Ayurveda

Calming a Vata Imbalance: You Can Heal Body and Mind with These 8 Tips

 

By Elizabeth Herman 

You can learn about the causes, symptoms, and effects of vata imbalances, and use these 8 tips for balancing your own health, the Ayurvedic way!


Do you feel balanced in your daily life? We usually associate balance with health. Humans need balance in diet, in work and play, and in the powerful, natural elements that make up our own being. But Americans are redefining what it means to have balance in their lives.

The five natural elements (fire, water, earth, air, and space) form and support life. You notice them every day in your own home. Ayurveda offers ways to balance them

What is vata dosha?

This ancient science identified 3 biological energies (doshas) that derive from the elements. They govern all physical and mental processes. They provide us with individual blueprints for health and fulfillment. For health, you need to care for and balance doshas, known in Sanskrit as vata, pitta, and kapha.

They all have different characteristics. They govern different areas essential to the mind-body complex. For instance, vata dosha governs movement. In the body, movement includes breathing, elimination of wastes, and blood flow. In the mind, it includes the movement of thoughts, images, memories, and ideas, to name a few. 

All of the types of movement that vata impacts are crucial to our health. But in this high-tech society, vata (the airy, dry, mobile dosha) can often be most vulnerable to going out of whack.

What is vata imbalance?

The mental, emotional, and physical plane contains all of the qualities of vata all the time. But imbalances make them overly dominant. So too many dry, cool, light, rough, mobile, subtle, and airy qualities can provoke symptoms. These include anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, spacing out, and uncontrolled proliferation of thoughts. A vata imbalance affects the nervous system. It affects the ability of the digestive system to remove waste from the body. It also impacts the workings of pitta dosha and kapha dosha.

You can learn to prevent excess vata and come out of such imbalances. First, you must become familiar with the causes, symptoms, effects, and remedies of them:

Causes

Ayurveda’s belief that "like increases like" forms the basis of how doshic imbalances work. Whatever qualities you bring into your life will increase the dosha that has them. 

In vata’s case, these are dry, light, cool, rough, subtle, and mobile qualities. Continuing to expose yourself to vata qualities will increase vata dosha within you. It will impact your mind, body, and emotions.

  • Dry and cold weather conditions can increase your vata.

  • Pungent, bitter, dry, and cold food can aggravate vata imbalance.

  • Dry emotions (such as hidden venom, unforgiveness, absence of love or affection, repressed anger) and cold behavior can add to your vata.

Symptoms of vata imbalance

You may have a vata type constitution. An Ayurvedic doctor can tell you if you do. If so, you'll start to feel the following symptoms soon upon the onset of a vata imbalance. 

Physical:

  • Constipation

  • Gas formation or distension in the abdomen

  • Dehydration

  • Rough, dry skin

  • General body pain and aching

  • Astringent taste lingering in the mouth

  • Weakness, fatigue, & low vitality

  • Sleep disturbance or insomnia

  • Tremors and twitches

  • Dizziness or spacing out

  • Sensitivity to cold and wanting warmth

Behavioral:

  • Irrationality, anxiety, nervousness, agitation, & impatience

  • Desire to run away

  • Confusion, fearfulness & shakiness

  • Feeling ungrounded

  • Excessive movement and/or speech

Effects of vata imbalance

As the symptoms settle in, they become harder to change. Mild or severe vata imbalance can cause the following effects: 

  • Weakening muscles

  • Joint pains and stiffness

  • Headache

  • Retention

  • Constipation

  • Weight loss

  • Cramps

  • Convulsions, tremors, paralytic attacks

  • Colic

  • Dryness, scaling

  • Phobias

Tips for balancing vata

When you start to notice any of the above symptoms and effects, you can start to adjust your eating. You can make other choices to take on other qualities that will cure your vata imbalance.

Here are 8 quick tips for reducing your vata to get back in balance:

  1. Eat naturally sweet, salty, and sour foods. Avoid junk food, excessive salt, and processed sugars.

  2. Follow a fixed routine and avoid too many different, frenetic activities. Bedtime, waking time, mealtime, and exercise time should be the same every day.

  3. You should practice yoga postures at a slow, steady pace.

  4. The following yoga poses and one pranayama will help. 

  1. Stay warm, calm, and relaxed. Indulge in hot baths, warm sesame oil massages, steam and heat treatments, and soothing music.

  2. Learn how different foods will affect your constitution. Avoid frozen, cooling, and dried foods, but eat warming, rich, oily foods, only in moderation.

  3. Meditate on a consistent schedule, for stability and calmness of mind.

  4. Ayurvedic herbs ashwagandha and shatavari will help balance vata, as will turmeric. They’re available online through Sri Sri Tattva.​

Don't give up if you find that problems persist after working with the above remedies. Panchakarma (an immersive program of therapy) can reverse the root of vata imbalance.

You can find out more about ayurvedic treatments. Check out the Shankara Ayurvedic Spa in Boone, NC, or the Sri Sri Ayurveda Hospital in India. You can have better health and balance through a holistic, individualized plan.

You may also be interested in learning SKY Breath Meditation for balancing your whole life. Click below to join a free introductory session, Beyond Breath, at your convenience.

This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

Elizabeth Herman is a long time meditator, a trained yoga teacher, and a PhD in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Composition, and Literature. She offers writing support to clients, teaches locally, and volunteers for a better world.

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