Determine your Dosha – Vata
Your dominant constitution is Vata and these are your guidelines for your food choices. Please take these suggestion below with an open mind and don’t be to strict for yourself. Be open for change and feel how this relates to your current food consumption. Enjoy every bite & drink!
Don’t you know your dominant constitution yet? And do you like to check if you are more: Pitta, Kapha or Vata? Determine your Dosha here!
When your dominant constitution is Vata these are characteristics
- Blessed with a quick mind, flexibility and creative resources.
- Associated with the attribute of motion. You are likely to be on the go a lot, mentally, physically or both (suggestion for dietary advice is to ground or stabilize this motion).
- Vata is most prominent in the fall, and this is the most prominent time to attend to the food suggestions.
- Routine is also very useful to ground all the moving energy effectively. You will find yourself getting rewarding results with greater use of regular patterns of healing and routine.
- Dryness, mobility, light, cold, rough, subtle, clear and dispersing. Excess of these qualities create imbalance. The opposite will calm it..
- Disorders are more likely in fall and winter: flatulence, bloating, tics or twitches, aching joints, dry skin and hair, brittle nails, constipation and mental confusion or chaos (often related to fear and anxiety).
Vatas need warmth on all levels, from their environment to their friendships to their food. Cold causes Vata to constrict and tighten up. It restricts the free flow of movement so vital to their well-being.
What can you do to balance Vata
- Keep warm
- Kundalini Yoga Kriya: Eliminate Gastric Troubles or Apana Kriya for Elimination
- Choose warming foods and spices
- Avoid extreme cold, and cold or frozen foods and drinks.
- Minimize your intake of raw foods, especially raw apples and members of the cabbage family.
- Take it easy on beans, with a few key exceptions (below)
- Make sure your food is warm, moist, and well-lubricated. Soup, hot drinks and rice with a little oil or butter.
- Emphasize sweet, sour, and salty tastes in your food choices.
- Keep to a regular routine.
- Create a safe, calm, and secure environment for yourself.
Dietary suggestions
- Be careful with raw foods (they take more energy to digest and you have not much digestive fire to waste). And members of the cabbage family, when eaten raw, easily create gas (Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts).
- Ground a light salade of lettuce and sprouts with an oil and vinegar dressing, or marinated your steamed vegetables to avoid the gas-problem. Most time you have flatulence your Vata is at least temporarily out of balance.
- Black lentils and split mungbeans are warming and can be eaten in modest quantities.
- Warm cooked whole grains ground Vata. Especially healing are basmati rice, brown rice, wild rice, oatmeal, and wheat products like Chappatis, tortillas, papadums, quick breads from baking powder or soda.
- Pasta of all kind is fine for Vata.
- Fruit serves Vata well, as long as it is sweet, moist, well-ripened and nota an apple, pear, cranberry, watermelon or dried fruit. (All fruits are best taken alone or at the beginning of a meal, not mixed in with other foods).
- Most sweets are tolerated well by Vata, although Sugar is overstimulating and is best avoided.
- Sesame oil is your best choice. It’s warmth and groundedness are beneficial for you.
Routine is remarkably grounding for Vata. If you do nothing else, eating your usual foods at regular times can ground you noticeably.
What shouldn’t you do as a Vata?
- Worry
- Fast
- Don’t get enough sleep
- Eat on the run
- Never lubricate your skin
- Eat dry, frozen or leftover foods.
- Avoid tranquil, warm, moist places.
- Repress your feelings
- Run around a lot – in cars, planes, trains or jogging shoes!
- Use drugs, especially cocaine and speed.