Sitali

Sitali is nine rounds, about three minutes, at a ratio of four counts in to six counts out, with no breath retention, practised in the late morning or the early evening in hot weather. Build to eighteen rounds over six weeks. That is the whole dose, and everything else on this page is detail.

The technique itself is one thing: the tongue is rolled into a tube, poked a centimetre past the lips, and the air is drawn slowly in over it, then let out through the nose. The name means cooling, and the cool feeling at the back of the throat arrives inside two or three rounds. Whether the body actually cools is a separate question with a clear answer, and it is further down this page, because I would rather you had the real answer than the traditional one.

It sits with Sitkari and Chandra Bhedana as the three practices I hand out in the hot months. Of the three, Sitali is the one people remember, because it is odd enough to be interesting on the first attempt.

Nine rounds. At four counts in and six counts out, a round takes about eighteen seconds once you allow for the tongue coming in and out, so nine rounds is a little under three minutes.

• Week 1 to 2: 6 rounds, 4:6, about two minutes.
• Week 3 to 6: 9 rounds, 4:6, about three minutes. This is a complete daily practice.
• Week 7 onwards: 12 to 18 rounds, 4:8 if the longer exhale is comfortable. Six minutes at the outside.
• Twice a day is fine in hot weather: once in the late morning, once before bed.
• No retention for the first three months, and none at all if you have high blood pressure or heart disease.

The ceiling is eighteen rounds and I am firm about it. Beyond that the mouth dries out, students get a dull headache, and the cool feeling stops arriving. If you want a longer sit, follow Sitali with Anulom Vilom for another five minutes rather than adding rounds here.

Published numbers for this practice range from three rounds to sixty, and nobody says where their number comes from. Mine comes from the hall, and it takes six weeks to reach eighteen.

The ratio column is where people cheat. Four in and six out means the exhale is genuinely half again as long, and if you are counting fast on the way out you have made it 4:4 and lost the settling effect. Count the exhale out loud in your head, slowly, and let the last two counts empty the chest completely.

These are the same practice with two mouth positions, and the reason both exist is that a quarter of the population cannot make the first one work.

Try Sitali first. If the tongue will not roll after two attempts, do not persevere: go to Sitkari and forget about it. The cool sensation, the slowing of the breath and the effect on the mood are the same in both, because both work by drawing air slowly over a wet surface and then breathing out long through the nose.

The classical texts describe Sitali as cooling and every page you will read repeats it. The one study that put a thermometer on people found the opposite, and I think you should know that.

Seventeen healthy men, four sessions each in random order, Sitali, Sitkari, breath awareness and quiet lying, with axillary temperature and metabolic measurements before, during and after. Body temperature rose significantly during both breathing practices and fell during quiet lying. Oxygen consumption rose 9.0 per cent during Sitali and 7.6 per cent during Sitkari. The authors' conclusion was that the results do not support the description of these practices as cooling, and that they may induce a mild hypermetabolic state.

So what is the cool feeling? Evaporation from a wet tongue and a wet throat as fast moving air passes over it, which is a real local cooling of the mouth and pharynx and has nothing to do with core temperature. That is why it works so well on the sensation of being overheated and so poorly as a way of actually cooling down.

I still teach it. A practice that changes how hot you feel, slows the breath to about seven a minute and gives an agitated person three minutes of something to do is worth having. It is just not a thermostat, and if you are genuinely overheating, shade, water and salt are the answer. This is the kind of claim I would rather correct than repeat, and the same goes for the ones on the Kapalbhati page.

Sitali goes at the end of the breathing work, not the beginning, because it opens the mouth and everything else here wants a settled nose.

1. Nadi Shodhana or Anulom Vilom: 12 rounds. Six minutes.
2. Sitali: 9 rounds. Three minutes.
3. One minute sitting still, mouth closed, breathing through the nose.
4. Savasana for five minutes if there is time.

On a hot evening I reverse it and use Sitali on its own, sitting in Padmasana or on a chair, as the last thing before bed. Nine rounds, then lie down. Students with trouble sleeping in the summer months report more from that than from anything else I give them, and it pairs naturally with the bedtime sequence.

If you are new to breathing practice altogether, the order in the home practice guide is the one to follow, and Sitali is a reasonable second practice to learn after alternate nostril breathing. In the online classes I ask people to turn the camera towards the face for this one, because the tongue position is the only thing I cannot correct by voice.

Sitali turns up in the gentler recommendations on this site and never in the forceful ones.

• Yoga for high blood pressure includes it, without retention, as one of the slow practices that is safe when the fast ones are not.
• Yoga for anxiety includes it for people who cannot tolerate sitting with the eyes closed and the breath unaltered, because having something to do with the mouth carries them past the first two minutes.
• Yoga for thyroid conditions mentions it only to say that the claims made for cooling breaths and metabolism have no trial evidence behind them.

Sit for it in Vajrasana if the knees allow, or on a chair if they do not. If you have never been to a class and want the tongue position checked once by somebody watching, that is what an introductory class is for.