It is hot here in Connecticut, hitting the upper 90's and into the 100's for the next few days. We live in a house with no air conditioning, pretty typical of houses in this area. Needless to say, as I write this I feel various sensations of sweat pooling or dripping. I do not glow, I sweat. I also am, what in the yoga science of Ayurveda, is called a fire type or pitta. I always wondered why hot weather not only made my butt sweat but generally would get my panties in a serious bundle. Well Ayurveda says it is all about my fire quality getting intensified and aggravated. Yep, makes sense. Ayurvedic science advises that in this weather I avoid vigorous or heating activity, and eat cooling foods and drink cooling tea. I also, in classic pitta form, think I know best and generally feel rules are made to be broken.
I am currently training for a half marathon, or two, and a triathlon and damn all advice to hell I am not going to miss my beloved run or bike. In my defense, I rely upon these activities to keep me balanced and out of cycles of anxiety and depression. As this is science we are talking about, my experiments the past two days have had interesting and surprising results. I could not get out to run in the cooler early morning hours yesterday so off I went at 10:00 with temps well into the eighties and humidity high. As I ran that 6.5 mile loop I could feel the fire building in me. I did a two mile climb early on and had to dig deep to go beyond sensation, had to get into my meditative state. The sweat poured out of me and my body seemed sure to fail, but a step at a time and I made it to the top. The second half of the run was still fiery and edgy but my prana (life force) surged and I felt one with the earth, natural and free. Not what is supposed to happen I guess, but it was my experience. I followed that run with a treatment fitting the Ayurvedic rules, cool shower, light cooling lunch including watermelon, which came highly recommended, and lazy lounging at the pool, in the shade of course, for the afternoon. Outcome was, I felt awesome! I did not find my anger blazing at all, no panty bundles in the least. Hooray.
Today I had to go out even later and it was well into the nineties so I chose to cycle. I went moderate completing a 10 mile ride of steamy sweaty rolling hills. Again I followed it with cooling practices. I am feeling good and have a crazy night with the kids ahead, and Stephen is out of town. So far so good, no melt downs, and I mean me, not the kids. Seems that as usual balance is the key to managing the mess of me. Glad to have tools that let me do "unfavorable" things and reap their benefits and offset them with countermeasures. I am a hot mess for sure but taking it in stride.
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