VATA – The Energy of Movement in Ayurveda
Vata is the principle of mobility that regulates all activity in the body: from how many thoughts one might have during a given period to how efficiently food moves through our intestines. Vata is in charge of functions such as the pulsation of the heart, respiration, circulation and elimination. It is responsible for joy, happiness, creativity and speech. Vata is also in charge of the vital life essence, or prana. When Vata (prana) leaves the body, life ceases.
The colon is the most important seat of Vata dosha. Vata is also present in the nervous system as motor neuron impulses; in the ears; in the pelvic cavity, lower back, sacrum and thighs; and in the joints and skin. When Vata is increased, there may be signs and symptoms connected to these locations.
Vata has the qualities or attributes of dry, light, cold, rough, subtle, mobile (erratic), and clear.
PITTA- The Energy of Digestion and Metabolism in Ayurveda
Pitta represents the Fire principle in the body. Everything that enters the body must be “digested” and assimilated, from sensory perception to food for nourishment. In addition to the gastric fire, pitta also includes the enzymes and amino acids that play a major role in metabolism and even the neurotransmitters and neuropeptides involved in thinking. Some of the responsibilities of pitta are to regulate the body heat through the chemical transformation of food and to give a person appetite, vitality, and the capacity to learn and understand.
Pitta is hot, sharp, light, oily, liquid, and spreading in nature. It vitiates with sour, bitter, pungent foods.
KAPHA- The Energy of Lubrication and Structure in Ayurveda
Earth and Water give kapha its definitive qualities. Kapha comprises all our cells, tissues and organs. Kapha molecules tend to stick together to form dense masses and give the body a chubby shape. Lubrication of joints and organs, strong muscles and bones, cellular secretions, and memory retention, are all part of kapha’s function.
Kapha is heavy, slow, cool, oily, liquid, hard, smooth, dense, soft, static, viscous, and cloudy.
Ayurveda and Cycles of Time: How Doshas Rule the Day
Let’s begin with the KAPHA TIME of day because the day always begins with kapha dosha. Ayurveda teaches that it’s best to get up in the morning before 6:00 am. This is because at 6:00 am, kapha becomes dominant. Kapha is the energy of water and earth and thus is heavy and sluggish. If you awaken during Kapha time, which is between 6:00 am and 10:00 am, these qualities will increase within you – and you get that “I overslept and am having a hard time waking up” feeling. It’s best to get up before 6:00 am and engage in some early morning activity to get your heart pumping and your day off to an energetic start. Eat a light breakfast that is well-spiced. Despite prevailing wisdom, breakfast is NOT the time for a big meal, as this will only increase heaviness and sluggishness. Lunch is the most important meal of the day when the warmth of the natural world supports digestive fire.
Kapha time flows into PITTA TIME, which begins at 10:00 am and continues until 2:00 pm. Pitta governs the time of productivity, the time that the sun is highest in the sky, and there is more heat in the natural world. Pitta is the dosha of heat, as it is made of fire and water. During this time of day, heat will naturally predominate in our bodies and minds. By harnessing this midday heat, we are propelled to be productive and accomplish our goals. However, it’s best to avoid spending time in the direct sun at this time of day, especially engaging in vigorous activity in the sunshine if you are predominantly pitta since those with a pitta nature are likely to experience an increase of heat symptoms within the body at this time, including burning indigestion, skin rashes, or even flares of temper. As mentioned above, lunch is when you can most indulge in a big meal, as you are best able to digest it at this time, since digestion is a fiery process and will be supported by the heat in the natural world.
The pitta time of day fades as the VATA TIME of day begins, at about 2:00 pm. Vata time continues until 6:00 pm as the day gives way to night. Vata, which is made of the elements air and space (ether), governs the time of transition. The naturally light, etheric quality of this time of day allows creativity and expansive thinking to peak, making it a great time to engage in creative pursuits and problem-solving. However, it can also be a time when those of a vata nature may feel agitation, so choose a calm environment in which you can work while minimizing excess sensory input such as bright lights and loud noises. Instead, ground yourself in a peaceful environment, and grab a cup of herbal tea and a warm blanket. Vata is the most delicate of the doshas, and the most likely to become imbalanced, as it is the dosha of movement. By keeping it pacified at this time of day, its creative gifts can manifest and imbalances avoided.
