Cool tips for Hot Times!
These Cooling Tips come from Ayurveda. Ayurveda is a system of diet and health practices thought to be about 5,000 years old, with timeless insights into human nature and human physiology. The five elements earth, water, fire, air and space unite in various unique combinations and express the qualities that we see in Nature. Each season, plant and animal, each human being has a distinctive set of characteristics that will influence us humans toward balance, or imbalance, when we expose our own organisms to them.
The primary way Ayurveda organizes its practices is by looking at the qualities of nature as they manifest in all living ( and inanimate) things. All the qualities of nature are organized into three main “doshas,” or types. Balancing these types and qualities of nature is the challenge Ayurveda addresses. Summer is characterized by the dosha “Pitta.” Pitta is hot, mobile, sharp, and spreading like the waves of heat at high noon on a midsummer day can be. Hot flashes from hormonal changes can bring on the heat in any season.
Anything that is cooling will help balance the heat and intensity of summer. Here are my favorites:
Cool Ginger tea, mixed half & half with lemonade. Ginger is balancing for all doshas, and great for digestion, and sweet and sour tastes are also cooling. Delicious, too! Simmer about 2 inches of thinly sliced fresh, raw ginger in a gallon of water for 45 minutes. Cool, then strain into a pitcher and refrigerate. Crushed mint (also cooling) is quite yummy in ginger tea also. Mix with your favorite lemonade.
Coconut oil for self-oil massage (Abhyanga) is the BEST feeling especially after a hot day at the beach, or a long stressful day or night that included some hot flashes.
Use about a quarter cup and rub the oil in slow, circular motions around all your joints. Use longer strokes over the rest of your body and relax for 5 or 10 minutes before (yes before)you shower or bathe. (TRY IT! You will be amazed!)
Take this one up a notch: Coconut oil will turn liquid in warm or hot weather, so pour a quarter inch of it into a small empty yogurt cup. Put the cup into the refrigerator or the freezer, and when you get ready for your shower, rub the chilly little bar all over you to get REALLY relaxed and ‘chilled out’. Please let me know if these Ayurvedic Cooling Tips have been helpful to you!