The Other Side of Summer

By Gabriel Muller

Summer is the season of abandon. The lush leaves and vibrant flowers, so prim and proper in spring, now grow indulgent, seemingly "letting their bellies out" and luxuriating in their over-ripeness. Kids are out of school, unshackled from the confines of routine and free to follow every whim, alternating between indolent "bed-rotting" and endless twilights outside, playing and coming home late. Even the adults cut themselves some slack. Email goes unanswered a little longer, and there's a tacit understanding that even in hard-driving corporate America the intensity can ease off a bit. 

But we yogis understand that life is rarely so simple. Existence is a delicate balance of paradoxes and contradictions that constantly tug at each other to achieve neutrality. While summer, culturally and seasonally, is a time for being out and about, ignoring bedtimes, lingering on rooftops with friends, and postponing projects until after Labor Day, it is also the season of Cancer, which pulls us the other way. 

Cancer is a sign of return. The sun enters Cancer at the summer solstice—the peak of summer brightness—and, from that moment, the days begin to gradually shorten again. Cancer is a water sign symbolized by the crab, who carries its home on its back and draws into its shell when the world becomes too much. Astrologically, summertime demands something different of us, a certain emotional discipline, a quieter and more thoughtful awareness. Unlike the splish-and-splash summer we see on TV, astrological summer is a shoring up of inner resources and emotions, a quiet taking-stock, a turning inward. So where does that leave us? And what does any of it have to do with Kundalini yoga?

Kundalini yoga is, in part, the practice of accepting contradictions like these as a feature of real life and letting them sit together in harmony rather than tension. In practical terms, that might mean leaning into summer's Cancer dimension: a little more time on the cushion or the mat to counterweight all the careless fun in the sun. It might mean meeting that school's-out feeling with a steady, summer-minded practice to regulate a system that's running hot and wild.

SITALI BREATH
Sit in Easy Pose with a tall spine. Stick out your tongue and curl it like a taco. Inhale slowly through your curled tongue, as if sipping from a straw. Once you've fully inhaled, close your mouth and exhale slowly through your nose. Repeat: Stick your tongue out again like a taco, inhale slowly, bring the tongue back in, and exhale through your nose. This cools your entire system.

Balancing cultural summer with astrological summer is an important thing we yogis can do for ourselves this season. Just as a child who eats too much ice cream gets a stomach ache, ignoring our inner world in favor of lazy afternoons can lead to a rude awakening when the world returns to itself come September. This reminds me of my own childhood: the bliss of the final school bell in early June, followed not two months later by a heavy lethargy and boredom, a desire for some structure and discipline to even out the overcorrection of doing absolutely nothing. By late August, I eagerly anticipated school-supply shopping, drawn by the smell of sharpened pencils and the promise of a fresh start.

So this summer I'm challenging myself to hold both. To make space for the careless abandon that makes the season so sweet, and to keep the counterweight of Cancer close—the return to myself, regular kriyas, discipline on the mat—so that when September comes, I can ease into the fresh start instead of feeling totally jarred by it.