What's your Dosha?

What's Your Dosha?
by Vicki Peterson

Developed in India more than 5,000 years ago, Ayur-Veda is now organizing lives in the United States

     Are you a restless, sensitive, creative person who loves to begin projects but never gets around to finishing them? You might be a Vata Type. Vatas are slender and do everything fast. Under stress, they have a tendency for anxiety, insomnia, dry skin and constipation.
     Or maybe you are a Pitta person with a sharp intellect, focused attention, strong sense of justice and a tendency towards irritability. Pittas like to be in control of their environment, are good public speakers and love to be the center of attention. Under stress they flare up in anger or become overly self-critical.
      If you are naturally calm and have an excellent long term memory you may be a Kapha type. Kaphas have good strength and endurance, larger joints and eyes, even teeth, and a more rounded shape. They tend to hibernate or gain weight under stress.
     Vata, Pitta, Kapha? These are the "doshas," or organizing principles, described in Ayur-Veda, one of the most ancient, comprehensive systems of natural medicine on the planet. The word Ayur-Veda comes from two Sanskrit roots: Ayus meaning life and Veda meaning knowledge. Ayur-Veda is the knowledge of life, not disease.
     Practiced in India for over 5,000 years, Ayur-Veda has been recently revived and brought to the West by His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation^® program.      Wouldn't it be great to know yourself so well that you knew what to take in from the environment with each of your senses to create and maintain balance? Knowing your own unique constitution is the first step to a personalized Ayur-Vedic health care program.

     How you walk, talk, look, and think all reveal something about your constitution. Ayur-Veda uses the language of everyday experience so that understanding your little quirks and all of your aches and pains and odd sensations can guide you in the direction of balance.
     Even children can grasp the simple concepts of the three doshas.
     Vata, Pitta, and Kapha are the basic organizing principles of creation. Vata comes from the elements of air and space. It is quick, dry, rough, light and cold. Pitta comes primarily from the element of fire and is hot, sharp, slightly oily. Kapha comes from the elements of water and earth and is solid, slow, strong, cold, viscous, and moist.
     Vata governs movement. Pitta governs digestion, metabolism and transformation. Kapha governs structure and fluid balance. We are born with a certain combination of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha which is just right for us.
      Our constitution doesn't change but we can accumulate stress in our life that shows up in pulse diagnosis as specific subdosha imbalances. There are five subdoshas each for Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Each subdosha has a particular location and function in the physiology with counterparts in the mind and emotions.
     During a Maharishi Ayur-Veda consultation the physician takes your pulse with three fingers at three different levels of pressure to help him determine your underlying constitution, specific imbalances at the subdosha level, the health of each of the seven tissues, and the location of any impurities which impede the flow of the body's own inner intelligence.

     The primary treatment for any disease is to reconnect with bliss, the underlying field of wholeness which is the basis of health. The Transcendental Meditation technique is effortless because the mind is drawn towards bliss. The technique is practiced for twenty minutes twice a day sitting comfortably with the eyes closed. It produces a unique state of restful alertness for both mind and body which helps remove deep-rooted stresses and strains from the past.
     Since 1971 over 600 scientific research studies have verified the health benefits of the Transcendental Meditation program. TM has been shown to benefit everything from asthma, hypertension, angina and anxiety to insomnia.
     All meditations are not created equal. A meta-analysis of all the published research studies on different forms of meditation used to treat anxiety found the TM technique to be consistently twice as effective as other forms of relaxation.
     In addition to meditation which is good for everybody, individualized home Ayur-Vedic treatments include diet, exercise, aroma, special herbal preparations, and special neurorespiratory and neuromuscular integration practices.
     Maharishi Ayur-Veda consultations are just part of a whole host of Vedic medical practices that make up the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, including Vedic astrology, architecture, and music. If you're on the net, check out www.TM.org or www.vedic-health.org.

^®Maharishi Ayur-Veda, Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, Transcendental Meditation and TM are registered trade marks licensed to Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation.

Vicki Peterson is a teacher of the TM program and an Ayur-Vedic patient educator with her husband, Dr. John Peterson, a board certified Family Practice MD who completed the Maharishi Ayur-Veda physicians training program in 1985.

From Jar Magazine 1997