What is Ayurveda?

In Ayurvedic Medicine, life is looked at through the lens of nature, with everything being composed of the elements: Fire, Air, Ether, Earth, and Water. That includes the outside natural world around us, but also humans are composed of elements too. Did you know that Ayurveda is the oldest written version of medicine in the world, being over 5000 years old?

The word Ayurveda can be translated as the ‘Science of Life’. Isn’t that beautiful?! It’s a system of health designed to be introspective, adaptive, intuitive, responsive, unique to YOU and something that evolves with YOU as you go through your life, working towards keeping you in balance in the ebb and flow of this life of yours. Helping you understanding yourself better within the world around you. Something that can meet you where you are at and be specific to helping you feel better. It recognizes the human body as capable of healing and very intelligent too, which I love. one of my favourite things about Ayurveda, is that Ayurveda believes the waters, the lymph of the body are the key to our overall health. They believe the waters of our body known as RASA, feed and build all the other tissues in the body. Water = Life. Fascinating right?!

Have you ever heard of a DOSHA Quiz? Finding your constitution can be fun and insightful!

We have all heard of those personality questionnaires like the Myers - Briggs, or the more recent ones around the concept of Human Design, or Enneagrams, or even a personality quiz in a popular magazine of which kind of person are you, right?! Believe it or not, these all have something in common. They can help us find patterns within ourselves that may help us understand ourselves better. Ayurveda famously has what’s called a DOSHA system to help you understand your unique make-up and tendencies as well as personality traits and how you handle stress. This is commonly seen as a DOSHA Quiz or questionnaire to help you understand if you are more VATA (Air + Ether), PITTA (Fire + Water), KAPHA (Water + Earth), or a combination of 2 or more of these. Doshas can be applied to everything from our own unique body-mind-spirit, the seasons, times of day, and the world around us.

Doing a DOSHA questionnaire can give you great insights into yourself. Sometimes you will see quizzes that have what’s called A PRAKRUTI and a VIKRUTI - which is a two step dosha questionnaire that is helpful in understanding current health and energetic imbalance, as well as what your natural, healthy natural state is for you. For example, You might be a VATA/PITTA nature and be experiencing a KAPHA imbalance. Or be KAPHA nature experiencing a PITTA or a VATA imbalance.

When I offer my 1:1 consults, the DOSHA questionnaire with the VIKRUTI and PRAKRUTI parts is something we do together to get a sense of what is your what your constitution is and what your current imbalance(s) may be. I find this a really helpful approach and has brought some much insight for me and my clients I have worked with.

Since its the season of Autumn, let’s look at VATA together in more detail.

To help you understand this DOSHA, think what the elements are like. What characteristics do AIR and ETHER have? Air can be cold or cooling, dry, light, moving, can change directions. Air supports all motion in the body. Movement of muscles, movement of air in and out of our bodies, movement of food through our digestive tract. Ether is space - the spaces of our throat, nose, esophagus, intestines, our lymphatic and blood vessels, inside our bone marrow. Air is associated with the sense of TOUCH in the body, as well as the idea of grasping new concepts, adapting to change, uplifting yourself and others, you might be energetic, enthusiastic, which are characteristics of air within you. You might be able to picture moments when you feel ‘light as air’, or are able to ‘go with the flow’ and adapt to change or feel confident and able to express your view and share your voice. This is VATA in balance.

When VATA is aggravated or we have too much AIR and SPACE elements in the body, you might struggle with anxiety, feel nervous, are always cold, have digestive complaints like constipation, bloating, burping, racing mind, trouble focusing, are a light sleeper, have a sensitive stomach, rush into everything you do, racing from one thing to the next and your life feels “up in the air” scattered, directionless like a pile of leaves fluttering around in the wind. These are all VATA imbalances. You do not, nor will you likely experience all of these at the same time, but they are united by a theme of an imbalance of AIR and ETHER in the body, that I hope you can begin to picture a little bit easier now.

AUTUMN

In Autumn - VATA is seen in nature as the leaves are falling, cool, crisp air, cooler nights. Dry skin, season of colds/flus as our respirator tract gets aggravated by the increased dryness. Soups and teas to the rescue! In our modern lives we can get VATA imbalances from always being on the go, lots of screen-time with our thoughts and attention scattered and pulled in many directions. A simple mindful moment to stop, notice what is happening, ground yourself, and then keep going can help, as well as taking making time for meditation, earthing, nature walks, turning off screens an hour or more before bedtime all are very helpful for helping a VATA imbalance.

VATA has a time of day too!

Yep! The DOSHAS all have a 4 hour window twice a day. Vata times of day are: 2am-6am when we often experience more dreams in our sleep and start to feel light enough to begin waking towards the middle to end of VATA time. Ayurveda encourages us to get up before 6, when Kapha energy kicks in and it feels a bit heavier and harder to roll out of bed after 6. Have you ever noticed that? I have never been much of an early morning person, so I tend to get up right at 6 or a few minutes before, but in the winter when it’s dark at 6, it can be nice to floow th sun and wake with the sun when yo ucan too. The othe rtime of VATA is between 2pm-6pm. It’s when the air is lightest during the day and we can use this to guide our daily routine. It can be a beautiful structure to follow or something to look at to get a sense of imbalances too.

My next article will be on how VATA can play out in our Lymphedema in Autumn!

What did you think of this post? Did you learn anything new? Was it interesting? Tell me in the comments below!