The Simple Ayurveda Podcast: Episode 9
Ayurveda could be summed up by “like attracts like, opposites create balance.” The gurvadi gunas are 10 pairs of opposite qualities that can be applied to everyday decisions. Do you feel like you're rushing around? Choose a grounding Yoga class. Are you lethargic? Wake up with a brisk walk or power Yoga class. In this episode I share what they look like in my life and how you can apply them to yours.
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episode transcripts
Welcome to the Simple Ayurveda podcast. I’m Angela Perger, and this is a place where we discuss how ancient wisdom can be applied to your everyday life, so that you can be your happiest, healthiest self.
Thank you for tuning in to Episode 9, today I’m talking about one of the most basic principles of Ayurveda: like attracts like, opposites create balance. In Ayurveda there is something called the ‘gurvadi gunas’ and they are a list of qualities, and there are 20 altogether that make up 10 opposing pairs. So I’m just going to go through them and then I’ll explain how they show up in your everyday life. So the qualities are: heavy and light, dull and sharp, cold and hot, wet and dry, smooth and rough, dense and flowing, hard and soft, static and mobile, subtle and gross, cloudy and clear. And you can see that these words are something that’s probably already familiar to you, most of the qualities here. So the idea is that like attracts like and opposites create balance. When we feel heavy and we choose to stay in bed longer and sleep in, and then maybe eat some foods that are heavier in quality, we just start to create more and more and more of that type of energy. So that’s where this like attracts like. And you may have felt that. It’s when we get into a rut, it’s like we go down this hole of a certain quality and we find ourself attracted more and more to that type of thing even though it’s not the best for us, and it’s really hard to get out of that. For me, it can be hard to get out of that. And so, the opposite creates balance. So if we feel heavy, doing something to create lightness, like eating a lighter food or eating some soup or something in nature that’s light, lighter, and not going toward that craving for heavier. There are more ways that this can show up in your life, and it shows up in my life every single day. So another example here would be cold and hot, and this is sort of like it just makes sense. If it’s cold outside then warm tea would be great, feel better than iced tea in most cases, or should feel better, right? When we’re in balance then opposites create balance, when we’re in balance we crave more balance. When we start to fall out of balance, we crave things that take us even more out of balance, and that’s where we need something to snap out of it.
The doshas each have their own list of qualities, so the first dosha that I’m going to talk about is vata, which is made up of ether and air. Ether is just empty space, it’s like vastness or possibility. So the qualities that describe vata energy are dry, light, cold, mobile, subtle, and rough. And the way that these can start to apply to your everyday life is if you notice that you have vata symptoms, so vata is the energy of action, transportation and movement. And we elevate vata when we multitask, when we’re on the go, when we’re doing a lot of things, and all of these things that I’m talking about, multitasking, you can see that that quality of mobile is a part of it. Another aspect of vata dosha is subtle. So subtle is in our mind, it’s like in the air, we can’t see it it can be thoughts and ideas and an example of how these qualities have helped me figure out when I’m on the path of imbalance is the other day I was on my computer a lot, and I was on social media and texting, and then that night I started to feel a little bit dizzy. So I had too much mobile, subtle, light energy going on, and instead of not knowing why I was dizzy, which would have been in the past before Ayurveda, I wouldn’t have been able to connect why I felt a certain way that I normally don’t feel to an action that I made. And right away I knew my vata is too elevated. I was on electronics too much today and that’s what’s causing this random dizziness, in fact it’s not so random it’s something that, it’s a direct result of my actions. And so now I can look at these opposing qualities to figure out what I need to do to calm that. So for example, vata has the quality of mobile and the opposite is static. So I can get into a child’s pose on the floor next to my bed or even in my bed and just hold that pose for a long time like 5 minutes. And stop moving my body and cultivate some static energy. Another example of how I could balance that is that the quality of vata is light, or lightness, and the opposite is heavy. So I could put on some warm, cozy socks that are heavy and get into my bed with a huge comforter surrounding me and that makes me cozy and that pulls in some heavy, static energy.
So let’s talk about pitta. The qualities of pitta, well first pitta is the next dosha, it’s fire with a little bit of water. So right away we know one of the qualities of pitta is hot. The other qualities are wet, or oily, sharp, light, subtle, flowing, hard and smooth. An example of how this could show up in your life is that sharp can manifest as irritation. And so the opposite of sharp is dull, and we’re not talking always about dull as in not intelligent or something like that. But, I think of feeling sharp and now I’m going to eat some dull or mild foods. So this happens to me like if I eat salsa or some hot sauce and it’s just adding on to more and more of those type of qualities, then I can temper that with some mild or cooling foods.
