3 Cooling Breathing Techniques for Hot Days and Busy Minds

🎙️Show Notes

Summer doesn't just bring warmer weather. It can also leave us feeling restless, irritable, impatient, and unable to switch off.

In this episode of Rooted in the Seasons, Katja Patel explores how Ayurveda understands the accumulation of heat in both body and mind and shares three simple breathing techniques to help you feel cooler, calmer, and more comfortable during the summer months.

You'll learn when to use Shitali, Sitkari, Chandra Bhedana (Moon Breath), and Bhramari (Bee Breath), along with practical ways to work with the season rather than feeling at the mercy of it.

Keywords

•  Ayurveda summer tips 
•  cooling pranayama 
•  breathing exercises for anxiety 
•  summer Ayurveda 
•  hot weather wellness 
•  sleep in hot weather 
•  yoga breathing techniques 
•  nervous system regulation 
•  pitta dosha 
•  cooling breath 
•  stress relief techniques 
•  mindfulness and breathing 

Titles

3 Cooling Breathing Techniques for Hot Days and Busy Minds

Feeling Hot, Restless or Irritable? Try These Cooling Breathing Practices

Ayurveda for Summer: Cooling Breathing Techniques to Calm Body and Mind

Sound Bites

"Sometimes the temperature outside stays the same, but your experience of it changes."

"A few conscious breaths can change the direction of the next hour."

Chapters

00:00 Why Summer Can Leave You Feeling Restless
03:45 How Ayurveda Understands Heat
07:30 Shitali and Sitkari: Cooling the Body
12:00 Chandra Bhedana: Moon Breath for Busy Minds
16:00 Bhramari: Bee Breath and the Nervous System
20:00 Working With the Season, Not Against It
22:30 Final Thoughts

Resources

Free Guide

•  5 Ayurvedic Shifts to Feel Like Yourself Again
  pages.zestforyoga.com/5-ayurvedic-shifts 
  
  

Related Reading

•  3 Cooling Breathing Techniques for Hot Days and Busy Minds 
•  Stay Cool This Summer with Ayurveda and Yoga 
•  7 Best Cooling Spices for Summer 
•  Seasonal Eating: Ayurvedic Summer Food Guide 

Workshop

•  When Rest Isn't Enough — Reset Your Daily Rhythm

🎁 Get my free guide: 5 Daily Ayurvedic Shifts to Feel Like Yourself Again
 

Practical tips to feel calmer, clearer, and more like yourself — without overhauling your life.
 👉 GET THE FREE GUIDE HERE

🎙️ Rooted in the Seasons is created by Katja Patel at Zest for Yoga & Ayurveda.
 Explore more episodes at zestforyoga.com/podcast

Transcript

Katja (00:00)
Some patterns are easy to miss until you start connecting the dots. Hello and welcome back to Rooted in the Seasons, where ancient wisdom meets modern life with a strong cup of tea and practical tools for real busy women. I'm Katja Patel.

Ayurvedic diet and lifestyle educator, yoga teacher, and teacher mentor.

Today I want to talk about something many people experience during the summer but don't always connect the dots around it.

If you're listening to this in the middle of the summer, you might recognize some of these signs. You feel hotter than everyone else. Your sleep becomes lighter. Little things seem to irritate you more quickly. You feel restless, maybe even a little bit fed up.

And yet when we talk about summer, we always think we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves. And we should, for sure.

Long evenings, holiday season, time outdoors. So when we feel uncomfortable, we often assume it's us. We are the spoilers. Sounds familiar? I certainly can relate to that very strongly. I love summer, I really do.

But once the temperatures climb above 30 degrees, like it does at the moment here in London, I'm done. My patience gets shorter, my energy drops.

My concentration drops as well, sleep becomes less restful, more restless, and even small inconveniences suddenly feel much bigger than they need to. Now, here's something interesting. Most of us think of heat as something happening outside of us.

It's hot outside, therefore I feel hot. But from the Ayurvedic perspective, there's another layer to this. Ayurveda teaches that the qualities present in nature influence the qualities within us.

