10 Ways to Use Your Mind to Beat the Heat

Too hot? Ever noticed that on a hot summer’s day there are people who are as happy as can be, and there are others who may actually get close to having an outburst of anger or even an emotional hijacking of some sort?  It’s not all in the biology of the human body; it’s in your mind, too!

1. Slow down all of your movements, and thoughts. Could you imagine yourself moving, thinking, feeling … in slow motion? If you really want to up the ante, you can even imagine hearing and seeing everything in slow motion as well.
2. Breathe … and imagine that as you start relaxing, you exhale the heat out of your body.
3. Visualize a thermostat, and imagine turning down the dial or pressing a button to cool down.
4. Create an experience inside your head during which you imagine being submerged in cool water or cool air. What would you see, hear and feel?
5. Float your awareness out of your body, and look back at yourself. You basically dissociate from your own hot body.
6. Interrupt the pattern of thinking how hot you are. Stop the obsessed thought of being too hot, and focus on something else instead. Keep your mind engaged with other things.
7. A large part of being too hot is actually YOUR emotional response to it. How do you usually switch away from unresourceful feelings such as anger, frustration and irritation? Think about things that make you happy, crack a joke, or think about a time in the past when you were relaxed and happy.
8. If you can remove a piece of clothing, right before you do so imagine that as soon as you remove the item it will have a massively cooling effect. See, hear and feel exactly the experience of a massively cooling effect to occur. Then remove the piece of clothing.
9. Think of someone you know who deals extremely well with the heat. Float your awareness out of your own body, into the body of that person. And look at the world through their eyes.  What is it that this person does? How does this person experience summer? Is there something specifically that he or she does?
10. Figure out how the feeling of being too hot starts. Usually people don’t go from normal temperature to a feeling of “I am going insane” in a split second. What are the initial signs of getting a little warm? Apply any of the techniques in this article right away, or make sure you cool down through turning on the air a little earlier, cold water on your wrists, etc.