Try this. It takes 30 seconds.
Image: Tricia Galvin Unsplash
Close your eyes. Relax your body.
(Make a mental note of how hot you are on a scale of 1 to 10)
Have a millimetre gap between your teeth
Keep your tongue flat against upper palate
Separate the lips, gently exposing as many teeth as you can
Inhale slowly and deeply through the teeth
At end of inhale, close mouth and exhale slowly through nose
This is 1 round. Repeat 5 more rounds.
(Make a mental note of how hot you are on scale of 1 to 10)
You can't read on until you've tried it. (It's only 30 seconds of your time).
Well? Did it make a difference? Do you feel cooler?
When the weather outside is hot I swing from utter delight to a moaning fest. During the heat wave the idea of doing any form of movement expanded my already copious vocabulary of expletives. My Monday morning online 'Power Yoga' class from my front room yoga studio, brought a deeper understanding to the phrase 'It's &@># hot!'
Outside was blistering. Add airtight windows, studio lighting, and no fan because it interferes with the microphone, and my “Power Yoga” class accidentally became Bikram. Any idea of looking cool, calm and collected leading the class was null and void. Then I remembered that nifty breathing exercise you've just tried and it worked a treat.
Have I mentioned how amazing Yoga is?
There are so many great things in yoga. Just like we have exercises for the body (asana), yoga also has breathing exercises (pranayama). Some are designed to increase heat and others to reduce body heat, which has been a life saver this week.
Sheetkari Pranayama is a yogic cooling breath('sheet' in Sanskrit means cold). The inhale through the mouth cools the air before it reaches the lungs, helping reduce excess body heat and taking the edge off that overheated, sticky feeling.
Next time you get &@># hot, a sneaky little toothy smile, sucking the air in, will just take the edge off and make it that heat much more bearable.
A gin and tonic with ice and lemon also helps, though strangely I can’t seem to find that one in the yogic texts.
Photo by Tricia Galvin on Unsplash