Ayurveda for Your Type
by Cindy Wargo
It's too easy to go through life without paying attention, especially in a world full of exponential distractions. One of my favorite things about practicing yoga is how it has helped me pay more attention. I’m grateful to notice what creates sparks inside of me, and I'm especially grateful when I let that spark guide me.
My spark of interest around Ayurveda began with a ‘What’s Your Dosha?’ quiz. Unlike the quizzes in Cosmo Magazine, this one actually provided helpful information about what made me tick. Suddenly I understood why I had zero interest in Hot Yoga, and why I reacted with agitation to the precision of Iyengar-style yoga. While those styles are great for other doshas, not so much for mine. Knowing my dosha helped me understand why a gentle, quiet and expansive style of yoga made me feel better, and why I have always loved meditation. The effects of these particular yoga styles and practices are linked to the natural tendencies of my dosha.
In case you aren’t familiar with the concept of doshas, yoga's sister science, Ayurveda, teaches that there are three different qualities of energies present in everyone., and they are closely aligned with the nature of the five elements. The energies, known as doshas, are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Vata is Air/Ether, and its qualities are cold, dry, rough, and mobile. Pitta, since it’s mostly Fire with some Water, is hot, sharp, mobile, and penetrating. And Kapha is Earth and Water, so its qualities are moist, heavy, cold, dull, and dense. The cycles of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha show up during different times of the day, different times of our lives, and during seasonal changes.
We all have a special combination of these doshas that make us unique. Each of us has all three doshas within us, and using a minivan analogy for our constitutional makeup, we could say that one dosha is usually in the driver’s seat, one in the middle row, and one in the back row. It’s also possible to have one driver dosha, and one in the front seat next to the driver, making a dual dosha combo. Very rare is the person with all three in the front seat, like an old pick up truck, but it does happen.
Once we know our dosha and our natural tendencies, we can start to practice in a way that better brings us into balance. While fiery Pittas like me really don’t do well with Hot Yoga, and earthy Kaphas don’t do well in a Yin class, we can adjust even within a group yoga class. We can learn how to recognize when we are out of balance, and then practice in a way that brings us back to our natural tendencies.
Recognizing our imbalance, and then adjusting our yoga practice to correct it, is exactly what we’ll be doing in my upcoming workshop, Ayurvedic Yoga for Your Type . Join in studio, on Zoom, and/or catch the replay for 30 days. I’m really excited to share these practices with you. It’s hands-down one of the best things that has transformed my practice to one that nourishes me.