And summer carries the qualities of heat, clearly, and over time that heat

begins to accumulate within us as well as on the outside. You might notice your body responding in subtler ways first. Like for example, for some people this shows up as headaches. For others, the skin might be irritated, the eyes might burn, some inflammation is in the body

The digestion is disturbed or you find it difficult to sleep. For some people, it feels more emotional. They become impatient, frustrated, restless. Maybe you've noticed that what used to roll off your shoulders suddenly feels harder to deal with.

And this seems to sneak up on you.

This where things start to connect. Rather than working against the season, Ayurveda encourages us to make small adjustments to bring balance. One of the simplest ways to do that is through the breath.

The breath is always with you.

wherever you go, right? You don't need a yoga mat, you don't need an hour of spare time. You can use the breath while sitting in the garden, waiting for the kettle to boil, sitting in traffic.

Or in the tube.

So today I would like to explore three simple breathing techniques that can help bring a little more coolness and calm into your day.

What I'm going to do because I want to take that also into practice. So you might do something else where you can't join in, so you can come to back to that later. Otherwise, you can join in each practice that I introduce. We do three breaths or rounds of what that what it asks for, and and then I'll talk a little bit about what it is for.

And then you might get an idea already of what that breathing technique could bring to you. And even when you are doing something where you can't join in, you can still listen and you can mentally follow it. And this will also give you a good idea of how it calms or cools. So the first one.

Is one, but it can be done in two ways for a reason. So one is called shitali and the other one is called shitkari. The first technique called shitali. And if you have never seen it before, it looks a little unusual because you roll your tongue into a tube as so.

and breathe through it. Now some of us can't roll the tongues, which is absolutely fine. then shitkari comes in because then you roll your tongue up as so.

The effect stays the same. As you inhale, the cooler air moves across the tongue down the throat. So think about you're stepping out of swimming pool on a warm day and then a small breeze suddenly feels incredibly refreshing. That's the same principle. The breath creates a

cooling sensation throughout the mouth, the windpipe and eventually the entire body.

What I notice for me the greatest benefits apart from the cooling effect is what happens to my mind. Whenever I feel irritation building.

During a long journey, for example, busy day, or one of these moments when everything seems to need my attention at once, a few rounds of shitali immediately creates some space. The heat starts to soften, the urgency

begins to dissolve and I can think more clearly again. And if you're navigating perimenopause or menopause, many women also find these practices helpful when feelings of heat begin to rise. So let's practice

Three breaths together.

So you roll or fold your tongue and you inhale.

Close your mouth, swallow, and then you exhale through your nose.

Roll or fold your tongue. Inhale.

Close your mouth, swallow, and exhale.

And

Inhale through rolled or folded tongue.

Close your mouth. Swallow. Exhale through your nose.

So notice how it feels in your throat. Maybe you could feel, even if you're not used to it, how at least a third time, how it gets much cooler through the tongue, down, through the windpipe. And see how you felt, how your face also felt, your jaws.

Your shoulders if something relaxes a little bit or shift it. And if not, don't worry about it.

Sometimes when we do the first time, the body is much more busy with how the technique is, the logistics, and not really start to notice sensations in the body. But it is a really nice breathing technique and it is worthwhile practicing it on a regular basis.

You can follow the instructions here. And maybe even after these three breaths, you can see or feel the potential of that technique and how it would feel after 10 or even 20 breaths. So the next one is Chandra Bhedana, the moon breath.

if you have practised alternate nostril breathing before, this will feel very familiar and easy to practice because it's one part of it. You inhale through the left and you exhale through the right, and then you repeat it in that same way, always like this. Inhale left, exhale right.

Why is it called moon breath? In yoga, the left side is traditionally associated with the lunar qualities: cooling, calmness, receptivity, reflection, creativity. The opposite of pushing and striving.

And perhaps that's why I find this practice particularly helpful in the evening.

you know, those moments when you're physically tired,

Yet your mind still seems to be running a meeting nobody asks for. Planning tomorrow, replaying conversations, creating to-do lists, solving problems, and the moon breath can be surprisingly effective at helping the mind to move from doing into being. Just a few minutes can create a noticeable shift.

So let's practice also three breaths of chandra bhedana together, the moon breath. So for that

If you're unfamiliar with the alternate nostril breathing, Nadi shodana, you have the hand in front of your face, flex, index, and middle finger, the thumb on your right nostril, little and ring finger on your left nostril, shoulders relaxed. And take a few breaths first to get used to this position of the hands.

