BALANCING VATA-Nutritional and Lifestyle Recommendations

Balancing Vata-

If excessive stress in your life leads to your Vata force becoming imbalanced, your activity will start to feel out of control. Your mind may race, contributing to anxiety and insomnia. You may start skipping meals, resulting in unintended weight loss, and your digestion may become irregular. If you notice these early symptoms of a Vata imbalance, slow down, take time to meditate, don’t skip meals, and get to bed earlier. A regular lifestyle routine helps ground Vata so you are not carried away into the ethers.

• Vata is cold, light, irregular, dry, and always changing. To balance Vata, make choices that bring warmth, stability, and consistency to your life.Try to get to bed before 10pm, awaken by 6am, and eat your meals at regular times.

• Avoid becoming chilled. Wear adequate clothing appropriate for the season and keep your head covered when the weather is cold.

• Perform a daily self massage using warmer, heavier oils like sesame and almond.

• They experience periods of high energy, but they also tire easily. Light exercise that enhance balance and flexibility is best for a Vata body type. Take care not to push yourself too far and exceed the limits of your energy. Beneficial activities for Vatas include: yoga,walking , light bicycling, light tennis, golf, dance, and aerobics.

• Fresh ginger root is beneficial and can be used frequently. During the cool weather, sip ginger tea throughout the day.

• Be certain that your bowels move regularly on a daily basis.

• Favor soothing, calming music.

• Favor warm colors in your clothing and environment such as earth colors, pastels, browns, and warm yellows.

• Favor aromas that are sweet, heavy, and warm. Examples include basil, bay, cinnamon, citrus, cloves, frankincense, lavender, pine, sage, and vanilla.

Vata-Balancing Nutritional Guidelines

According to Ayurveda, it is important to eat foods that have a balancing effect upon the dominant dosha or that will pacify (stabilize) a dosha that has become excessive or aggravated. Since Vata is drying, cooling and light, favor foods that are oily, warming, or heavy. The best tastes to pacify Vata are sweet, salty and sour. Minimize foods that are pungent, bitter, or astringent.

Recommendations:

• To balance the lightness of Vata, eat larger quantities, but don’t overeat.

• All sweeteners pacify Vata and may be taken in moderation.

• Fats and oils are beneficial in the digestive system and help reduce Vata. Use up to 3 teaspoons daily of ghee or extra virgin olive oil.

• All low-fat dairy products are recommended. Milk is easier to digest when warm or heated.

• Rice and wheat are the best grains for balancing Vata. Reduce the amount of barley, corn, millet, buckwheat, and rye.

• Favor sweet, heavy fruits such as: bananas, avocados, mangoes, apricots, plums, berries, coconut, figs, grapefruit, orange, lemon, melons, papaya, peaches, pineapples, rhubarb, kiwi, dates, nectarines and dried fruits.

• Eat fewer dry or light fruits such as apples, cranberries, pears, and pomegranates. To ease digestion, fruits are best eaten lightly cooked or sautéed or eaten alone.

• Cooked vegetables are best. Raw vegetables should be minimized. Favor Asparagus, beets, and carrots. Other vegetables may be taken in moderation if cooked in ghee or extra virgin olive oil, including peas, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, and sweet potatoes.

• Sprouts and cabbage tend to produce gas and should be minimized.

• Dairy products pacify Vata. For optimal digestion, boil milk before drinking it and consume it while warm.

• Spices that pacify Vata include cardamom, cumin, ginger, cinnamon, salt, cloves, mustard seed, basil, asafetida, cilantro, fennel, oregano, sage, tarragon, thyme, and black pepper.

• Nuts are recommended.

• Beans can aggravate Vata, so minimize your consumption of them, with the exception of tofu and mung bean dal.

• For non-vegetarians, use fresh, organic chicken, turkey, seafood, and eggs.

Note: Favoring heavy foods such as sweets, oils, and richer foods may contribute to weight gain. Focus on natural grains, and heavy, moist fruits and vegetables. Keep your sweets to a minimum and use low-fat milk products. Cook your food for easy digestion.

Tridoshic Prakrities-characters

You must have observed sometimes..that your Dad, mother and your  sister and you yourself, all have different natures, different tendencies, and different responses towards a same situation.
You hardly suffer from cold and your sister usually does. Temper of your father is high and yours one is low .Your mother loves to stay in cold and your father prefers hot environment.Your father puts in little efforts and lose weight quickly,but your mom tries so hard,but dont get results so fast.You have a good appetite and eats much more than your sister,but dont put on weight,but your sister puts on weight so easily even when she eats too less. 
There are too many differences that list will be too long to discuss. This is not only with you and me. Every family is having same different characters with it. You all stay in same environment and eat same foods!! Then why these differences are there? Answer lies in the concept of Prakruti/Bodytype.