As the cycle continues, and we move towards night, times ruled by the doshas repeat. KAPHA becomes dominant again from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm, when the water and earth elements accumulate once again. These heavy qualities tell you it’s time to wind down, eat a light, early dinner (don’t overeat at dinner – avoid heavy food), and settle in for the night. As you move towards 10:00 pm, begin your soothing preparations for sleep. By going to bed during the Kapha time of day, the heavy quality of this time of day will help ensure that you drift off to sleep easily, naturally. During the last hour or two before bed (from about 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm), engage only in calming activities that nourish and soothe you. No agitation, no distressing conversations, no violent TV shows – or this can interfere with sleep! Instead, take a warm bath, sip tea by the fire, listen to soothing music, and enjoy light conversation with loved ones. Allow the natural kapha time of day to ease you to sleep.
As 10:00 pm rolls around, hopefully, you are snug in bed, sound asleep. This is important, because PITTA rules activity, and during your sleep is no exception. The pitta time of night is from 10:00 pm to 2:00 am, and it is important to be sleeping during this time because the activity that now takes place is inside you; this is the time of internal cleansing. If you remain awake during this important time, you miss out on the benefit of this cleansing time of day. If you are still awake, you may find that the munchies kick in, and you find yourself in the refrigerator, reaching for ice cream or leftover pizza since the digestive force will go looking for something to digest. Your body will thank you for skipping this, and being asleep instead!
VATA time returns from 2:00 am to 6:00 am, marking another time of transition. However, the early morning vata time is not a time of creativity, but rather of receptivity. Yogis discovered long ago that this time of day, when air and ether dominate, is the best time of day for meditation, prayer, chanting and other spiritual practices. By arising before 6:00 am, you can maximize this experience, spending this peaceful time of day in spiritual pursuits. If you are still in bed, you may find that your sleep is light and disturbed, or that you awaken and have a hard time shutting off your mind. Meditation at this time can be a challenge for some, especially if you have a lot of Vata in your nature or have a vata imbalance. Utilizing mantras or affirmations can be very helpful for quieting the mind, have a cup of warm milk in the evening before bed, engage in gentle yoga, or inhale some soothing essential oils such as lavender or jatamansi to calm the mind.
By listening to the cues of nature, and following her rhythms, she will reward you with optimal health, balance, and peace of mind.
By Marisa Laursen, C.A.S., P.K.S., A.Y.T., Faculty at the California College of Ayurveda
DOSHAS- VATA, PITTA, KAPHA
According to Ayurveda, every living being on Earth is made up of five basic elements – fire, earth, water, ether, and air. These 5 elements are combined known as Panch Tatva. These 3 doshas Vata, Pitta and Kapha are found in each of us, they were configured during our conception. We mostly have predominance of two doshas in our constitution in where one is the leading one & other one just supports.
When these are combined in a group of 2 elements, it makes three doshas, namely:
VATA = Air + Ether PITTA = Fire + Water KAPHA = Earth + Water
The whole of life journey is divided into 3 major mile stones:
From birth to 16 years of age- Kapha (anabolic): physical growth and structuring of body.
From 16 to 50 years of age- Pitta (activity and vitality)
From 50 to 100 years of age- Vata (catabolic): process of deterioration (tremors, emaciations, and breathlessness)
- Vata, pitta, kapha are present in every cell, tissue and organ in our body. When in balance create health. When out of balance, they are the cause of disease.
- Doshas are responsible for individual differences and preferences.
- Influence all we are, we do- from our choice of food to our modes of relating to others.
- Govern the biological and psychological procession of our body, mind and soul
- Regulate creation, maintenance and destruction of bodily tissue and elimination of waste products.
Govern our emotions:
When in balance– generate noble qualities of understanding, passion and love
When out of balance due to stress, improper diet, and environmental conditions gives rise to anger, fear and greed.
VATA (AIR PRINCIPLE) – Energy of movement
Physical features: Too tall or too short, lightweight, flexible, less strength, less stamina, dry skin, dry lips, dry hair, cracked heels, muscle tightness, thin hair, rough nails, teeth broken and protruding, variable appetite and thirst, constipated, insomnia, sexual, gaseous detention, weakness, arthritis, pneumonia, nerve disorder, and mental confusion.
Mental features: Vata types are blessed with creative abilities, a quick mind and mental flexibility. Excellent imagination and excels in coming up with new ideas.
PERSONALITY TRAITS OF VATA DOSHA
- Restless and easily fatigued.
- Have less tolerance, confidence and boldness.
- Not good savers and planners.
- Bored easily, need a change frequently.
- Love out of fear and loneliness, when in balance joyful.
- Don’t think about things before acting or making wrong decisions.
- Face difficulty in stability and commitment.
- Low in willpower often feels unstable or ungrounded.
- Neither a good savour nor a good planner.
