One Question to Answer to Figure Out Your Predominant Energy
When I was a new mom I was getting up every 3 hours to feed baby, I felt overwhelmed and depleted, and long after I felt it should have, my extra baby weight was holding on for dear life.
I tried every diet but each one made me feel worse than the last – and didn’t work.
Finally at the end of my rope, as is often the case, I felt a sense of giving up, giving in, and giving over.
I decided to try getting out of my body’s way, and dive in to Ayurveda.
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I knew a little bit about the 5,000 year old sister-science to yoga, Ayurveda. I know that it’s all about ways to support the intelligence of our own body, its ability to heal and its power to find balance and vitality.
I had studied it a little in my yoga teacher trainings, but I took a year long course and I remember during that time, pushing my stroller and listening to the MP3 discussions, my jaw was constantly dropped open.
I couldn’t believe how helpful these concepts and principles were for every aspect of my being. It was like having a manual – The Care and Feeding of the Human Body – with information I had never received in Health Class.
It went way deeper than what I need about getting to my ideal weight and supporting the strength of my body’s healing power, through simple self-care, natural remedies, and food.
When I incorporated some of these quick and easy practices, the pounds fell off, I stopped getting constant colds, and it was as though someone gave me my afternoons back because I finally had energy throughout the day. Soon I had returned to my more calm, grounded, natural state.
After that, I honed what I had learned down to easy, quick routines called Anchor Practices any busy nurturer of people and projects could do, to optimize their own metabolism, immunity, digestion, inflammation, and radiant vitality.
I called it “Mayurveda” because it’s especially good for overwhelmed moms, but any nurturer of people and projects would benefit from knowing these simple principles.
If you’d like to know how it could help you, first let’s explore your unique Constitution.
One Question To Answer to Get Insights Into Your Ayurvedic Constitution
To truly know your Constitution (or Dosha, “that which can go out of balance”), make an appointment with your local Ayurvedic practitioner. Traditional doctors in India train for many years, but of course there are many wonderful American practitioners who know a lot.
An Ayurvedic practitioner will get more than 2000 different labels just from looking at your tongue and feeling your pulse, and this gives them information about your whole physiological system. They will tell you your symptoms you didn’t mention, and how they’re connected to others, and why certain foods and daily actions may be making it worse and how to make it better. It is a wonderful thing to have an Ayurvedic doctor as part of your health care team – I highly recommend it.
You can also google “Ayurvedic dosha quiz” and take some online. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and your own energy, even by just entering your physical attributes.
For now, here’s a quick quiz that can give you sense of what your dosha might be:
Imagine you’re driving in your car and you’re late for a meeting.
You’re in traffic.
You’re going slowly.
Do you:
- Get annoyed at how slowly the driver in front of you is going and honk?
- Feel anxious about the person you’re meeting, and start tapping your thigh nervously?
- Turn around and go home, hang on the couch and eat a bag of chips?
Obviously we all experience all of these! But which one seems to happen first?
According to Ayurveda, we are each made up of the elements, the main 3 being Fire, Air, and Earth.
While you don’t have an actual flame burning inside you, if you were to put your hand inside someone’s body, it would be warm – especially in the intestines. What’s making it warm? That’s called Pitta or fire.
While you’re hand is inside your body, you’d feel things moving and flowing. Circulation, pulsations, elimination – anything that moves in the body does can be described as Vata, or air. Especially our nervous system.
And finally, inside the body you could touch some things – and some would slip
through your fingers. The more solid something is, heavy, the more earth element o kapha it has: what brings things together, like mucous.
So, if you chose 1 – if you tend to get frustrated and angry – you might have more pitta, or fire.
If you chose 2 – if you tend to get anxious – you might have more vata, or air.
And if you chose 3 – if you like chilling out in one place – you might have more kapha or earth.
Congrats! You have a sense of what energy is more dominant within you, at least right now…
Next up – how to start using this information to find balance?
What small choices can it help you make that support your immune system, metabolism, and life force energy – in the biggest ways?
Comment below what element you have the most of: fire, air, or earth! 💜
To learn more about your dosha as well as simple but powerful self-care routines, join me live online for Mayurveda.
