The season that refuses to be still: practising yoga in summer’s excess

One summer narrative tends to sneak up on us: the one that insists summer should be effortlessly idyllic.

School is out. Days are long. You’re rewarded for surviving winter with months of evening light and warmth. Yoga vocabulary leans into this idea too; open hearts, sun salutations, radiant energy.

Summer is a great story but for others it’s hot and sticky. Overwhelming. Everything ripens all at once and then demands that you ripen with it. Nights are longer. Social commitments pile up. Sleep suffers. The heat clings to your skin long after dusk settles. Bodies feel heavy and irritable. Relaxation comes less easily. If winter is the season of lack, summer is the season of excess. Of too much light. Of too much noise. Of too many obligations and not enough cool-down.

Balance is rarely how yoga feels when summer is at its peak.

Restlessness takes over on your mat. Your body can’t seem to settle: it wants to move but not too much. Limbs feel heavy. Breathing becomes shallower without you noticing. That backbend you loved in April now digs into your sternum. You’re aware of every single spot your body lands on. Thoughts tumble. One moment you’re upright, the next you’ve started mentally checking off the things you still need to do before bed. The final minutes of savasana are torturous. You’re tired but heat radiates in every cell and stillness feels, somehow, exhausting.

Summer weather and asana reveal a subtle unraveling of the blissful myth.

Which maybe isn’t something we need to remedy. But simply observe.

Summer asks us to expand. It cannot be contained. Fruit blossoms. Flowers bloom. Berries grow so abundantly the vines strain to contain them. Days lengthen past what feels comfortable. There is extravagance in summer.

Summer asks something different of us. Not pushing harder, but practising with intuition. It requires us to tune-into our threshold: recognising when to move and when to stay put. When effort benefits our practice and when it simply creates more chaos.

Summer is not the time for pushing ourselves to do more yoga. Even if our bodies seemingly let us.

We forget summer has a way of dulling our judgement. Just because we can fold deeper doesn’t mean we should. Warm weather loosens muscles in the best ways, but it also loosens our boundaries. Summer injuries creep up on us because we don’t realise — amidst the pleasures of how supple we feel compared to four months ago — that something is off. Listening becomes more important than pushing our edge.

It’s not just asana that overflows in summer. Summer calendars overflow too. Parties, BBQs, weddings, holidays. Many of us step onto our mats depleted — not from suffering — but from surplus. Too many events. Too many messages to respond to. Not enough time with ourselves.

Our summer practice becomes a place to dial-down instead of power-up. Choosing not to move through poses at lightning speed. Pausing longer. Giving ourselves more space. Choosing less stimulation when the rest of the world feels so busy igniting. Reclining poses that invite us to sink inward. Sitting postures that cocoon us. Breathing slowly to reduce internal temperature.

These can all feel like acts of rebellion when so much of mainstream yoga praises heat and expansion as summer motifs. But our bodies are wise. They know when they’ve had enough.

Summer is also ripe with irritation. The nervous system taxes easily under heat. Little sleep softens our edges. What may have taken minutes to annoy us in March now takes seconds. Hot-weather patience is a practice in and of itself. You might notice your irritation show up as short tempers on your mat. With yourself. With the teacher. With other students. Yoga becomes frustrating. Not zen.

Yoga teaches us that there is no one way to feel about summer. It teaches us we are not alone in whatever it is we’re feeling. You may not be able to change the season, but you can change how much pressure you let it induce.

To practice during hotter times means letting go of how we think yoga should look. Small practices become nothing to feel bad about. Skipping your morning practice to sleep in is okay. If anything shows up on your mat, great. If all you want to do is lay down and pant; that’s okay too.

Summer may even ask you to step away from your mat. To put your mat beside you in the grass and chase the shade. Drink more water. Rest more. If we aren’t gentle with ourselves in summer, when will we be? Yoga doesn’t disappear if we take a break. More than anything summer teaches us that yoga is real when nothing about it looks pretty.

Whether your preference is hot or cooler seasons, Emily at Mount Martha Yoga can accommodate you. If you love the sunny sea views from the studio, or would prefer the blinds down and the aircon pumping in one to one sessions you get to choose!

Emily also offers corporate yoga in Mount Martha, along with private yoga lessons in Mount Martha and mobile yoga in Mount Martha and right across the Mornington Peninsula. Contact the studio today for more details.