To follow the ebb and flow of this beautiful life, and yet to steer the boat. How to strike a balance between ease and effort in our lives. According to Ayurveda, over-efforting throws us off balance and causes mental and physical disorders. We live in a culture of over efforting. Taking it easy and prioritising slowing down, doing fewer things and worrying less are definitely not encouraged.

Our twenties pitta – high achievement years have the purpose of launching ourselves out to the world from under the wings of our parents, but we’re not designed to thrive at such a pace and a lot of the subtle enjoyable and most important stuff can be easily missed if we stay in this state.

Aggravated pitta can lead to inflammation in the body and possibly to inflated egoism and therefore we often mistake a career or love for something that supports our ego, rather than finding our soul’s connection or dedicating our time to those who deserve it and living our dharma – purpose.

As summer heat is already reaching us, any imbalance of pitta dosha is easily felt, both at physical and mental levels. We can combat this by adjusting our diet to be more cooling but to deal with a flaring mind, we need to practice awareness and tweak our habits. Therefore looking at our physical world firstly, as its the elements getting to us, is a good place to start from.

Summer dietary changes to apply:  Eliminate caffeine, alcohol, sugar and too hot spices. Add lots of fruits and vegetables. Watermelon, cucumber, cilantro, lettuce and so forth. Slow down with exercise. Take nice long early morning walks to avoid the heat or do some slower paced yoga. Meditate to find a better connection to your thoughts and where they arise from.

There are many good qualities to pitta – the more ambitious, smart, getting-things-done side of us, so we should definitely use this to our benefit. However in the summer season our pitta tips easily off-balance and we become sluggish. Use these cooling practices to revive your energy. And when pitta is driving, use the sharp intellectual, even fiery side of you together with a long thoughtful process of reflection – svādhyāya, to create your life as is meant for you. For example sometimes we need that extra push to be more decisive and pitta can help us with that.

To balance our lives and live in better harmony, we can apply this same technique outside the summer season as we are living in a very much pitta driven world. Having the ability to slow down to reflect where our thoughts and actions arise from, and adjust our habits for the seasonal changes of the natural world are a key to living a balanced life.