What are you made up of?
In Ayurveda, you may hear terms thrown around like “dosha” that often lead to confusion. There are all these quizzes out there to “find your dosha.”
You may think dosha pertains only to the type of body or personality you have. It does, but there is so much more to it.
Hang with me here as this takes some breaking down.
Ayurveda is a system aligned with nature and based in the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. The doshas are simply a way to lump elements, or qualities, together.
There are three doshas: kapha, pitta, and vata
Kapha= earth and water
⛰️Qualities are heavy, stable, smooth, slow, cool, oily, damp
⛰️Energy of generation/building up
⛰️Season of spring
⛰️Lifestage of infancy to puberty (childhood)
⛰️In the body= stable part of bones, muscles, tendons, fluids, and mucosal linings
Pitta= fire and a little water
🔥Qualities are sharp, hot, light, oily, pungent, sour
🔥Energy of transformation
🔥Season of summer
🔥Lifestage of puberty to end of fertility (menopause)
🔥In the body= hormones, digestive enzymes, neurotransmitters
Vata= air and ether
🌬️Qualities are mobile, light, subtle, dry, irregular, and cold
🌬️Energy of degeneration/moving out and down
🌬️Season of fall/winter
🌬️Lifestage of wise elder (post-menopause)
🌬️In the body= organ cavity (space) and movement of food down, flow of blood, downward flow of elimination, fluctionation of thoughts
EVERYTHING around us contains these three doshas (and five elements). They are like primary colors. If you start observing closely, you’ll notice that even places have a doshic makeup, as do animals.
Enjoying a little fresh mountain air on a warm-ish January day. Photo by Ron Kapioski.
For example, I live in Denver. It is high desert: dry, erratic, mobile (windy), with unpredictable (irregular) weather. It is a primarily vata place, with some pitta (heat) moving in during summer. There is more kapha(earth) in the mountains.
Since you are part of nature, you also have a doshic makeup. You contain all three of them, in a certain combination.
We are born with an exact makeup, and tend to go out of balance most easily in the dosha(s) that are primary to us (this is generally what people are alluding to when they say “I’m a VATA!”)-- usually, they’ve determined they are vata predominant.
The reason we want to understand our tendencies is it helps us to then create habits in our lives to find balance. In Ayurveda, we do this by bringing in opposite qualities.
For example, if I determine that my makeup is primarily vata, with only a little pitta and kapha, then I know that I will tend to be a person who is on the move, mind racing, flexible, creative, and often feel cold. I may have an irregular appetite and be prone to constipation.
The medicine? ROUTINE, heat, density, moist, slowing down (opposite of the qualities of vata). These can be brought in via lifestyle (sleep, stress reduction) in HOW we eat, and the qualities of the food we eat (eating a diet that is warm + moist).
As I’ve talked about previously, perimenopause is the time we start transitioning from pitta time of life to vata time of life. This transition doesn’t happen overnight, just like summer doesn’t turn to winter overnight.
What gets tricky is that the nature of the constitution we’re born with starts to get overlaid with more vata dosha coming in, on top of whatever imbalances have accumulated.
I can help you understand all of this for YOU. One of the things I do in 1:1 coaching is an in-depth assessment to help you understand 1- the tendencies you were born with and 2- how those tendencies are playing out now 3- how to manage the imbalances.
We will also be doing a deep dive into this in the upcoming Ancient Wisdom for the Modern Perimenopausal Woman.