Do you know your body type? Is your body type basically Air, Fire, or Earth? Ayurveda tells your body type with the elements: air, fire or earth. Your basic nature type is your dosha. It’s a way of organizing our tendencies into the three groups or elements.
If a tendency towards air, fire or earth gets out of control or makes a person miserable, Ayurveda has suggestions to correct and re-balance your body.
Despite the fact that you are, by special design plus the genes you were born with, unique and perfect in every way, sometimes you are not as energetic as usual or suffer from bodily annoyances on a daily basis.
Medical systems of Chinese and Ayurveda see human health expressed as energy. In Ayurveda as in Chinese medicine, there’s an emphasis on recognizing the type of bodily constitution a person has. The practitioner’s effort is to discover whether it’s running well, is either excessive or lacking, and thus steering off-balance.
Both systems take cues from natural elements as the point of access to information about a person’s health. Wind, Fire and Earth supported by temperature and moisture form a group of five elements that can, in Ayurvedic terms give a true picture of a person’s constitution. Comparing human beings with natural elements reveals tendencies and imbalances and is a way to understand human health and dis-eases.
How does this work? How can natural elements represent the human body?
Watching and noting the elements was key in ancient times. Ayurvedic scientists looked at each element and realized that the elements were each a potent form of energy replicated everywhere in nature.
As we know, energy is the ability to do work, to affect change. The elements are an ancient language: we all know what air or wind can do for us on a hot and muggy day, how a fire burns, blazes, consumes, and must be fed to continue, and how earth is restive, supportive and nurturing.
In Ayurvedic terms, Wind or air is seen as movement and is necessary for our bodily processes, from thought to the work of the internal organs. Fire is seen as consuming and necessary for digestion. Earth is the result of action and rests as the tissues of the body, providing support for the new.
Ayurveda’s ancient knowledge about the elements of wind, fire and earth tells how humans grow and mature from conception through old age. Thus there’s no one best type to be, because we need all the elements. As air is responsible for movement, for electrical impulses, for transport and exchange, it’s most active in the brain and nervous systems.
As fire is responsible for the digestion of food, it’s most active in the stomach and intestines; when viewed as the body’s heat, its effects can be seen in the skin and the eyes. And as earth is the product of air, water and fire, it’s seen body-wide in its tissues—muscles, blood, fluids, bones, hair, nails, skin, etc. that are profoundly influenced by the food we eat and our intake of beverages.
Practitioners of Ayurveda determine which one is most characteristic of a person. Either airy, fiery, or earthy—generally speaking—a person is perceived as being representative of one or another of these elements. However simple, the elements suggest a point of access to the complex human being. Elements with known behaviors provide a stepping stone into the unknown.
Sometimes one element builds and dominates, creating the kind of stress that leads to dis-ease.
Consider how an airy or Vata type person can acquire too much air, driving them to extremes of thought, behavior, and being out of whack, so that they continually suffer from lack of being grounded and are unable to get back to a balanced airy state.
Consider how a fiery or Pitta type person must consume (not just food) to feel vital and yet develops skin eruptions, has no patience or tolerance and acquires the concentrated heat that contributes to inflammation.
Consider how an earthy or Kapha type person can become un-motivated, unable to be active, and thus sink below the horizon of their truly loving nature.
The combination of types helps to sort through some of the imbalances a person may be experiencing. As Bridgette Shea, author of Handbook of Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda makes clear, the way of Ayurveda, concentrating as it does on lifestyle and prevention, offers us help in sub-clinical situations and strengthens our constitutional types. It’s this last aspect—strengthening ourselves as we are naturally in our most balanced state—that is most helpful in staving off dis-ease and suffering.
Such explanations oversimplify the answers to questions you might have about your essential nature. The ideas in this brief essay come from Ayurveda, a vast and ancient science not limited to what’s written here!*
Find yourself and your natural state by reviewing or discovering your personal constitution, your dosha. Are you airy, firey, or earthy? Is anything out of whack, meaning, are you often over-stressed or angry, do you eat to satisfy something missing in your life? Do insomnia, psoriasis, constipation and digestive problems or joint pains repeatedly plague you?
Tendencies and imbalances can be comprehended better in this small part of Ayurvedic wisdom. Try reviewing your personal system and use the information to change daily choices and help acquire a balanced, more comfortable state. This is powerful and helpful! as so many authors have indicated.
*Authors who’ve studied Ayurveda offer lifestyle recommendations. Reviewed recently on this website are Brigette Shea’s Handbook of Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, Acharya Shunya’s Ayurvedic Lifestyle Wisdom, Jonathan Glass’s Total Life Cleanse and Ananta Ripa Ajmera’s The Ayurveda Way.
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