When our constitutions become out of balance from the wrong kinds of food, movement, routine or environment, then our health can suffer. This is known in Ayurveda as an imbalance and, no matter what your dosha, Ayurveda will treat and deal with the imbalance first. (For more on imbalance, see Balancing the doshas, pages 22–41.)
| Vata | Pitta | Kapha |
| Air | Fire | Water |
| Space | Water | Earth |
So I hope you are starting to get the picture that Ayurveda is a way of living; a large part of it is food but lifestyle is also vitally important. This book is an introduction to an ancient way of living, a tool to give you more insight into your body and how it is affected by the world we live in and the choices we make.
MY AYURVEDIC JOURNEY
When I was introduced to Ayurveda through yoga, it resonated deeply with me because it asked me to look at the things I was doing and question whether they were working for me.
I thought what I was eating was healthy, I followed nutritional guidelines and ate the recommended foods but I never had cause to query the concept of a one size fits all nutrition model.
However, once I started to investigate Ayurveda and research the foods that were appropriate for me and my body type, it became pretty obvious to me they were different to what someone of a totally different body shape could tolerate.
When I looked a little deeper, as Ayurveda asks you to do, and examined myself closely, I saw that I was a bit of a controlling mess. I had been practising a style of yoga that followed a macrobiotic way of eating that was far too heating for me. I was anti sugar and my diet was full of intensely flavoured foods with lots of soy sauce, chilli, curries, miso soup and tomatoes.
The increased heat that this diet created in my body didn’t impact so much on my health but it had a field day with my mind. I had become a self-centred, highly motivated, competitive, hard-working perfectionist who had very little sweetness in her diet or her life. I functioned on overdrive with a highly regimented exercise regime, a full diary and very little time for fun or relaxation. When anything went wrong I just tried harder, worked harder and berated myself for being a failure. Nothing was ever good enough for my insane standards and I was angry and miserable.
Anyway, long story short, after carrying on like this for about 10 years I worked myself into the ground, lost my business and had a breakdown. The fire had burnt out!
Yoga was the only thing I felt would get me back on track so I took the crumbled me back to my mat, but this time I chose a different style of yoga and the principles of Ayurveda formed the foundation of this new practice. Yin yoga is a gentle, relaxing form of yoga with more passive poses and a slower pace. On those rare occasions I could quieten my mind for a moment at yoga, I started to hear messages I had needed to hear for a very long time. As I listened, I learnt that perhaps sweet stuff wasn’t all bad and that all of those intense flavours I demanded and proclaimed essential to add flavour to a meal were not as good for me as I’d believed them to be.
So I started digging, learning and experimenting with both my diet and my lifestyle.
HOW THE AYURVEDIC LIFESTYLE HELPED ME
My research revealed that I was basically a Pitta (one with a fiery constitution) who was totally out of balance. I was eating all the wrong foods and if I continued doing all of the things that I had been doing, then the misery would continue. Unfortunately, before my meltdown my need to look good in the world had overtaken my need to feel good – I’d allowed my fire to become a raging inferno.
As a Pitta, I realised if I wanted to feel better, I had to learn how to chill out, slow down and eat in a different way. I started with the food because for me that was the easiest and the hardest place to start. (For Vata types the challenge is to quieten the mind and manage their fear and anxiety. If digestive issues have started to surface, then these also need to be managed. Kapha types often have an ongoing issue with their weight and energy levels.)
I’d never really had a struggle with sugar; I’d always been more drawn to the salty, spicier, more intense flavours. So after many years of eating very little sugar, I started to add it back into my diet and I don’t mean through eating lollies and cakes (though I did tell the sheriff in me they are allowed sometimes), I mean through adding more ripe seasonal fruit into my diet, sweet vegetables and grains, sweet spices to my porridges and on birthdays I’d bake a cake.
To remedy my intensity and hyper vigilance and to cool my mind, I introduced a little bit of dairy, but I was really mindful of how I did this. Not all dairy is suitable for Pitta types and of course the dairy I loved didn’t love me. I needed to ease up on the parmesan and salty feta and eat more soft fresh cheeses.
I began adding ghee to everything and slowly things started to change. I started to change and finally after many years I felt myself relaxing and softening and feeling open to sitting still. Prior to looking into Ayurveda, just the thought of sitting still made me anxious; every time I sat down and stopped my mind revved up. I’d spent my whole life trying to out run, out work, out educate the voices that lived in there that told me I needed to be more, achieve more, know more blah, blah, blah ...
It wasn’t until I was courageous enough to look at my work addiction and my Pitta attachment to success and being seen that the big stuff started to shift for me. You see, Ayurveda is here to help us create balance in all areas of our life and I needed to start looking at the elements in my life that had been missing.
My biggest challenge was learning how to do nothing; it still is. It is hard for me to avoid filling up my days. All of this is still a work in progress and I try not to take it too seriously, as my natural tendency is to be very serious and to want to try to be the best at everything I touch. Ayurveda has taught me so much about myself and a lot of it has been hard to see. Ayurveda has also taught me a lot about people around me and at first I would use it as a tool to diagnose and psychoanalyse everyone. I suggest you don’t do that! When I first discovered it, though, I have to admit I was pretty obsessed with trying to figure out what doshas my friends and family were and offering loads of unsolicited advice about things they could change to make their lives better – oh so Pitta! These days I try to mind my own business and only offer suggestions when asked. I must be maturing!
As I head towards the Pitta Vata stage of my life (as different times of life are also governed by the three main doshas, more about this shortly) they say I am meant to become more sensitive, creative, wiser, spiritual, forgetful, stiffer and drier. I can feel myself letting go of the need to be seen in the world that I held onto so tightly in my 20s, 30s and 40s when my fire was burning bright. And even though I am in some way grieving the fire diminishing in me, I do on a deeper level feel it is time to step aside and let those younger high-energy entrepreneurs have their time in the sun. I am also called to honour the cycles and rhythms of nature and remember that I am just another small part of it.
Today I have given up my mad exercise regime, thank goodness. I know now that too much exercise will aggravate the Vata that is now rising in me, so instead of running, boot camping and vinyasa-ing, I take long walks with my beloved