Connecting Yoga & Ayurveda
By: Marta Naidu
Tags: Three Doshas, Dosha, Yoga, Ayurveda

Do you wonder, how to utilize the knowledge about Doshas (Ayurvedic mind-body types), while choosing the right yoga style or pranayama practice for your daily yoga routine?

In this post, you are going to find out, what should you be focusing on, depending on which Dosha (Vata / Pitta / Kapha) is imbalanced for you at the moment.

Yoga for Vata Dosha

Vata needs grounding in their practice, more than anything else. Calming, down-to-earth movements slow down the ever-running Vata mind and helps to remove fear, worry, anxiety.

It is important that the practice is slow, conscious and warming. We want to avoid fast repetitive movements (eg. sun salutation) and asanas that bring too much pressure on the neck or joints, like hand or shoulder stands.

Great asanas for Vata individual are poses in standing (eg. tree pose, standing forward fold), especially when we bring awareness to the feet. For than we can use simple visualisation of the roots.

All asanas that compress pelvis, abdomen and lower back area will help to pacify Vata as well, because these are the original “Vata regions”. For example: apanasana (knees to chest pose), supta virasana and dhanurasana (bow pose). For me personally, the best grounding asana is the yogic squat (malasana) and it is easy to perform, even while travelling (eg. while waiting at the airport) or playing with children on the floor

Extra caution is adviced, whenever performing pranayama with aggravated Vata Dosha. It is because most breathing exercises can aggrevate Vata even more. For this reason, I would choose more warming pranayamas like surya bheda or even more cooling but balancing ones like nadi shodhana. In my experience, alternate nostril breathing is most calming and gentle practice for people with Vata imbalance.

Yoga for Pitta Dosha

Great asanas for Pitta are the ones that put pressure on the naval area and solar plexus. Pittas, similarly to Vatas should avoid rushy movements, that generate too much heat. Slow and mindful is the key! They will greatly benefit from heart opening poses like camel pose and cobra. They should rather avoid headstands, as this pose creates heat and puts too much pressure on eyes (where Pitta resides).

Shitali is the most cooling practice for Pitta, but it might aggravate Vata or Kapha. Personally, as a person with Vata-Pitta constitution, I like to practice Shitali in summer season, as I feel like on colder days, this pranayama raises my Vata too much.

Whenever I want to connect with more Sattvic aspect Pitta, I practice Kapalabhhati. It is not really the pranayama, but more of a cleansing shatkarma practice. Even though it’s quite a heating practice, I really find it super helpful, in order to connect with a fiery Pitta energy and cleanse the energy channels (here, you can practice Kapalabathi with me).

Yoga for Kapha Dosha

Kaphas on the contrary, need movement that is heating and stimulating. As the Kapha is heavy, moist energy it something that keeps it moving. Great will be the sun salutation (surya namaskara) will work wonders for excess Kapha, that also often struggle with congestion, depression or obesity issues.

Multiple rounds of sun salutations should be preferably performed during Kapha times of the day (6–11 am or 6–9 pm). Great asanas for Kapha are all chest openers (eg. camel pose, fish pose). They can also greatly benefit from asanas performed in the dynamic way.

Kaphas tend to get stiff and stagnant. That’s why, it is good for them to work on increasing their flexibility. However, poses that are engaging lower back too much, should be avoided (eg. dhanurasana, bow pose).

Because the main sites of Kapha are in the lungs and stomach, pranayamas are highly indicated for Kapha dosha. For a person with excess Kapha I would choose the bhastrika pranayama (“blow of the fire”), as pushes air out of the lungs and therefore has a very cleansing effect on Kapha’s lungs. Nevertheless, Bhastrika is a pretty aggressive and intense pranayama and shouldn’t be recommended for beginning yogis.