Summer is just around the corner. With the growing daylight, you probably feel ready to expand your horizons. Yet the increasing heat may put a little damper on your explorations.
Still, there’s no reason why you can’t open, expand, and play while cooling off from summer’s heat and intensity – and you don’t even need to hop into a pool! Ardha Chandrasana, the half-moon pose, has a cooling effect on the body while challenging us to balance, lengthen, and reach for the heavens.
While most of us – and especially our children – love the vibrant energy of summertime, it can be a drag when heat and humidity increase. This enflames the firey energy of Pitta dosha (or “body-mind type” in the health system of Ayurveda), which can cause burn-out, exhaustion, over-heating, higher blood pressure, and anything else which is caused by increased pressure and heat in body and mind. Tempers, not just temperatures, can soar! The dominance of Pitta calls for calming, cooling, and expanding poses to disperse the steam and turn the pressure down.
Why Half-Moon Pose is Perfect for Summer
Ardha Chandrasana, the “Half-Moon pose”, is the perfect solution. Ardha Chandrasana is one of my favorite Pitta-calming poses because it addresses all the issues of high Pitta, and it’s fun and challenging, too (which is all-important for those competitive and active Pittas out there).
Half-Moon is a balancing pose on one leg – but leaning over your side, with one hand on the ground. One leg stays grounded (establishing the needed earth element), while the other leg extends far up and back, out of the belly, and the top arm similarly expands up out of the heart towards the luminous, heavenly body it’s named after. The expansion of the pose cools, releasing the heat by increasing the elements of air and space. An added bonus – the opening of the liver area, which is the seat of Pitta in the body.
How to Practice Ardha Chandrasana
A favorite way to enter Ardha Chandrasana is from either Trikonasana (Triangle pose) or Parsvakonasana (Side Angle pose). But here’s the simplest way to describe soaring up into this heavenly balance. Stand with your feet about hip-width, placing your hands on your hips. As you exhale, bend forward. Place your left fingertips on the floor, about a foot in front of the little toe side of the left foot (or use a block or chair under your hand if you’re unable to bend that far forward or have difficulty balancing).
Shift your weight until it is centered over that left foot and hand. When you’re ready, begin to lift the right leg up, perhaps as high as the hip, or even higher to create a long diagonal from your head and neck up through your strongly reaching foot. Turn your right hip skyward, too, as you lift that leg up. Make sure you keep the left thigh, knee, and foot pointing straight forward: the tendency will be for them to collapse and turn inward, which isn’t healthy for the knee joint.
Do your best to rotate the front of the chest up and around toward the right. If you’re feeling steady here, continue the expansion by reaching the right arm upwards, lifting off the heart. Be light and expansive, even as you root downward through the standing leg for steadiness (and light in your humor, even if you tumble over!).
For a final challenge, you may choose to turn your head and look upward, as if the moon itself were beckoning you. Smile; imagine hanging in the air as effortlessly as that glowing orb, remembering to breathe. Then slowly lower the leg and arm down, back to a forward bend, and inhale to rise up to standing. Switch to side two and enjoy!
As you reach for the luminous orb of the moon, allow its cool energy to bathe your body and mind. Experience the calming, expansive energy of Half-Moon pose and feel it reduce the excessive heat of summertime.