Allow Your Body to Guide You: Honing Your Summer Practice
We are cyclical beings.
As we approach the summer months, the days become longer and longer. Seemingly overnight you become more energized, motivated, and inspired. Ever so subtly, your body is synchronizing with the rhythms of nature. The more you tune into that consciously, and intentionally, the easier it becomes to be driven by your own internal cycles rather than forcing yourself into a routine that goes against your body’s cues.
So what can a summer rhythm look like?
What can a supportive and rejuvenating yoga practice look like in the warm summer months?
And how can you hone your yoga practice and daily routine to allow yourself to be guided by the seasons and cycles of the natural world?
Ebbs and Flows of a Summer Practice
For many, summer months are hot. And because summer usually begins with a slow heat that continues to build as time goes on, that may mean your practice continues to change and flow as well.
At the start of summer – as the world has begun to warm and new blooms spring to life, as the sun stays out a little longer – you may begin to feel inspired and energized to intensify your practice. Maybe you find your pace is a little quicker as you seek to build heat and energize your body.
Conversely, by the end of summer – as the heat continues to build, as the excitement and business of summer start to fade – you may feel the urge to slow down and find ways to cool down, both on and off the mat. Perhaps your practice becomes a little slower in pace with some longer holds from time to time.
However your practice ebbs and flows with the summer months, continue to check in with yourself and allow your body to guide you.
6 Cooling, and Soothing Yoga Poses for Summer
You’ll probably notice that your body naturally wants to incorporate these poses into your practice, especially as summer days continue on. The poses can be incorporated into a quick, energizing practice, or a slow, soothing practice.
1. Forward Folds
Forward folds include any posture where you hinge forward from the hips, folding your upper body over your lower body. These can include a traditional standing forward fold, downward-facing dog, seated forward fold, wide-legged forward fold, bound angle pose, and child’s pose.
Forward folds provide a cooling effect for the body, supports digestion, and eases anxiety and stress. In energizing practices, incorporate a forward fold posture within your transitions, or to provide a chance to come back to your breath.
2. Spinal Twists
Spinal twists are delicious and cleansing on your internal organs and includes any posture where you are rotating in the spine. The postures can include seated spinal twist, supine twist, revolved triangle, revolved pyramid, and revolved crescent lunge.
Spinal twists aid in digestion, release excess heat from the body, and releases tension in your torso. In energizing practices, incorporate standing spinal twists and when cooling down, incorporate seated spinal twists.
3. Backbends
Backbends include postures such as fish pose, bridge pose, cobra pose, wheel and locust. If you’re feeling called toward a soothing practice, use the supported version on these backbend postures. What makes them supported is the use of props – such as laying your upper back across a bolster, creating a slight arch in the back in fish pose. Or a block under your hips while in bridge pose.
Supported backbends activate thyroid function, which in turn aids in the proper function of your metabolism.
4. Supported Inversions
Inversions can be stimulating, so during those days where you’re feeling full of energy and seeking to build heat within your practice, you can incorporate poses like shoulder stand, headstand, and handstand.
However, when looking for a more soothing summer practice, turn toward the supported inversions, such as legs up the wall. This gentle pose will calm the nervous system while also calming the mind.
5. Prone Savasana
Most of the time, savasana is practiced on your back. However, for a soothing, cooling practice, try savasana laying on your stomach. This position will activate the vagus nerve, further calming your nervous system.
6. Moon Salutations
Moon salutations are a sequence of poses rather than a single pose. While sun salutations are intended to energize, moon salutations invite strength and flexibility with low vibratory movement – meaning no jumping back into chaturanga. You can incorporate this sequence in the same way you would sun salutations. Notice the difference in how they feel.
3 Soothing Summer Breaths
As there are soothing yoga postures for the hot summer months, there are also soothing breathwork practices for summer. When we are feeling the heat externally, our bodies naturally want to cool internally. You may feel less inclined to practice heat-building breathwork practices, like Breath of Fire, during the summer months.
Try these instead…
Sheetali Breath
Sheetali breath is practiced by first curling the tongue like a tube, inhaling through the tube, closing the mouth and touching the tongue to the roof of your mouth, and then exhaling through the nose.
While I admit this sounds like a funny type of breathwork, it is said that sheetali breath reduces inflammation, purifies the blood, and cools the brain.
2. Sitkari Breath
Sitkari breath has similar effects on the body as sheetali breath. However, rather than rolling your tongue, allow your tongue to float in your mouth, your teeth to lightly touch, and inhale through an open mouth with your teeth together. As you exhale, exhale through your nose.
3. Single-Nostril Breathing
Single-nostril breathing is just as it sounds – using a single nostril during breathwork. In this instance, the focus is on the left nostril as it is said to be the body’s “cooling channel”. To practice this breath, simply block your right nostril and inhale and exhale from only the left nostril.
Hone Your Summer Practice
As summer approaches, keep these soothing summer postures and practices in mind. Maybe save this to reference later.
You may subtly begin to notice the shifts you feel within your body as the heat builds externally. You may transition from a fast-paced, sweaty yoga practice, to a slow, soothing, and indulgent yoga practice. And in between, you may incorporate both sides into one practice!
Always tune into your unique body first, and allow your body to guide and direct you through your practice – whatever that may look like!
