Stop, Drop, and Roll: A Three Point Plan for Managing Vata Dosha
Tis the season to be vata – la-la-la-la-la, la, la, la…wait? What were we singing? Yes indeed friends, tis the season to feel our Vata Dosha begin to take the reigns. But fear not, out good friend and Ayurvedic practitioner Daniel Shankin (Sitaram Das) is here with a three part plan for managing our Vata Dosha this season – Stop, Drop, and Roll!
When the weather starts to change, and the harsh winds begin to blow cold, deranged expressions of Vata Dosha are sure to be close behind. This vata energy can go out of balance at any time, and troubles many of us year round, but it’s particularly prevalent in the winter. Vata is considered to be an accumlation of the elemental energies of air and space, and is associated with several qualites that we see manifested throughout the natural world. These qualities include: cold, dry, light, mobile, rough, and subtle. A large part of ayurvedic medicine is based on the premise that ‘like increases like’ and ‘opposites decrease’. For example, drinking iced tea (cold) while driving very fast (mobile) on a windy day (rough, mobile) in February (cold) is a good way to increase vata dosha, and the nervousness, insomnia, joint pain, energy loss, and depression that come with it. Here is a simple, easy to remember, three point plan to make sure that your winter is as warm, juicy, sensual, and luxurious as any in recorded history.
Stop: For the Love of God, turn off the computer and go to bed already. Close the 10,000 browser windows, quick checking your texts and keep your eyes on the road. Put nineteen of the twenty books you are reading back on the shelf, and finish one. And no, you aren’t going out tonight, to all five parties which all happen to be on opposite ends of town. Just stop. Renounce activity. Eschew multitasking. Don’t do something, just sit there. Practice living calmly and simply. Do bathtub yoga. Let yourself off the hook when you feel like you ‘should‘ do something. If you catch yourself feeling an anxious and obssesive need to fix, fiddle, improve, or adjust, drop your ass into meditation immediately. Take some time to breathe deep, dropping into the body, and let your awareness explore the roots of your neurosis. Once you’ve found your grounded center, rise up, and move from that place. Ahhh, Exhale.
Drop: If we’re going to get this under control, we need to go straight to the bowels of Ayurveda. Vata Dosha accumulates in the large intestine and colon. When Vata runs wild it creates constipation, indigestion, and flatulence. To keep this dosha at bay, we want to make sure that we move our bowels regularly. Chances are, if you are reading this, you probably have a pretty healthy diet to begin with, and probably only need to make some minor changes to make sure that what goes in, comes out in a timely fashion. Rather than fixate on lists of foods that are ‘do’s and don’ts’, just start paying attention to the way your meals affect your elimination. Make sure that you are eating foods that are easily digestable as well as nutritious. WInter is also a perfect experiement with spices. Warm sweet spices like the kind you find in chai tea (cinnamon, cardamom, clove, etc) are perfect for winter, perfect for vata, and might just be perfect for you.
Roll: We all love our hot fast sweaty vinyasa flow classes. Our favorite classes involve loud, funky music. Nothing wrong with these classes, nothing at all. Only thing is, they can aggravate Vata. One of the characteristics of vata is that it is mobile, and is increased by excessive mobility. Physical Mobility like fast flow yoga, and sensual mobility like loud fast music. These two things increase vata in the nervous system and mind, and cause disturbances such as anxiety, insomnia, and lack of focus. Vata is also dry, which means that if you are leaving a huge pile of sweat on the floor, you are dessicating yourself, and potentially making your life harder with symptoms such as dry skin and the aforementioned constipation. I’m not saying to never do flow class, but it certainly wouldn’t kill you to mix it up and spend a little time with some of the more mature members of our yoga family, rolling around on the floor, rolling our joints open, lightly stretching and breathing into our chakras. Rolling around on the floor is very pacifying for Vata Dosha.
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