Not a Summer Person? Ayurveda Has an Explanation.

The sun has been climbing since December. But it’s only now — mid-June — that the body starts to feel it. In Ayurveda, this is Pitta season, when heat, intensity, and fire become the dominant qualities in nature and in us.

It can feel wonderful at first. Then July arrives and something shifts. The energy that felt expansive starts to feel like too much.

In New York, the shift is hard to miss. Rooftop bars fill up. People sit on stoops until midnight. The city operates at a higher voltage and everyone seems to love it.

And some people really do. There are constitutions (your individual Ayurvedic makeup — the combination of energies you were born with) that flourish in summer — that open up in the heat the way a flower does. If that is you, this season is yours.

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For the rest of us, it’s more complicated. By mid-June I’ve already had enough and summer hasn’t officially begun. The intense sunlight starts to feel oppressive, and the heat doesn’t leave me when I come inside. I’ll be in an air-conditioned room at 10pm still radiating warmth from an afternoon outside, as if my body absorbed more than it knew what to do with.

I am a Kapha-Pitta, and summer is my most challenging season. Mood, digestion, skin — all of it shows up. For a long time I thought this was a personal failing. Ayurveda gave me a different explanation. It wasn’t me being curmudgeon-y. It was my constitution meeting its most intense season.

If any of this sounds familiar, keep reading.

Pitta is made of fire and, to a lesser degree, water. Think of it as the midday sun with varying degrees of humidity — that combination tells you everything about how it behaves when it goes out of balance.

Heat. Just as the summer sun warms everything it touches, excess Pitta raises internal temperature — inflammation, redness, burning.

Sharpness. The sun’s rays are penetrating and precise. Excess Pitta sharpens digestion, hunger, vision, and the mind, sometimes past the point of comfort.

Intensity. Summer light is brilliant and relentless. Excess Pitta creates a focus and emotional charge that, without release, simply exhausts you.

Spreading. Heat moves outward. Excess Pitta surfaces through the blood and skin as rashes, redness, and warmth.

Oiliness. Unlike Vata, which is dry, Pitta carries a slightly oily quality — excess oil on skin and scalp in summer is often Pitta making itself known.

Pitta governs all transformation in the body — digestion, temperature regulation, the processing of emotions and experiences. It is the intelligence that converts what we take in into energy and understanding. Which is why when it’s balanced, you feel sharp and vital. And when it’s not, you feel it everywhere.

The most reliable sign is irritability — a sharpness that arrives before you’ve had a chance to explain it to yourself. Things that wouldn’t normally bother you start to. Your patience shortens. You may not even be angry at anything in particular. You’re just done.

From there it tends to spread. Digestion gets reactive — heartburn, acid, or that sharp hunger that turns unpleasant if a meal is even slightly late. Skin flares. Eyes get sensitive to bright light. Sleep gets harder, particularly that 2am wake-up where the mind decides it has things to sort out. And underneath all of it, a kind of heat that doesn’t quite leave — not fever, just a persistent internal warmth that makes everything feel like a little too much.

Food first, because it’s the most immediate lever you have.

The principle is simple: cool, not cold. Ice water and frozen things actually disrupt digestion — Ayurveda is firm on this. What you want are foods that are naturally cooling in quality. Sweet, bitter, and astringent tastes calm Pitta down. Pungent, sour, and salty push it higher.

In practice this means leaning into summer’s abundance — cucumbers, melons, zucchini, leafy greens, fresh herbs, coconut. Whole grains, legumes, fresh seasonal fruit. Cilantro and mint on almost everything. A cup of fennel or rose tea in the evening instead of something stimulating. Ghee, coconut oil, sunflower oil over anything heating.

What to pull back on in peak summer: very spicy food, heavily fermented things, excess salt and sour. Not forever — just while the heat is at its height.

The other thing Pitta does not tolerate well is irregular eating. Skip a meal and that sharp hunger becomes its own kind of irritability. Eating at consistent times, with the largest meal at midday, makes a real difference.

If summer is a season that flares you up, your health cannot be an afterthought.

This doesn’t mean retreating from life. You can go to the weddings, the vacations, the birthday dinners. Just don’t do any of it in the peak heat of the day if you can help it — roughly 10am to 2pm is when the sun is at its most intense and your Pitta least needs the encouragement. Plan around it when you can.

The bigger thing is your daily rhythm. Summer has a way of dismantling it — kids are off school, schedules loosen, social life picks up. All of that is fine. But somewhere inside that looseness, protect a structure that works for you. Consistent meals. Enough sleep. Time that is genuinely unscheduled.

You do not need to match other people’s enthusiasm for the season. That is not a failure of spirit. It is an understanding of your own constitution. And that is worth more than keeping up with anyone else's summer.

Not everyone experiences summer the same way, and that is the point.

If you are predominantly Vata — air and space, naturally cool and dry — summer is your friend. The warmth grounds you, loosens you, gives you an ease that the other seasons don’t always offer. Enjoy it.

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If you are Kapha — earth and water, slow and steady — you land somewhere in the middle. Summer doesn’t particularly bother you, but it can also give you permission to slow down more than you should. Keep moving. The heat is not an excuse to go still.

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And if you are Pitta, or Pitta is a significant part of your makeup, you already know. This post was for you.

No matter your constitution though, remember: what is happening inside us mirrors what is happening outside in nature. The sun is at its most intense. The days are long. The heat is accumulating. Our bodies are not separate from any of that — they are part of it. The goal is not to fight the season but to meet it with a little more awareness than you did last year.

𑁍 The sun has been climbing since December, and by mid-June the body is feeling it — whether you realize it or not.

𑁍 Pitta is the energy of fire and water. Summer amplifies it in all of us, but especially in those who already run hot. The signs are irritability, reactive digestion, skin flares, heat that lingers long after you’ve come inside.

𑁍 If that’s you — cool foods, not cold. Consistent meals. Movement in the early morning or evening, not in peak heat. A daily rhythm that doesn’t sacrifice you to everyone else’s summer agenda.

𑁍 If you’re Vata, enjoy it — this season was made for you. If you’re Kapha, keep moving.

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Not everyone needs to be a summer person. Some of us are just passing through it — gracefully, with good boundaries and cucumber slices. I’ll be in my cool room with a book if you need me.

Did you find yourself nodding along — or were you puzzled that there are people out there who don’t love summer the way you do? Either way, consider subscribing — there’s more seasonal wisdom, food talk, and Ayurvedic common sense coming your way all summer long.

And I’d love to know — is this your season? Are you one of the ones who blooms in the heat, or are you quietly holding your breath until October? Tell me in the comments.

P.S. I’ve written about Pitta season before — if you want to go deeper, last summer’s post is below.