FACE THE HEAT WITH A SMILE

Usually when we feel heated up, we drink ice-cold water or use an AC or cooler or fan. Of course, we will get relief for some time. After sometime, we feel heated up again. The above stated methods only merely decrease external body temperature. It is important to realize controlling internal heat is also needed in order to get the real cooling effect. Drinking lots of water, eating easily digestible foods, including more alkaline water-containing fruits and vegetables in diet, avoiding or reducing caffeine, avoiding or reducing spices, etc. reduces internal heat. Drinking coconut water, buttermilk with lots of water, watermelon and cucumber salads/juices, milk/coconut milk/nuts milk with lots of water, mint leaves or corianter leaves chutney or mixing it with juices or buttermilk and having it several times a day etc. are also very useful remedies to reduce internal heat. Corainder seeds, vetiver/khus roots, khus-khus/chia seeds, naruneendi/Indian Sarsaparilla roots, etc. can be used to boil water. This water can be cooled and kept in earthen vessels. Drinking any of this herbal water helps not only to reduce internal heat, but also it purifies blood. Applying sandalwood paste mixed with rosewater on forhead and pulse points is very effective in reducing heat-caused headache and fatigue. It can be also applied to whole body to reduce rashes and itching during summer. Rosewater can be applied alone too. Sitting or walking under moonlight also helps to reduce internal heat. For those who do exercise/yoga, morning time before sunrise and evening time after sunset are best times of day to have their practice in order to avoid dehydration and fatigue, especially if one is heat sensitive. Pranayamas like Sheethkari, Sheethali, Chandrabhethi are very effective in reducing internal heat and can be done several times a day. Doing these pranayamas in open and clean air increases their effectiveness.

Control The Tongue

“Jihve pramaanam jaanihi bhaashane bhojane pi cha

Atyuktiratibhuktishcha satyam praanaapahaarini”

-Subhashitham

Meaning: Oh, tongue, understand that with regards to speech and eating, talkativeness and overeating can cause death.

This subhashitam sloka advises us to understand the nature of our tongue, which we use to talk and to eat. The sloka reminds us both talkativeness and overeating can cause death. When we observe our day-to-day life, we can realize that one talk lead to another talk and it lead to another talk and it goes on and we may become unaware of what we express through talk. It may lead us to lose talks, gossips, blaming others, etc. which may eventually lead to problems in relationships, miseries, enmities, fight, energy loss, fatigue and then death. Similarly, when tongue gets highly attached to tasty foods, it creates desire in us to eat more and more foods which may burden our various body systems and it creates diseases and lead to death. We must thus always think before we talk and eat to talk the needy things in simple and few words and eat only when we are hungry. Both this leads to healthy life.