Less is More: Identifying Doshas

When I first began learning about Ayurveda, I was astounded to see how much sense it made.  Reading about vata dosha was like reading a handbook on my life.  Physically, I am the vata poster child.  I have dry skin, hair, lips, a thin light frame and muscles.  I HATE being cold and LOVE being warm and have perpetually cold hands and feet.  My joints crack constantly and I always have lower back pain.  On top of the many similar anatomical attributes, I am internally also very vata.  I talk fast, think fast, understand fast, but forget even faster.  I am creative, intuitive, imaginative, love exercise but love traveling even more. What may have surprised me most are the imbalanced attributes of vata including anxiety, worry, insomnia, and fear, all of which I have struggled with since I was a child.  It was very clear from the beginning that my primary prakruti is vata.  However, not everything fit into the vata and my secondary dosha is pitta.

In a few major ways, I am more pitta than vata.  I am extremely driven, determined, ambitious, critical, goal oriented, confident, competitive, and a leader.  I also have (thankfully) regular digestion, which is not vata at all and much more pitta.  Due to the fact that I am so strongly vata, and vata dosha is the easiest to become imbalanced, I decided to focus my experiment on balancing vata.