- Hard time settling down and staying grounded.
- Travel, continual stimulation, and frequent change, can easily upset their balance and leads to problems.
- Talkative, superficial in their ideas and talk aimlessly.
- They lack deep knowledge, lack determination, consistency and self-confidence.
- They lack stability and are fearful.
- They have too much to say and don’t know how to relate it.
One of the unique characteristics of people with vata dosha is that their mood largely depends on the weather, food, and the people around them
Factors that vitiate Vata dosha: Continual stimulation, travel, erratic hours, and frequent change lead to constipation. Loud music, drugs, sugar, caffeine, and alcohol also vitiate vata dosha.
Best for jobs like Producers, graphic designers, interiors, artists, etc.
PITTA DOSHA (PRINCIPLE OF FIRE) – Energy of digestion and metabolism
Physical features:
- Medium height and build, some are slender and delicate.
- Stronger but weight gain easily.
- They experience early greying hair loss or baldness.
- They have Yellowish teeth and bleeding gums.
- Hands are warm, body temperature a little higher, perspire a lot and strong body smell.
- They have strong appetites, strong metabolism and strong digestion.
- They are irritated, agitated and angered.
- Prone to fever, inflammatory diseases, acid indigestion, excessive hunger, jaundice, profuse perspiration, hives, rashes, burning sensation, ulceration, burning eyes, colitis, and sore throat.
Mental features: Alert, intelligent and have a good power of concentration, solution seeker, aggressive, and leader. A sharp mind sometimes becomes hyper-critical, and judgmental.
PERSONALITY TRAITS OF PITTA DOSHA
- Wise, brilliant but controlling and dominating.
- They tend to compare, competition and aggressiveness but are meticulous and perfectionist.
- They are on time, correct principled and workaholics.
- They prefer to spend rather than save. They tend to exhibit their wealth and possessions. Seek for material prosperity and luxury.
- Pitta’s sleep is medium duration but uninterrupted and sound.
- Their energy and endurance are moderate.
Factors that vitiate pitta dosha: Pitta disorders are caused by spicy, oily food, sour and citrus fruits, and drinking wine. Summer season is difficult. When out of balance crave spicy food.
Best for Jobs that require linear thinking, finance, medicine, science, law, etc.
KAPHA DOSHA (PRINCIPLE OF WATER) – Energy of lubrication and structure
Physical features:
- They have strong, healthy developed body, strong muscles, large bones, gain weight easily, difficult to take off.
- Soft skin, smooth lustrous, thick hair everywhere
- Evacuate slowly, steady appetite and thirst though digestion is slow.
- Skip meals and work without food comfortably.
Mental features: Peaceful, patient, tolerant, caring, compassionate, forgiving, stable, solid, faithful, faith is deep and abiding and their mind is calm, steady and excellent memory.
PERSONALITY TRAITS OF KAPHA DOSHA
- Slow and steady in every way.Eat slowly, talk slowly, and slow to act.
- Slow digestion, slow metabolism, slow vital capacity but healthy.
- Main quality- soft skin, soft speech, soft nature, loving look and excellent memories.
- Enjoy a long span of life.
- Sleep deep and prolonged.
- Vigorous exercise is good for kapha.
- Emotional, love, devotion, loyalty, crying easily, difficulty relating to strangers, good in known group and family.
- They are usually not creative or inventive but do carry things out. They finish better than start.
Factors that vitiate kapha dosha: Excess of sweet fruits, yogurt, and frozen food aggravate kapha dosha.
Best for jobs: Steady, methodical, detail oriented, social working, nursing, management, etc.
GUNAS- SATTVA, RAJAS, TAMAS
Sattva, Rajas and Tamas are three gunas of the mind like Vata, Pitta and Kapha are three doshas of the body. Sattva is the contented state, Rajas an excited state whereas Tamas relates to a lethargic disposition, i.e., foods can induce these states of mind.
- Nature possesses a qualitative energy through which we can either expand into wisdom or contract into ignorance. Trained as we are rationally and scientifically to look outside, we cannot perceive the subtle forces hidden in the world. We live in a magical universe filled with great forces of life and death, creation and destruction.
Nature is the divine mother in manifestation and the universe is her play of consciousness. She not only provides for material growth and expansion that moves outward but also supports our spiritual growth and development, which moves within. Nature functions through conscious forces, and spirits that can either be enlightening or darkening, healing or harming.
For any healing of the mind, we must understand these forces and learn how to work with them, as they exist, not only in the world but also in the psyche.
