The Shakti School

Feminine Form Sacred Technology

Self-Care

How to Do Sitali Pranayama: The Cooling Breath

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Sitali Pranayama, “the cooling breath,” is a simple and renewing yogic breathing exercise that’s perfect for late summer when the heat has peaked in the body. It helps lower our body’s temperature, calm nerves, take the edge off hunger pangs, reduce fatigue, fevers and high blood pressure.

How to Do Sitali Pranayama:

  1. Form the lips into an "o", curl your tongue lengthwise
  2. Project the tongue out of the mouth
  3. Inhale deeply through your tongue as if drinking through a straw
  4. Focus your attention on the cool breath across your tongue as you fill up your diaphragm
  5. Bring your tongue into your mouth and exhale slowly through your nose
  6. You can start with 2-5 minutes of Sitali breathing and work your way up to around 10 minutes

Make sure to finish with several minutes of meditation to notice the sensations throughout your body. 🌬️

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The Tongue According to Ayurveda

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Your tongue is a living mirror of your body’s ecosystem. 👅🌀⁠
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Ayurveda teaches that the tongue reflects digestion, detoxification, tissue health and even how well you’re processing life itself. ⁠
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When your digestive fire - aka your agni - is strong, the tongue tends to look clear, pink and vibrant. ⁠
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When things are sluggish or overloaded? The tongue often tells on us before our body does.⁠

👇🏼 Here are three daily rituals you can implement to take care of your AGNI and AMA and therefore your tongue (and really, all the systems of your body!)⁠

✨ Scrape your tongue! Tongue scraping gently removes overnight ama (toxins) and bacteria, supports fresher breath and gives your digestive fire a clean slate for the day.⁠
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💧 Drink warm water with lemon in the morning. Warm water in the morning hydrates tissues, gently stimulates elimination and helps flush what the tongue scraping brings to the surface.⁠
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🫖 Include spices in your diet. Support agni with warming spices like ginger, cinnamon or clove tea to kindle digestion so less residue accumulates in the first place.⁠
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These small rituals have a radiant ripple effect. ⁠

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How to Dry Brush the Ayurvedic Way

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Why Dry Brush?

Dry Brushing (traditionally called garshana) helps move stagnation, stimulates Rasa Dhatu’s flow, boosts our natural detoxification system and gives the skin that GLOW we all want! 🌟⁠
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In Ayurveda, our lymph is part of the Rasa Dhatu, one of the 7 tissues of the body.⁠
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The lymph and blood plasma serve as the first line of immune defense when we encounter allergens and bacteria. Not only does the lymphatic system serve as immune defense, it also serves as psycho-emotional defense (AKA how easily we can let things roll off us, rather than deeply penetrate and wound us, on an emotional level). 🫀⁠
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Unlike your blood, which is pumped throughout your body by your heart, your lymph relies on your body’s valve system to move, functioning more like a manual pumping system. This is where practices like dry brushing and Abhyanga come in - they help literally “pump” the lymph! 💪🏽⁠
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Brush Towards the Heart

It's best to use a dry brush on dry skin before you take a bath or shower. Start at your feet and work your way upwards. Brush in a circular motion always in the direction of your heart. This will help increase blood flow throughout the body.

Follow Up with Moisture

Try to brush for at least 3 minutes working your way up to 5 minutes. After showering, make sure to lather yourself in some kind of amazing moisturizer or use your dry brush right before you Abhyanga, allowing the oil to be deeply absorbed into your revived skin.

 

Spring is an amazing time for dry brushing, boosting your body’s natural detoxification system and even giving you a freshened-up, more vigorous outlook on life. 😉

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