To understand how the doshas affect your life, it’s important to understand the difference between prakruti, the balance of doshas at conception, and vikruti, the current state of imbalance.

Your prakruti is the unique balance of energies in your body and mind that were determined at your conception. It determines physical and mental tendencies, including your bone structure as well as predisposition toward certain health challenges. Prakruti is free of symptoms and any signs of imbalance — it's a perfect state of balance unique to you. Vikruti is what has happened since that point, meaning how far you have moved away from prakruti.

When vikruti is close to prakruti, you’ll experience little to no symptoms. But when vikruti is away from your original state, symptoms, illness and disease are present.  

When you are assessing your constitution, whether through a dosha questionnaire or as part of an Ayurvedic consultation, it’s important to look at how you experience life in the present and what it’s been like over time. From there, you’ll have a more accurate picture of the constitution you were born with and the imbalances that are present right now.

Your constitution, or the amount of each dosha within you, is as unique as your fingerprints. Understanding how the doshas work within you is a lifelong journey of exploring cause and effect. Begin with our dosha questionnaire, and get to know more about how the doshas influence your mind, body and emotions.

The translation for “dosha” means “that which gets messed up.” This tells us a lot about why it's important to understand the tendencies of the doshas. 

When doshas accumulate in excess, they cause symptoms and illnesses that reflect the qualities of that dosha. Imbalance can occur in any of the three doshas, but it's more likely to show up in the dosha that makes up the main portion of your constitution. For example, if your prakruti is primarily kapha and you are living out of harmony with kapha by eating a lot of heavy food and living a sedentary lifestyle, you're likely to face health issues related to kapha, e.g., weight gain, depression or diabetes. 

The key to regaining balance is in the Ayurvedic principle of “like creates like and the opposite brings balance.” This means if you experience signs of heat from excess pitta, apply cooling and soothing remedies to bring balance. If you experience symptoms of vata imbalance such as restlessness, eat grounding, easy-to-digest foods. And if you experience signs of kapha including excess mucus, invite more movement into your day and you’ll see quick improvements.

Once you understand the tendencies of each dosha and have a sense of where you're more likely to go out of balance, it’s easy to identify the remedy. 

What follows is a brief list of the qualities of the doshas in and out of balance. Learn much more about the doshas in our online Ayurveda trainings and programs). As you read through this, notice how these qualities are similar or different than your tendencies, both now and in the past.