When in the polar seasons of yang summer or yin winter, we observe how these energies are expressed within us.

This excerpt from my book The Empowered Yogi shares how to keep our energies balanced through meditation, breathwork, and a story you might be able to relate to.

Heat and fire rise; water flows downward. When we are babies, our constitution is optimal. Babies have a watery head, with lots of tears and drool keeping the brain moist. Their baby bellies rise and fall as they breathe, creating a warm abdomen that keeps the digestive fires well-tended to.

As we age, this often flips. Our bodies become colder, and we tend to become “hot headed” and anxious. A well-balanced constitution that we are always seeking to cultivate is “water above, fire below.” Water energy creates a cool, calm mind, as the brain corresponds to the kidney chi of the water element. And the fire relates to the passion in our hearts as well as the fire of digestion in the small intestine.

Sylvia is a lovely woman in her mid-sixties that has a small, thin physique, and bright fiery eyes. She loves yoga and is very active, playing pickleball, swimming, and cycling around town.

Too often, Sylvia suffers from feeling anxious and can never seem to get warm enough. Her digestion is always an issue, as she feels bloated and crampy in her. This is a clear indication of fire above and water below, which we can address with pranayama, a chi-balancing breathing technique of water rising and fire falling, re-establishing the balanced energy of fire and water.

Water rising and fire falling is the opposite of how the elements actually move. As water flows downward, fire flames rise upward. But in TCM, the mix of water (kan) and fire (li) creates steam that rises.

As we age, our brains and skin start to dry up, creating wrinkles in our skin. We also experience memory loss, Alzheimer’s, and thinning hair, which are all conditions of a lack of water energy rising to nourish and hydrate the brain and skin.

This is the same with our digestive issues when the fire energy in the low abdomen is weak and we feel cold and suffer from poor digestion.

Pranayama (breathwork) to Balance Water and Fire ~Yin and Yang

According to Chinese medicine, our energetic body is composed of vessels that the energy is stored in, like reservoirs, and flows through the rivers, known as the meridians. The two main vessels are the Governing and Conception vessels.

The Governing vessel starts at the low dantien, an energy center that resides about two inches below the navel, and travels down to the pelvic floor, then loops up the back of the spine, travels around the top of the head, goes down the face, and ends at the upper lip.

The Conception vessel travels from the lower lip and runs straight down the front down to the chin, down the throat, the chest, and the abdomen to the lower dantien, below the navel.

We can visualize this flow of energy like a wheel. In this technique, we are inhaling the water energy rising from the kidneys up the governing vessel, up the spine, and around the head to hydrate the mind with the cool blue water energy.

We exhale the heat from the brain down the front of the body to insert in the low dantian, where it belongs to nourish the fire of digestion.

Micro Cosmic Orbit Meditation

~ Inhaling water energy up the Governing vessel to hydrate the brain.

~ Exhaling the heat from the mind down the Conception vessel into the lower dantien to feed the digestive fires.

Where our mind goes, our energy flows. After a few weeks of regularly practicing this pranayama technique, Sylvia reported that her mind felt calmer, she wasn’t so anxious, and her body felt warmer. This meditation helped soothe Sylvia’s anxious mind by inhaling a cool water breath upward and activated her lower dantien when exhaling the heat from her mind down to her low abdomen by pulling her navel into her spine, which ignited the inner fire of digestion.

During the early summer season, we want to activate the heart and small intestine meridians in our physical practice to create a smooth, even flow of chi so we can maintain joy and peace, which are our natural states when the energy flow is efficient.

In our yoga practice, we consider the poses and sequences that will activate the fascia chains that these meridians travel through. The heart meridian starts at the armpit and travels down the inner arm to the pinky. The small intestine meridian starts at the pinky nail and travels up the top of the hand, up the top of the arm, through the shoulder blade, then up the neck, ending at the inner ear.

We also consider the small muscle groups, as they are the body tissue related to the fire element, and during the early summer, it is the easiest time to develop them.

Holding plank pose, side planks, handstands, forearm stands, and any arm balances all build arm muscle strength as well as confidence and courage, which are aspects underlying joy and peace – the emotions of strong healthy heart chi.

To balance the strength building in the arms, stretching and lengthening the arm muscles and connective tissues pulls on the meridians, like stretching a hose to release any kinks that block the flow.