All Ayurvedic
Yesterday, in an interview for Yoga Journal, I was asked what lifestyle techniques I wholeheartedly swear by. I’ve been saving this trick up for a while to share…it’s certainly one of the main approaches I live by for maximum wellness and solid-to-goodness ground-ed-ness.
I tame my vata.
But I have a theory. I believe untamed vata is the reason why people in our culture are feeling more and more unsettled and angsty, and getting weirdly unwell as a result. I make a big call, but read on.
Our “vata” is out of balance. Contemporary life turns us into vata types. But it also aggravates vata energy. We’re set up to #epicfail!
Have no idea what I’m talking about?
OK, I’ll break this whole vata thing down
* Vata is an Ayurvedic term.
* Ayurvedic healing, IMO, is the most grounded approach I’ve encountered. Yoga as we know it today – all of it – and meditation and a lot of the dietary theory I espouse comes from this tradition which is more than 5000 years old (some say 10, 000). It started in India. Buddhism stemmed from it 3000 years ago.
* Anyway. According to Ayurvedic thinking, we’re all made up of 3 doshas – vata, pitta and kapha. This is less woo-woo than it sounds. Promise. It’s simply a way to categorise body/personality types that exist for a multitude of evolutionary reasons. We all possess all three doshas, but tend to have one that dominates. Our dominant dosha can get out of balance, which causes us different digestion/weight, health and emotional issues.
Make sense?
So, generally…
Vata types have: light, flexible bodies and big, protruding teeth; small, recessed, dry eyes; irregular appetite and thirst; often experience digestive and malabsorption problems; easily excited; alert and quick to act without much thinking; may give a wrong answer but with great confidence. Their dominant force is wind so do not like sitting idle, and seek constant action. They’re FLIGHTY! Vatas hate cold. Hate, hate, hate it. They need warm, mushy foods to bring them back down to earth. And they love summer.
