Ayurveda teaches us that the five elements are the building blocks of all life.  These elements are earth, fire, water, air, and ether.  They make up the doshas, which are the forces that permeate everything in nature.  Kapha dosha is made up of earth and water and can sometimes be recognized as the part of us that’s caring and nurturing.  Pitta dosha is made up of fire and water and can sometimes be recognized as the part of us that’s passionate and driven.  Vata dosha is made up of air and ether and can sometimes be recognized as the part  of us that’s creative, imaginative, and social.  Vata’s main function is movement and one of the main sites of vata dosha is the colon.  Balanced vata shows up as the ability to think on our toes, coming up with new and helpful ideas, thinking outside the box, and any form of creative expression.

Vata dosha is made of the elements air and ether and some of the qualities of vata are cold, light, dry, mobile, subtle.  Air is literally all around us and is always moving.  Even when we’re in total sillness, we can almost feel the air around our skin, eyes, nose, and ears.  Ether is sometimes understood as space or stillness.  It’s what can contain or hold.  When air and ether come together to create vata dosha, there is potential for creation and also a container to just be.  

We see vata in us whenever we come up with a new idea or a different plan.  Vata manifests as our ability to express, craft, and share.  On the other end of that, vata is also the only dosha that moves, so this may lead to feelings of emptiness or lack.

The vata archetype is someone with a long straight frame, light bones and muscles, cool skin, cold hands and feet, and a slower walk.  They probably eat and talk fast and want to multitask all the time.  It can be difficult for them to gain weight and it’s usually easy for them to lose weight.  Some vata types may have a very dominant feature like large eyes, big teeth, or a more pronounced nose.  They are social, creative, and also love to learn and travel.  Due to the mobile quality of vata, our vata friends probably need reminders and to-do-lists.  Your vata friend is the one who you may not hear from for some time, but you’ll probably get a call from them at a very random time on a Tuesday because they want to tell you they were thinking of you and that they miss you.  They may even make plans to see you for lunch that week and confirm many times that they’ll see you Thursday afternoon at 12pm.  By the time Thursday comes, you may find yourself at the restaurant, alone, waiting for your vata friend to show up.  You’ll call them around 12:15pm to see if they’re okay and they will respond with something like: “Oh wait, that was today?  I was just painting all morning and lost track of the day and time!”  

Late fall and winter are considered vata season because it’s when we see many of vata’s cold, light, dry, mobile, and subtle qualities. When the weather begins to get cooler, we see nature naturally begin to dry up and get lighter.  It becomes much windier and there is a crispness to the air that can only be felt during vata season.  During this time when our environment is naturally drying out, we need to maintain balance by favoring well-cooked, moist, and warm foods.  It’s common to find that our appetite might increase as well and it’s okay to lean into that change.  If you think about the lunch you have on a hot summer day vs the lunch you have on a cold winter day, the two are probably very different.  Ayurveda teaches us that they should be different because the world around us is different during these times.  Vata season is a time to embrace routine.  It’s important to try to wake up and go to sleep around the same time, eat meals around the same time, and do our best to have a predictable schedule.  The mobile quality that comes with this season can cause imbalances within us if we aren’t finding ways to ground ourselves.  

The vata times of day are 2pm-6pm and 2am-6am.  The daytime hours of vata from 2pm-6pm are when we may feel that afternoon crash or the need for a coffee or something sweet.  This is a great opportunity to practice something nourishing like pranayama, meditation, or more mellow yoga classes.  It’s a nice time to take a walk in nature and to also have a cup of tea. The late night and early morning hours of vata are a time to use the air and ether elements for receiving.  It’s said that if we can wake up around 5-6am, it’s a very powerful time to meditate or to take part in whatever ritual or practice we have.  It’s naturally a time with little distraction because most people are still asleep and all things in nature are just beginning to wake up.

The more we understand vata dosha and the qualities of vata, the more we can connect to nature around us and to the qualities within us.  We can become more aware of how certain times of day, certain seasons, foods, situations, people, and places either help us come to balance, or cause us to fall out of balance.  This awareness can hopefully help us become more understanding, supportive, and helpful to the people in our lives and to ourselves as we navigate this time on planet earth.  When we begin to recognize how the doshas manifest for us, we can move through our day in a much more loving and understanding way.  We can cultivate more compassion and become teachers who teach by example.  The ability to teach people to find balance begins with us finding out how we can stay in balance.