And then when you're ready, you start to close your right nostril, inhale left. Slow, full breath.

Close left, open right, exhale, equally slow.

Close right again. Inhale

close open right exhale.

It can be helpful for concentration to count. So close right, open left, inhale, two, three, four, close and exhale, two, three, four.

I would like to show you one technique that might be easier for the start. So you can use both hands. And if you find it very difficult to have the hand into in this mudra, you can use both. So you close with your index finger or index and middle finger, your right nostril inhale left, close left, open right.

You continue like that. That can be easier at the beginning. So after these three breaths, again notice how you feel.

And maybe it feels different to After the shitali breathing. Each practice evokes a different energy. So you can use what need what's needed right now.

The final practice is one of my absolute favorites. Bhramari, the bee breath. For this practice, you take a full inhale and then you hum as you exhale. That's all there is to it. Simple but remarkably effective, as you will notice, or you know it already if you have practised it before.

why humming works is because of the vibrations created by the humming. It has a soothing effect to the nervous system. Attention naturally draws inwards immediately. The heart rate often slows, the mind becomes quieter.

And because the exhalation is longer, the body receives a very clear signal that it's safe to settle. Like the moon breath.

This can also be done in the evening before bed. So whatever suits best, whatever feels like more natural to you, you do.

especially if you're climbing into bed and your mind is still traveling through the entire day. A few rounds can help create a transition between the activity and the rest.

So a quick note here for the Bhramari breathing. If you're experiencing depression, Bhramari is generally not recommended because of the way it draws the awareness inwards. In that situation, it's always best to seek individual guidance from a qualified teacher.

So let's practice Bhramari together.

you might not hear me so well. So listen to your sound. I take my mic up though and maybe you can still hear me as well.

So take a natural breath in and then start with Ibrahimary breathing. Take a deep breath in.

⁓ not deep. Don't want to force it. Take a full breath in, it's better.

And then hum on the outbreath.

Maybe you can feel the vibrations in your head that I talked about earlier. Take a full breath in.

And one last time, full breath in.

and hum on the outbreath.

What do you feel now?

For me this has the strongest effect immediately. It simmers everything down, down. See my mind is gone down.

As I was preparing this episode, I found myself reflecting on something. Most of us spend a lot of time trying to change our circumstances. We wait for things around us to become cooler, quieter, less demanding, less busy. And sometimes that happens.

But often life continues exactly as it is. The gift of these practices is that they help us to change our relationship with what is happening. The temperature outside might stay the same. The school holidays might still be chaotic. The inbox may still be full, but

Our internal experience can be very different. And that's what matters. Because how we experience our day often determines how much energy we have left by the evening.

So question for you. As you move through the week, notice this. When do you feel heat building? Not only the physical heat, but also mental heat, emotional heat. the moments when patience starts to disappear.

The moments when your nervous system feels stretched. And experiment with one of these breathing practices before things reach a boiling point. See what changes.

So let's bring it down to the essentials. Summer doesn't have to mean feeling hot, irritable, restless, and fed up. A few conscious breaths can create a surprising amount of space. Shitali, shitkari, the moon breath, the bee breath. Simple practices.

a few minutes and often a very noticeable shift. Small steady changes matter.

Maybe you're listening and thinking, wow, I know exactly what you mean. I finally get the time to rest, but I still can't settle. And you're not alone with that. This is exactly why I created when rest isn't enough. A live workshop.

Cooling breathing techniques can be incredibly helpful. Sometimes the deeper challenge is that the body has become so used to being switched on that rest not longer feels restorative.

The workshop explores simple daily anchors that can help creating steadiness, support the nervous system, and make rest feel restorative again. And you never know one of these cooling breathing techniques could be one of those anchors. You find all the details in the show notes. Thank you for listening.

To Rooted in the Seasons. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe or follow Rooted in the Seasons on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. So new episodes land automatically for you.

If you like more support between episodes, you can download my free guide, five daily Ayurvedic Shifts to Feel Like Yourself again. Also, this link will be in the show notes. And if something in today's episode resonated, I'd genuinely love to hear from you.

You can connect with me on Substack or drop me an email. I always read and answer all of them. Until next time, stay rooted in the seasons. Bye-bye.