Ayurveda is the sister science of yoga. It is the way our energy flows within us. Let me give you a crash course on some background.

Our mind experiences life through the senses and these senses process information through organs of action. The sensory experience that comes into our field of awareness impact our preferences. In addition to this, there are forces of nature that impact our physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual being. These forces are called Gunas. There are additional Gunas in the world that I will tell you about like, rajas, tamas, and sattva.

Rajas is the doing or kinetic energy of the world.

Tamas are the potential energy or the not doing.

Sattva is the balance between the doing and not doing.

These are the forces that can push and pull us out of balance.

Our sensory experience is largely impacted by the elemental properties of things in our world. In Ayurveda, we look at five elements to explain the constitution of different things. Earth, Fire, Water, Air, and Ether. These elements make up our Doshas.

Everything around us has its own elemental pull which means everything has a dosha.

The main rule of thumb for Ayurveda is like increases like and opposites decrease. For example if I have a glass of water and add more water I just end up with more water. If I have a fire going and I toss water on the fire, the fire will lessen, decreasing the fire. When we look at balancing our lives through an Ayurvedic perspective we have to understand our natural dosha constitutes without that we cannot balance ourselves.

Let's look at these doshas.

So there are three main dosha types: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Each of them have elemental qualities and I will have another blog post breaking them down individually in the future.

For now here is the basics for the Doshas

Vata: A combination of air and ether. Embodying the qualities/Gunas of the wind. When you think of Vata think of the qualities such as, dry, light, cold, rough, subtle, clean. People with a natural Vata pull are prone to anxiety, bloating, cold hands, dry skin, etc. Vata is more related to the fall season due to the natural state of the weather.

Pitta: A combination of Fire and Water, embodying the qualities/gunas of molten lava. When you think of Pitta think of the qualities such as, hot, sharp, mobile, oily, and transformative. People with a natural Pitta pull are prone to excess heat in both the mind and body. Pitta is more related to the summer season due to the natural hotness that happens.

Kapha: A combination of earth and water, embodying the qualities/gunas of a smooth nutritive clay. When you think of kapha think of qualities like, heavy, slow, cold, oily dense, soft, sticky, hard, gross. People with a natural kapha pull are prone to heaviness in the mind and body. Kapha is more related to winter season due to the slowness that comes with the cold.

This I just a stepping stone into the world of Ayurveda and balancing Doshas. The first step is to figure out what you naturally are and what is currently out of balance. This is not a selling point, but I do offer the ability to give you the test to find out what you are naturally and what is out of balance or you can use one of the link below to take an online test and see what you are naturally. Some of these will tell you out of balance, but some will not.

If you are interested in having your dosha test done by me and a short document on ways to help improve your imbalances click here https://www.mindfulmovementsyoga.org/online_store/dosha-test

Links to websites for Ayurveda Test:

https://mapi.com/pages/dosha-quiz-landing

https://paavaniayurveda.com/pages/quiz