And then the last dosha that I’m going to talk about, the third dosha is kapha, which is earth and water energy. And the qualities related to kapha are cold, heavy, wet, gross, dense, static, dull, soft, smooth and cloudy. So I kind of started out with an example of too much kapha energy, if you’re feeling heavy and you’re not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. Another example I think of when it comes to a little too much of the kapha like qualities is this idea of static and mobile. So static is like not moving and you want to have some static to temper that vata energy, but then there could be too much static in a certain aspect of life. So static could be stuck energy around something. Whether it’s starting a business, whether it’s cooking, a project, creating something, and for me, in the past I’ve had static energy around what I’m gonna cook. Like I just wasn’t feeling motivated. I was in a rut, and that’s where looking at the opposite quality of mobile, like just start to move, just start doing something. So I’m just going to start cooking even if I’m not that excited about it. And then as I start to do it, do the action, I can get more excited. And this can happen like if I’m writing a blog post I feel like I don’t have anything to say or I don’t know where I want to go, I just start doing it and that’s going to pull in more and more of that energy, like attracts like. So you might have felt like this in any area of your life, where sometimes it just takes getting the ball rolling.
You can know your prakriti, what you were born with, but you might not and that’s ok you can still use these principles because the idea is that we’re always in this fluctuation. So your prakriti is what you were born with. That’s that ratio of vata pitta kapha that you came into this life with. And when your in balance you might have more, a tendency toward one, and therefore you might always sort of be on the lookout that if you tend to be mobile person, if you tend to have a lot of vata, then in general you might constantly need some of those grounding, static, heavier type things to balance you. But you don’t have to know your prakriti for sure to be able to use this philosophy. Because Ayurveda says that we have our prakriti that we’re born with, and then we have our vikriti which is our dosha, it’s when we’re out of balance. And I can use myself as an example. So I know that my primary element here is pitta dosha. So I’m mostly pitta. And therefore, I’m mostly sharp, hot, light, subtle, flowing, hard, smooth, wet. I’m gonna be on the lookout for those qualities rising up too much, like attracting like, and I’m gonna notice when I start to get out of balance. Now this is where other things can come into play. It could be the season that you’re in. so even though I’m mostly pitta, when it’s freezing cold here in New Jersey in the winter, I’m not so much on the lookout for these qualities. I’m more looking at those vata qualities that happen in early winter where I need to stay warm. And when it comes to spring after I’ve been nesting all winter I’m gonna look at those kapha qualities. So that’s where seasonal alignment can be more beneficial sometimes than knowing what your constitution is.
But other than that there’s still day to day life right? So I’m not always going to just try to do the opposite of pitta, even though I was born pitta because that’s not what’s always happening in my life. And going back to that example of spending too much time on the internet and that’s a lesson that I just keep getting over and over again, and symptoms start to pop up. So this happened another time where I started to get like a dull ache in one of my ears and I knew that ear and jaw and random pains and aches it’s all related to vata, so I can go back and look at what I was doing that day or what I was eating, and refer to this list to find out how I can balance. So I think I’ve talked a lot about popcorn on this podcast, because it’s my favorite junk food that’s easy for me to make at home. And the day that my ear was hurting a little bit, which I knew was related to too much internet and vata, I also craved popcorn, so there we are back at that like attracts like. I wanted something light and airy even though I already had too much light and airy in my day. So if I’m gonna disregard Ayurveda and I’m gonna go with what I want, I would just keep eating that stuff and I probably would have had a smoothie too. Which is light it’s not grounding. But instead, I’m gonna go against what I’m craving because I realize that I’m so far out of balance that my craving is not for balance. My craving is to take me down that rabbit hole of vata vata vata. And if I keep going I’m going to probably stay up all night, I’m going to disregard rhythm and routine that helps to control vata and the vata is going to escalate. And that’s how the disease process begins. When the body can’t handle the elevated dosha to the point where symptoms start to occur. So I’m gonna have to reign it in and instead of eating something light and airy I’m looking at this list, I need something that’s oily, that’s heavy and that’s hot. And if it’s just a snack I could make a golden milk, I could use almond milk or rice milk and warm it up with some oil, some coconut oil is what I would put in there, and I can start to create something that’s warm and static and grounding. And it’s even smooth because vata has the quality of roughness which popcorn does too, where golden milk has the quality of smoothness. You can look at how you feel a certain day, so if you woke up lethargic right that would sort of be like imbalanced kapha energy, heavy, dull, dense, if I woke up feeling like that and I decided to practice yin yoga where you hold the pose for five or so minutes, then I would be contributing to more of that quality of energy. And I might have a really slow day. But if I woke up and had that lethargic energy and went for a brisk walk or this is where a power yoga class would help, to get the energy flowing and to create balance.
So you could look at these qualities, how you feel moment to moment to make your choices about your activities, about whether you need to do something static and sit down or whether you need to get up and move, whether you need to have something smooth, like a nice easy or you need rough like you need to shake things up and go back to this idea that like attracts like and opposites create balance. I’m gonna post some notes on my blog, the show notes for Episode 9 and I have a free download of this too so you could print it out with a little bit of self inquiry, just start to think about your own day to day decisions.
Thank you for listening, I would love to connect more. You can find me on simpleayurveda.com, on Facebook Simple Ayurveda the Community, on Instagram @simple_ayurveda and on pinterest too @simpleayurveda. Have a beautiful day, namaste.
