Summer Yoga Poses: Cooling Asanas & Pranayama for Pitta Season
- Pura Veda
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
A Ritucharya guide to slowing down, cooling the body and softening your asana practice through the hottest months of the year.
What is Ritucharya? Seasonal Yoga Routine in Ayurveda
In Ayurveda, Ritucharya means seasonal routine. Now, as Ayurveda teaches us, the seasons have a huge impact on our state of being and can aggravate certain dosha, which can tip our scale out of balance. Essentially Ritucharya is an intentionally designed seasonal routine. It aims at tweaking diet, lifestyle, and environmental choices to help promote balance and health according to the season we are in. One aspect of lifestyle that we tweak in a ritucharya (seasonal routine) is our asana practice, if we have one. Just as our Summer Ayurveda for Summer: Tips to Stay Cool, Balanced and Healthy This Season shift toward cooling, hydrating choices, our asana practice deserves the same seasonal tuning. Summer is governed mainly by Pitta: hot, sharp, and intense. Left unchecked, the same fire that gives us drive and digestive power can tip into irritability, inflammation, and burnout. A cooling summer yoga practice is one of the keys to help care for ourselves through this season. Today, we are going to explore 5 cooling asana/asana families that are great to incorporate in our practice during the hot summer months.
Why Your Summer Yoga Practice Should Slow Down?
It's tempting to think a cooling practice is only about which poses we choose. But how we practice matters just as much as what we practice. Summer calls for a slower rhythm, one that favors rejuvenation, restoration and release over intensity. Take your time and be very intentional and present when moving through your asana practice. Incorporate longer holds in the postures. Resist the urge to push. A gentler, more spacious practice gives Pitta room to settle rather than stoking a fire that's already burning bright.
5 Cooling Summer Yoga Poses for Pitta Season
These are the asanas we walked through in our latest Instagram reel, each one chosen to cool the body, release built-up heat and ground an overstimulated nervous system. In essence these asanas help to oppose or balance the governing qualities of summer, which helps to keep us balanced as well.
Salamba Sarvangasana (Supported Shoulderstand): This inversion preserves soma & lunar energy. Soma is the sacred cooling nectar of life, it provides deep nourishment and promotes spiritual bliss. The engagement of Jalandhara Bandha or the throat lock in shoulder stand is the action that helps to hold and preserve our lunar cooling energy in the body. On top of this shoulder stand soothes the nervous system, making it great to include in a summer practice. By supporting the shoulders and drawing the legs skyward, it turns the body's energy inward and calms an overheated mind. A side note, if you find shoulder stand physically demanding, hard to access and hold, it can actually build internal heat in which case the cooling effects are canceled. If you find this pose difficult, then you can get similar effects with Viparita Karani or Legs Up The Wall Pose.
Seated Forward Folds: This whole family of asanas promotes introspection, balances the nervous system, and cools the body. Folding forward from a seated position draws our awareness inward, it’s an invitation to internalize the senses. These asanas are considered langhana which means they have a calming and cooling energetic effect on our physical, energetic and mental bodies. Seated forward folds are a great place to implement slowing of the breath, breathing slowly and focusing the awareness on the inhale and exhale. When we begin to lengthen and slow are breath, it also allows us to hold these postures for a little longer which helps to release deeper layers of tension.
Twists: Twisting postures release and cool the body. As we wring through the spine and abdomen, twists help move stagnant prana (our life force) and heat. Twists also support the body's natural detoxification and improve digestive function. Seated or supine twists are considered deeply therapeutic and are great to include in every practice.
Side Bends: When we lengthen through the side body, we help release through the musculature and connective tissue located in this area. Our liver and spleen are also located towards the sides of our body and both are pitta organs which can accumulate heat. When our liver and spleen are holding onto heat it will not only start to disrupt their function but lead to further imbalances in our system. Ayurveda says that side bends create space along these organs, encouraging the release of built-up Pitta.
Savasana: Savasana is a must, it’s an essential asana because it gives us and our bodies' natural intelligence the space to allow everything to integrate from the practice. This final pose of release and integration allows the nervous system to fully settle, giving the body space to absorb the cooling, grounding work of the practice that came before it.
Cooling Pranayama Techniques for the Summer
The breath is one of the fastest ways to shift our internal temperature. Here are a few pranayama techniques to cool the body during the Summer or Pitta season:
Sitali/Sheetali: breathe in through a curled tongue, draw in cool air like sipping through a straw. A classic summer cooling breath
Chandra Bhedana: "moon or lunar breathing" inhale through the left nostril only, activating the cooling, lunar quality of the nervous system
Nadi Shodhana: alternate nostril breathing, balancing the solar and lunar channels and steadying an overheated mind
These breaths become a quiet, powerful counterbalance to the intensity of the summer season.
A Gentle Reminder
Ritucharya isn't about doing more, it's about listening more closely. As the heat rises this summer, let your practice soften. Let your holds lengthen. Let your breath cool what the season stirs up. This is how we stay balanced, season after season, together.
For a bigger foundational understanding of how summer affects your doshas — plus diet, lifestyle, and daily routine tips, read our complete guide, Ayurveda for Summer: Essential Tips for Staying Cool, Balanced, and Healthy.
If this information resonated with you, you may be interested in our Yoga Teacher Trainings where our unique quality is to integrate the physical, energetic and spiritual and ayurvedic aspects to yoga. Feel free to save this blog for later and/or send it to a friend who could use a little more ease this summer. And for more of the seasonal practices we teach inside our Gurukulam, come find us on Instagram: @puravedacostarica.
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