Tri-Doshic Prakruti

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One person has a tendency to use minimum of energy. She tends to store it. Irritation on different stimuli can cause energy consumption and will result in nothing. This means,she is just cool, calm, and smooth like Kapha. She needs a food that can just fulfill her energy requirement. Even few bucks of extra energies will lead her to blockage in her arteries, dump body, diabetes, over weight and many more bad conditions. If we talk about physical aspects,broad structure,she has a thick,moist,cool skin;strong,white teeth,bright-big eyes,soft-white nails,minimal thirst and appetite,dense-moist-wavy hair,likes sleeping and has dense sleep too.She has a good stamina,grasps things slowly but retains for long.Manges her expenses in a planned way.Temperament calm and slow,moods dont change quickly.She has entrepreneurial skills.She is typically kaphaj in nature.

Another person needs more energy to expend.He has a Pitta constitution. He is sharp enough,has good appetite,good thirst,warm and oily skin,even-yellowish teeth,soft-oily hair,enjoys sound sleep.He is more determined but has loose temperament,intelligent,agitated moods,aggresive and clever mind.Has interests in politics or sports. He will have to be controlled by cool and calm food i.e. what is harmful for first person will be useful for second one. And he is just like a bike of low average and good pick up. His anger should be cooled by special Yogic exercises.

Last one (3rd person)needs the extra energy as she wastes too much in minimum works.She is Vata in nature. She can't stand at a place if she is not offered few bucks for this purpose. Most of the time she is restless.She is always in hurry. Grasps things quickly,but forgets even more quickly,has dark-dry-thin hair,disturbed sleep,dry-rough-cool skin,protuding-uneven teeth,sometimes nervous,swinging moods ,creative at work,spends
lavishly,quite anxious. She needs to be tackled by a mixture of diet and routine of above two. Less food will lead her to deficiencies and extra will lead her to a fatty body.

Besides these three body types there are also the body types which have the traits of two of these. So seven Doshic Prakrutis are:

1. Vata Prakruti
2. Pitta Prakruti
3. Kapha Prakruti
4. Vata-Pitta Prakruti
5. Pitta-Kapha Prakruti
6. Kapha-Vata Prakruti
7. Vata-Pitta-Kapha Prakruti

Diets based upon Ayurvedic Prakriti/Bodytype

The principles of Ayurveda are based on the concept of tridosha, or the system of three doshas. The three doshas, known as Vata, Pitta and Kapha, are dynamic forces with distinct characteristics .Each person is born with a unique constitution, called prakriti, that is composed of varying amounts of influence from each of the three doshas.

In the Ayurvedic view, an imbalance between the doshas produces a condition called vikriti, a Sanskrit word that means "deviated from nature."

  According to Ayurvedic principles, each individual's diet should be suited to his or her prakriti.

During times of vikriti, or imbalance, the diet can be used to either decrease or increase the three doshas until balance is restored. The dosha balancing effect of a food is determined by its taste, either salty, sour, sweet, bitter, astringent, or pungent and its other qualities, either heavy, oily, cold, hot, light, or dry.

Ayurvedic Diets: Ayurveda is a very vast and ancient medical scienc...

Ayurvedic Diets: Ayurveda is a very vast and ancient medical scienc...: Ayurveda is a very vast and ancient medical science. Unlike other medical sciences, instead of focusing on treatment of any particular dis...

Ayurvedic Diets

Ayurveda is a very vast and ancient medical science. Unlike other medical sciences, instead of focusing on treatment of any particular disease, Ayurveda focuses more on the healthy living and well being.
   For healthy living, Ayurveda emphasizes on consuming right kind of diet which is healthy and nutritious. In Ayurveda, food is considered not only as mixture of the basic ingredients like proteins, vitamins, fats and carbohydrates, but something, which serves as a source of energy for mind and soul.
The basis of Ayurveda diet is the concept of tri-dosha, or the system of the three doshas: Vata, Pitta and Kapha (the equivalent of the three body types, ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph).

According to this ancient system of healing, the formula for your optimum health, ideal weight, increased longevity, vitality and fulfillment in life is to:

• live in harmony with your natural environment and the seasons
• keep a a stress-free mind and a joyful spirit, and
• have a balanced dosha - or Ayurveda body types

What we eat affects our emotions and can create a predisposition for both psychological and physical disorders. Just as wrong emotion can upset our digestion, so wrong digestion can upset our emotions.”

The most important principle in the Ayurvedic Diet is that your food is fresh (without pesticides, additives and other chemicals), seasonal, and as often as possible local. Fresh doesn't, however, mean raw. The best are freshly cooked, whole meals.
Contrary to what you might think, eating Ayurvedic diet doesn't mean eating only legumes, rice and vegetables. Basic Ayurveda diet principles can be applied to any cuisine, be it Mediterranean, Asian, European, or whichever one you prefer.


There is a elaborative discussion on the diets considering one's tridoshas(vata-pitta-kapha),importance of six tastes on ayurvedic diets,concept of Agni/metabolic fire ,good food habits,how to maintain harmony between health and taste,which has to come up here gradually...