Hot Days, Cool Breaths
When summer temperatures rise, it can feel like your entire body is working overtime to stay comfortable. Your skin feels hot, your energy drops, and even simple activities can leave you feeling depleted.
While breathwork can't replace hydration, shade, air conditioning, rest, or other important strategies for staying safe in hot weather, cooling breathwork can be a simple way to slow down, settle your nervous system, and create a greater sense of ease when you're feeling overheated or uncomfortable.
Certain breathing practices, particularly those rooted in yoga, have traditionally been used to cultivate a cooling sensation. Other techniques focus on slowing and softening the breath, which can help you release physical tension and shift out of a state of stress or overactivation.
The key is to keep your practice gentle.
When your body is dealing with heat, it needs support—not more effort.
Why Does Heat Affect Your Nervous System?
Your body is constantly working to maintain a stable internal temperature. When it's hot outside, your body increases blood flow to the skin and produces sweat to help release heat.
But heat can affect more than your physical body.
You may notice that you're more irritable, restless, tired, unfocused, or easily overwhelmed when temperatures rise. Your body may begin to feel tense as you unconsciously brace against discomfort.
This is one reason breathwork and nervous system regulation can be useful during hot weather.
Slow, mindful breathing gives you an opportunity to pause and reconnect with your body. Rather than fighting the sensation of heat, you can use your breath to soften tension, become more present, and create a greater sense of internal spaciousness.
And sometimes, that shift can make the heat feel more manageable.
1. Try Sitali Pranayama: A Traditional Cooling Breath
One of the best-known cooling breathing exercises from the yogic tradition is Sitali Pranayama, sometimes called "cooling breath."
The practice involves inhaling through a curled tongue, creating a cooling sensation as air passes through the mouth.
To practice:
Find a comfortable seated position in a cool or shaded place.
Relax your shoulders, jaw, and belly.
Curl your tongue into a tube if you're able to do so comfortably.
Gently inhale through your curled tongue.
Close your mouth and slowly exhale through your nose.
Repeat for 5–10 rounds.
As you inhale, notice the sensation of air moving across your tongue and through your mouth.
You might imagine that you're drawing a gentle coolness into your body.
Don't force your inhale or try to take an unusually large breath. The practice should feel comfortable and effortless.
Can't Curl Your Tongue?
No problem.
You can try Sitkari, another traditional cooling breath. Gently part your teeth and draw the breath inward through the mouth, creating a soft sipping sensation. Then close your mouth and exhale through your nose.
Choose whichever variation feels most natural to you.
2. Lengthen Your Exhale
You don't need a specialized breathing technique to practice cooling breathwork.
One of the simplest approaches is to make your exhale slightly longer than your inhale.
Try:
Inhale for 4
Exhale for 6
Continue for several comfortable rounds.
The goal isn't to breathe as deeply as possible. Instead, allow your breath to become slow, soft, and steady.
As you exhale, consciously relax your shoulders.
Unclench your jaw.
Soften your belly.
Let your hands become heavy.
Imagine that each exhale is helping you release some of the effort and tension that can accompany being overheated.
If counting your breath feels stressful, forget the numbers and simply allow your exhale to be a little longer and softer than your inhale.
3. Use Cooling Visualization
Breathwork can become even more soothing when you combine it with visualization.
Find a cool, shaded place and settle into a comfortable position.
Close your eyes if that feels comfortable.
Begin breathing naturally.
As you inhale, imagine a gentle wave of coolness moving into your body.
Perhaps you imagine stepping into cool ocean water.
Maybe you picture a soft summer breeze moving across your skin.
You could visualize moonlight, rain, mist, a shaded forest, or another image that evokes coolness and calm.
There is no right image.
With each inhale, imagine inviting coolness inward.
With each exhale, imagine releasing heat, tension, and effort.
Continue for two to five minutes.
Visualization won't literally lower your core body temperature, but bringing your attention to sensations and images of coolness can help shift your experience of discomfort and encourage a greater sense of relaxation.
4. Practice Breathwork in the Shade
One of the simplest ways to practice breathwork for summer is to pair your breathing with your environment.
Find a shady place—a porch, garden, balcony, or spot beneath a tree.
Sit comfortably.
Notice the difference between the sun and shade.
Feel the movement of air across your skin.
Listen to the sounds around you.
Then allow your breathing to become slower and quieter.
Try silently repeating:
Inhale: Receive.
Exhale: Release.
As you inhale, receive the shade, breeze, stillness, and support around you.
As you exhale, release unnecessary tension.
This turns breathwork into a sensory experience rather than something you need to perform perfectly.
5. Try a Cooling Breath and Body Scan
When you're hot, you may unconsciously tense your body.
Your shoulders might creep toward your ears.
Your jaw might tighten.
Your hands may clench.
Your belly might brace.
A simple body scan can help you notice where you're holding tension.
Take a comfortable breath in.
As you exhale, soften your forehead.
On the next breath, relax your jaw.
Next, release your shoulders.
Then soften your hands.
Finally, allow your belly to relax.
Continue scanning your body, releasing tension wherever you can.
You don't need to make anything happen.
Simply notice.
Soften.
Breathe.
This combination of breathwork and body awareness can help you become more aware of what your body needs in the moment.
Breathwork and Heat Safety
It's important to remember that breathwork is not a treatment for overheating or heat illness.
If you're extremely hot, dizzy, confused, faint, nauseated, unusually weak, or experiencing other concerning symptoms, stop your breathwork practice and move somewhere cool. Hydrate as appropriate and seek medical attention when necessary.
Don't try to "breathe through" serious overheating.
When you're already very hot, avoid strenuous breathwork, rapid breathing, or prolonged breath holds. These practices can increase discomfort or cause lightheadedness.
Cooling breathwork should feel gentle, comfortable, and restorative.
If a breathing technique makes you dizzy, uncomfortable, anxious, or short of breath, stop and return to your normal breathing.
Create Your Own Summer Breathwork Ritual
You can turn these practices into a simple summer ritual.
Find a cool or shaded space.
Sit or lie down comfortably.
Take three natural breaths.
Then practice 5–10 rounds of Sitali Pranayama or another comfortable cooling breath.
Follow with several minutes of slow breathing, allowing your exhale to become slightly longer than your inhale.
Finish by placing your hands gently over your belly or heart.
Then ask yourself:
What would help my body feel more supported right now?
Maybe the answer is water.
Maybe it's a cool shower.
Maybe you need to rest in the shade.
Maybe you need to turn on the air conditioning and lie down.
Maybe your body is asking you to stop doing and simply rest.
Let the answer be simple.
Let Your Breath Be a Path Back to Yourself
The purpose of breathwork isn't to conquer the heat or override what your body is telling you.
It's an opportunity to listen.
When you slow down enough to notice your breath and sensations, you may become more aware of what your body needs—rest, water, shade, nourishment, movement, stillness, or simply permission to pause.
Summer invites us to work with a different rhythm.
To slow down.
To seek shade.
To conserve our energy.
To listen to our bodies.
And sometimes, the most powerful practice is also the simplest:
Pause.
Breathe.
Soften.
Listen.
Give your body what it needs.