have strong digestion, then summer is an excellent time to eat the raw fruits and the raw vegetables and the salads. Usually those things are just too hard on the digestion. They require too much of a digestive fire and can cause overheating and inflammation. But summertime is an excellent time if your digestion is good to incorporate those. And also, summer is an excellent time to incorporate the green juices. Those help uh clear the liver, help reduce the fieriness of the liver, help cool the body. Uh, maple syrup as a sweetener is wonderful. Uh, small amounts of honey are good. And so we also have some spices like uh cilantro, naturally cooling, dill, peppermint, mint, spearmint, all the mints basically. Excellent, excellent summer herbs. Hibiscus is another good one. Hibiscus lemonade would be really great and fantastic. Uh, during the summertime, we want to limit the nuts, limit the almonds, the cashews, the peanuts. These just can be naturally more heating and inflammatory. And for our routines, right? Because it's I think it's easy to overdo everything in the summer because the sun is out for so long, and we have all this extra energy and daylight hours to do everything. But we still want to be on a routine with regular times for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. You know, moon baths are an excellent thing to do in the summertime. The lunar energy is more feminine, it's cooling. It can just be nice to sit outside underneath the moon and do a moon bath during the summer. And just as we wrap up, how we treat ourselves is a mirror for how we treat others. Do we give ourselves the nourishment, the nurturing, the ease that we need? And in turn, do we give the nurturement or the nurturing and the nourishment to those around us, to our kids, to our most beloved? Do we take time for ourselves? Do we take time for what we need? And do we give time and space to those around us? Ayurveda is the practice of a lifetime. We are always changing, as the seasons always change, we're always learning as the seasons are always teaching us. So as we move forward today, as we move forward for the rest of this week, let this summer be your teacher. How do you want to treat yourself? And how do you want that reflected in the relationship that you have with others, with your most beloved, with your family, with your kids, with your coworkers, with whomever it is, with yourself? What is it that you're most desiring for yourself in this season of transition, this season of summer as your teacher? Have a wonderful rest of your week. If you have any questions, comments, want me to cover anything, please let me know in the comments. Most of you watching are not subscribed. I've also included the link in the show notes for an early summer foods list. So if you want something that's easy to read, printable, something that you can take with you to the farmer's market or the grocery store, go ahead and check that out. Hope to see you next time. Be well and nourished. That's it for this edition of the body rhythm. Thank you for joining me. Be well and nourished.