Ayurveda provides a special language for understanding the primal forces of nature and shows us how to work with them on all levels.
Nature consists of three primal qualities which are the power of cosmic intelligence that determines our spiritual growth. These are gunas in Sanskrit, which means “which binds”
SATTVA
Intelligence: Imparts balance
Quality of intelligence: virtue and goodness, create harmony, balance and stability
- Light and luminous
- Possess inward and upward motion brings about awakening of soul.
- Provides happiness and contentment of the lasting nature.
- Principle of clarity, wideness and peace, the force of love that unites all things together.
Domain of sattva (mind and consciousness): Unless the mind is calm and clear, we can’t perceive anything properly. Sattva guna creates clarity through which we perceive the truth of things and gives light, concentration and devotion. It balances Rajas and tamas energy and stability.
SATTVIC LIVING
- One gains peace and harmony and returns to primordial nature and pure spirit which is liberation. It is responsible for true health and healing.
- Health is maintained by sattvic living like living with nature and our inner self and cultivating purity, clarity and peace.
- Sattva strives for balance and peace of mind that cuts of the psychological root of disease.
- Sattva prevails when we are quiet, peaceful and content or naturally fall into meditation.
- Sattvic people:adaptable, harmonious, considerate of others and take care of themselves, see all life as a learning experience and look for the good in all things, even in disease.
DEVELOPING PURE SATTVA NATURE
- Develop love and awareness as universal forces
- Learn to transcend the limitations of human conditions.
- Inner peace should be a dominant force.
- We no longer seek to overcome pain but to develop our joy.
- More from the human aspect to the universal aspect by open to life.
- This is the stage of spiritual practice. It is beyond all ordinary healing and work to heal our relationship with god or inner self.
RAJAS
Energy: Causes imbalance
- Quality of change, activity and turbulence
- Introduce a disequilibrium that upset an existing balance.
- Motivated in its action, ever seeking a goal
- Possessing outward motion causes self-seeking action that leads to fragmentation and disintegration.
- Stimulating and providing pleasure, owing to its unbalanced nature quickly results in pain and suffering.
- Force of passion which causes distress and conflict.
- From Rajas comes the false idea of the external world as real in itself.
- Causes us to seek happiness outside ourselves and lose track of inner peace.
- Creates desire, distortion, turbulence and emotion
- It predominates in the sensory aspect of the mind because the senses are ever-moving and seeking various pleasures. As long as we remain immersed in the pursuit of sensory enjoyment, we fall under the instability of rajas.
- Causes pain, agitation, and dissipation of energy.
- Rajas brings overexpression of energy which eventually leads to exhaustion in which tamas prevails.
- Rajas have good energy but burn through excessive activity.
- Mind agitated seldom at peace, strong opinion, seek power over others, impatient, inconsistent, and blame others for their problems.
- Accomplish goals dominated by ego. If they lose control causes suffering.
WHEN RAJAS IS DOMINANT: we are agitated, disturbed, active or outgoing and when we are very busy.
Moving from rajas to sattva requires:
- Surrender pain, letting go of individual hurt and sorrow.
- Depersonalize problems and look around opening of suffering of others as our own.
- We must learn that problems/ suffering comes to help us grow spiritually. It’s a stage for service and charity.
TAMAS
SUBSTANCE: Creates inertia
- Tamas is a quality of dullness, darkness, inertia, heaviness, veiling, or obstructing action.
- Retards things and holds them in a specific limited form.
- Possess a downward motion that causes decay and disintegration.
- Brings about ignorance and delusion in the mind and promotes insensitivity, sleep and loss of awareness.
- It is a principle of materiality and unconsciousness that causes consciousness to be veiled.
- Tamas causes ignorance that veils our true nature and weakens our power of perfection through it arises an idea of ego separating self, by which we feel alone and separated.
- Tamas prevails in consciousness identified with the physical body which is dull and limited.
- As long as our identity and sense of well-being is primarily physical, we remain in the dark realm of tamas. It brings about stagnation, decay and death.
- Tamasic types have a deep seated psychological blockage.
- Energy and emotion are stagnant and repressed.
- Poor hygiene and poor self-care habits.
- Accept condition as fate and don’t look for solutions.
- Don’t want to be responsible for their lives.
- Don’t deal with their problems and don’t indulge others also.
WHEN TAMAS IS DOMINANT: We are mentally dull or emotionally depressed
Moving from tamas to rajas requires:
- It requires outer activity to break up inertia to get into rajasic.
- A new sense of who we are and what we need is required to get out of tamas.
- New energy is required, change job, modify relationship or move to a new locale.