Heat Happens!
How to Stay Cool — and Clear — When It Does
Blue Eye, Saranda, Albania by Marc Morell, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
One of the things I’ve always struggled with is heat. I’ve never liked hot temperatures — they overwhelm me, make me want to flee. And yet, I know that heat is also a life force. In the body, it rises to heal, to move, to clear. It signals transformation. Still, heat has never come easily to me. Living in the DC area — with its heavy, humid summers — has been a kind of teacher, revealing just how deeply this discomfort lives in my body.
Recently, I was on retreat. I stepped into one of the sacred rooms and was instantly wrapped in a heavy wave of warmth. The air was still and close. My body tensed. My first instinct was to turn and leave. But then I remembered something my yoga teacher always says:
“When the heat builds —stay for three more breaths.” So I stayed.
I sat down. I softened. I let myself feel the heat instead of resisting it. And then something started to shift. I remembered the day before, sitting on the patio and feeling a cool breeze sweep down from the trees. I recalled the exact texture of that air, the way it touched my skin, and I invited that memory into my body. I imagined the breeze moving through me, clearing out the weight and the heat.
Within minutes, my body started to cool. I touched my arm — and to my surprise, it was cold. Not just metaphorically. Physically cold. My breath deepened. My nervous system quieted. The pressure dissolved, and a memory rose.
I was about six or seven, in the middle of a sweltering summer in Tirana — the kind of heat that makes the pavement shine and the air feel like it’s pressing against your skin. And yet, for reasons only a child could explain, I had put on my winter coat. Zipped all the way up. Wool and thick lining wrapped around me like armor, ready to go outside in 30 degrees Celsius.
My mother looked at me in disbelief. “Why are you dressed like that?” she asked. And I remember saying, clear and certain: “I want to experiment with my body. I want to stay cool even when it’s hot.”
Inside myself, I imagined I was made of cold, rushing water — like the fresh spring of Syri i Kaltër, the Blue Eye, down in the south near Saranda. Even then, I knew how cold that water was — crystal clear, shockingly blue, always freezing, even when the sun burned down on the lush green trees around it. I told myself I was the Blue Eye. I pictured that cold moving through me, keeping me still and calm under layers of heat. And somehow, it worked. I didn’t sweat. The heat didn’t touch me.
That moment planted something in me — a kind of intuitive understanding that I could shift my inner state. That I could become something else inside the heat. Back then, it felt like just a game. Only now, looking back, do I realize it was something more — part of a pattern of experiments I used to do only because my body told me so. I didn’t need to understand them — I just needed to feel them. And I see now that those early instincts were teaching me something I would need again and again. Not just with weather, but in life.
Over the years, I’ve returned to that same practice in other forms:
Before speaking in public, when my chest tightens.
In hard conversations, when emotions flare.
In moments of urgency, when systems push too fast and too hard.
Because what rises in those moments isn’t just temperature — it’s heat in another form: pressure, emotional intensity, the demand to perform, to endure, to react. We feel it in our breath, in our bodies, in our relationships, and in the world around us.
But I’ve learned this: when I meet that inner heat with presence instead of panic, something changes. When I remember I am the Blue Eye — still and clear, even in summer — the pressure begins to release.
The Nature of Heat
Heat is more than temperature. It’s tension. It’s urgency. It’s a buildup of energy looking for a place to go. In the body, it might show up as inflammation, tightness, a quickened pulse. In the psyche, it can appear as anger, anxiety, passion, or even ambition. In our culture, we feel it in hot topics, flashpoints, burnout, meltdowns. The metaphors reveal the truth: heat is everywhere.
But heat is not the enemy. Heat is also comfort — the warmth of tea on a cold day, the fire that keeps us alive through winter, the sun that coaxes growth from the soil. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, heat belongs to the fire element, which governs the heart — the source of connection, joy, and spirit. We need fire. Without it, we grow numb, disconnected, inert.
The key is balance. The word heat comes from Old English hætu, meaning not just warmth but fervor, passion. Its Latin root, calor, gives us both calorie (energy) and cauldron (a vessel of transformation). So heat is not just sensation — it’s potential. A creative, dynamic force. It can burn or it can refine. It depends on how we meet it.
And we can meet it — not just emotionally or metaphorically, but physiologically.
When we slow our breath and invite in cooling imagery, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the body’s built-in reset switch. It calms the heart rate, lowers cortisol, and shifts blood flow. In the brain, regions like the insula and anterior cingulate cortex — which help us track internal states and regulate emotion — begin to light up. Our experience of pressure literally shifts.
And this is the invitation: not to avoid the heat, but to learn how to meet it — with awareness, with breath, with the tools that bring us back to balance.
Leadership Apothecary Practice: Cooling the Heat
This practice is for those moments when heat rises — in your body, your emotions, or your life. It may be physical heat, stress, pressure, or intensity. Rather than push it away, this practice helps you stay with it, get to know it, and offer your system the felt experience of cooling — not from the outside, but from within.
Sense the Heat: Turn your awareness inward. Where do you feel the heat in your body? Is it a temperature? A tightness? A swirl of energy? Let it be there. Stay with it. Breathe into it three times, through longer exhales. You are not getting rid of the heat, you are making space.
Meet the Heat as a Being: Now, imagine the heat as a being — an entity with form, shape, maybe even personality. Ask yourself gently:
What does this heat feel like?
What does it taste like?
What color or texture is it?
What is it here to show me?
Let yourself simply be with it, as you would sit beside a friend in discomfort.
Call in the Cool: Remember something that brings a deep sense of cooling to your system. It must be something you have felt in your own body — a memory, a place, a texture, a breeze. For me, it’s the Blue Eye in southern Albania — an icy spring bubbling up through lush green earth, impossibly cold even under the blazing sun. What is it for you?
Let that cooling sensation rise in your awareness. Feel it. Remember it. Let it move through you.
Let It Move: Let this coolness be like a being, too. A cloak of cool, or a stream of water. Watch how it moves through your body. Where does it want to go? Where does it land first? Let it move at its own pace. Just follow it with your awareness.
Integrate: Rest here for a few moments. Notice what’s changed — in your breath, in your body, in your state of being. Whisper to yourself, if it feels true: I am calm. I am clear. I can hold this fire.
Our bodies carry ancient wisdom. They remember how to cool, how to settle, how to restore. Even in the hottest, most intense moments — sometimes, all it takes is three more breaths. This practice isn’t about numbing or escaping. It’s about cultivating a relationship with heat — physical, emotional, societal — that allows for transformation. It’s about learning to wear your cloak of cool, even in the heart of summer.