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.