An Ancient Cure for Modern Life

Everyday stress can lead to vata derangement, an excess of nervous energy. These Ayurvedic therapies can bring you back into balance.

By Alison Rose Levy

While pittas and kaphas do well with more strenuous exercise, repetitive, flowing movement balances vata, so it is best for vatas to do Suryanamaskar slowly. These poses can align vatas mentally and spiritually, Svoboda pointed out, if they face the sun, real or imagined, while doing them. Focusing gathers vata's scattered energies, Svoboda said, and directs them toward "the sun, the source of light and consciousness in the world."

Practice Is Perfection

Following a well-earned breakfast, we next performed abhyanga. This is an Ayurvedic oil massage and a classic prescription for healing vata that brings vata's dry, rough, and irregular tendencies into balance with the oil's smoothness and heaviness. Ayurvedic clinics in Kerala, India, are renowned for treatments like pizhichil, in which as many as four people simultaneously oil massage a single client, or shirodhara, in which oil is slowly poured onto the top of the head. When oil is absorbed through the skin, it dislodges toxins, explained Svoboda, which otherwise impede the flow in our system, block the movement of prana, and aggravate vata.

Ayurvedic physicians also use food as medicine, considering the effect of every food and spice on each dosha. Cream of wheat, for example, while grounding for vatas, is too heavy for already grounded kaphas, who tend toward weight gain; on the other hand, a vata should probably pass on the chili because beans cause gas. Although people associate Ayurvedic cuisine with Indian food, the two are not synonymous. A diet balancing to one's dosha can consist entirely of Western or international dishes. The retreat offered gourmet spa cuisine, delicious and balancing to all three doshas.

Ayurveda views the digestive process as a metaphor for all we take in. Many people eat whatever is available, watch whatever is on the tube, and believe the common consensus on many subjects. But Ayurveda asks us to consider what we can handle, as vata's delicate nerves and digestion are easily overwhelmed by a bad meal—or a bad movie, for that matter. Svoboda and Leary urged us to use the retreat practices to refine our inner awareness, so we could begin to discern the effects of the foods, images, and ideas we take in. This is helpful for all doshas, but particularly for curious and experimental vatas, who want to try everything even though their powers of assimilation aren't always up to it.

Anything taken in but not processed remains in our organism and becomes a toxin, Svoboda told us. That's why it's important to recognize what is beneficial and decline what isn't, rather than leave the gate open to any and all forms of input. Vatas are great communicators and love chatter. But as much as they love it, it is jarring to their nerves. The solution? To practice limiting input—and output.

All chatter ceased on the day dedicated to silence, a traditional form of spiritual austerity practiced in India. Silence is believed to have a purifying effect on the sense of hearing and on the mind itself. In silence I noticed how much breath and energy I habitually waste on words. At meals I never missed the conversation, which I now realize was often used to stave off fears or feelings of emptiness. In silence these feelings were given room to come into the light of awareness, where they could dissolve. Our silent afternoon asana class brought the entire group into a state of inner and outer focus, as we followed Leary in a strong series of standing poses, the ocean breezes and our own breath the only sounds we heard. Silence, I discovered, is a restorative posture as powerful as any physical one.

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