Ayurveda, Doshas, and Everything in Between
I am often asked “what exactly is Ayurveda?"
Well, it's a complicated answer. Ayurveda is an ancient medical science from India. It is knowledge passed down from the Vedas. The Vedic civilization passed on knowledge from guru to disciple and all of this was eventually written down to become the Vedic text from which we know Yoga and Ayurveda.
Ayurveda is complex. It is a medical science, but one that looks at the whole body, mind, spirit and world around us for clues on what to treat first. According to Ayurveda, we are a mirror of our environment. We are part of an elemental world and therefore, those elements are also within us. Each person is unique in their elemental makeup and in how their environment has impacted their unique elemental makeup. The dominant element in one’s body is their Dosha or their faults.
Vata is energy that consists of air and ether. It is expansive, airy, cold, dry and able to move.
Pitta is fire and water (oily). It is hot, fast, moist and has the ability to burn up, inflame or impart color.
Kapha is earth and water, and is energy that is cold, heavy, dense, stable and moist.
Everything in life has its Doshic phase from seasons to the stages of life.
The Doshas are what we see and feel and they also recognize the deeper layers and complexity of our humanness. There is a subtleness to who we are which is known as the subtle Doshas. We have subtle essences within the Doshas that connect to our mind. Our life force or Prana is our ability to be energized, present, aware and in a state of flow. Tejas helps us digest through our senses and then use that knowledge, have the courage to build something and be radiant in our awesomeness. Ojas is our immunity, juiciness as humans who make more humans.
When we go deeper into the self, the ancient Risis observed that we were made up of more than elements, regardless of the dosha in your body or mind.
They observed a deeper essence of what drives us as a human – the Gunas, our natural unconscious state of being. To illustrate this, imagine a lake as our state of consciousness. A clear lake that is undisturbed would be considered Sattvic. However, if one were to throw a stone in the lake it becomes less clear and turbulent, restless. In Ayurveda, this is called the state of Rajas. Once the lake becomes so unclear that we can hardly see anything in it at all we are in a state of Tamas.
Tamas is a state of being that is inert, closed, dark and blinded from the deeper connection of humanity. The mind that is Rajasic is turbulent with worldly focuses of personal gain and greed. A Sattvic mind is calm and unbothered, connected to a higher source, steady in its knowing that we are more than a body, more than a mind and more than what our senses tell us.
Overall, Ayurveda ties these somewhat esoteric concepts neatly together with the focus on diet, lifestyle and spiritual practice to bring these parts of ourselves into harmony.
When working with an Ayurvedic practitioner, they are looking at your whole elemental makeup on all of the layers mentioned above. The modern practitioner uses any and all therapies available to bring you into harmony.
Bringing your Doshic constitution into harmony should not, however, be a second job. One tenet of Ayurveda is that in order for it to work it must adapt with the times. We live in a Rajasic world full of Pitta driven people who are full of low quality Prana. The goal is not to turn everyone into Sattvic beings, the goal is to bring each being closer to their unique version of balance as they navigate our modern world.
