Sitkari

Sitkari is nine rounds, about three minutes, at four counts in through the teeth and six counts out through the nose, with no breath retention, in the late morning or early evening of a hot day. Build to eighteen rounds over six weeks. That is the dose.

The teeth are parted by about a millimetre, the lips are drawn back, the tongue lies flat with its tip behind the upper teeth, and the air is drawn in through that thin gap with a soft hiss. Sitkari is the Sanskrit for the hissing sound. The mouth closes, and the breath goes out long and slow through both nostrils.

It is the twin of Sitali, and the reason to know both is practical: rolling the tongue into a tube is inherited, about a quarter of adults cannot do it, and those people need a cooling breath too. Everything that has been measured about the cooling breaths has been measured on the pair, so the evidence on the Sitali page applies here word for word.

Nine rounds. A round at 4:6 takes around sixteen seconds with the mouth opening and closing, so nine rounds is a little under three minutes.

• Week 1 to 2: 6 rounds at 4:6. Two minutes.
• Week 3 to 6: 9 rounds at 4:6. Three minutes. A complete daily practice.
• Week 7 onwards: 12 to 18 rounds, moving to 4:8 if the long exhale is easy. Six minutes at the most.
• Twice a day in hot weather, morning and evening. Once a day otherwise.
• No retention for three months, and none at all with high blood pressure, heart disease or glaucoma.

If the teeth are comfortable and you want more sitting, add Nadi Shodhana after it rather than more rounds of this. The gain from rounds nineteen to forty is nothing I have ever been able to see, and the dry mouth is immediate.

The published numbers for Sitkari are copied from Sitali and neither set is sourced. This ladder is the one I use, and the last column is the part I care about.

Note that the exhale is longer at every stage. Four in, six out. When students plateau it is almost always because the exhale has quietly shortened to four and the practice has become a fast one. Count the exhale slowly and let the last two counts empty the chest.

Three practices get muddled here, and two of them are not even cooling breaths.

If your teeth are sensitive, Sitali. If your tongue will not roll, Sitkari. If neither is comfortable, Chandra Bhedana, which is nasal and produces the same settling without touching the mouth at all. And if what you want is a breath to use while moving, that is Ujjayi and it is not a cooling practice in any sense.

Two traditional claims are attached to Sitkari and I will take them in order.

Cooling. Seventeen healthy men, four sessions each in random order, axillary temperature and metabolic measurement before, during and after. Body temperature rose significantly during Sitkari and fell during quiet lying. Oxygen consumption rose 7.6 per cent. The authors' own conclusion is that the results do not support the description of these practices as cooling. The cool feeling is local: fast air over a wet tongue and wet teeth evaporates moisture and cools the mouth, which is exactly where you feel it.

Hunger and thirst. The classical texts say Sitkari reduces both. I have taught for about forty years and I have never seen it, and I could not find a trial that has tested it. So the honest position is that this claim is unsupported rather than disproved, and you should not take up a breathing practice as an appetite suppressant. If weight is what you are after, the weight loss page here says plainly what does and does not move the number.

None of this makes the practice worthless. It slows your breath to about seven a minute, it makes you feel less hot, and it gives you three minutes of attention. I would rather sell you that honestly than the thermostat.

Sitkari goes last among the breathing practices, because it opens the mouth and everything before it wants a settled nose.

1. Anulom Vilom: 12 rounds, six minutes.
2. Sitkari: 9 rounds, three minutes.
3. One minute sitting still, mouth closed.
4. Savasana, five minutes, if the day allows.

On a hot night, use it alone: sit on the edge of the bed or in Padmasana, nine rounds, then lie down. It pairs well with the bedtime sequence and it is short enough that people actually do it.

If you are assembling a first home routine, the order in the home practice guide is the one I teach, and a cooling breath is a sensible third practice to learn, after alternate nostril breathing and Bhramari. In the online classes the one thing I look for on this practice is the jaw, because a clenched jaw is invisible to the person doing it.

Sitkari appears in the slow half of this site and nowhere in the forceful half.

• Yoga for high blood pressure lists it, without retention, among the practices that are safe when Kapalbhati and Bhastrika are not.
• Yoga for anxiety includes it for the same reason it includes Sitali: an agitated person will do something with the mouth when they will not simply sit and watch the breath.
• Hatha yoga is the tradition these two practices come out of, and both are named in the classical hatha texts rather than being modern additions.

Sit for it in Vajrasana or on a chair. If you want somebody to look at your jaw and your teeth position once, that is what an introductory class is for.