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The Doshas: The Three Humours: Friend or Foe?

In this edition I want to take a more detailed look at the doshas and the constitution. Understanding your constitution is central to understanding Ayurveda. It can also benefit your yoga practice as it can help you to make your practice specific to you.

“ Vata, pitta and kapha move in the whole body producing good or ill effects upon the entire system according to their normal or provoked states. Their normal state is prakriti and their abnormal state is vikriti” Charaka Samhita

What is a Dosha?

You read the term dosha in the press quite frequently these days. There seem to be lots of body care products, teas and therapies for the dosha, but what on earth are they and how can knowing about them help you?

Dosha is the Ayurvedic term that generically describes our inherited traits, individual characteristics and tendencies. This refers to such things as the body frame, eye colour, digestive capacity as well as emotional balance. We all have a different balance of the doshas. For example, some of us are tall others short, some can’t bear the cold and others dislike the damp. The constitution is fixed at birth but some traits have a tendency to accumulate. If this accumulation does not leave the body through the normal routes (stool, urine, sweat), it increases. This, according to Ayurveda, is the cause of most disease. Despite this tendency to veer out of balance the doshas offer much potential for health and vitality, if they are cared for properly!

The doshas are not physical entities but subtle by-products of the cosmic evolution of the five elements- Space, Air, Fire, Water and Earth. You cannot see them. You can only know them through inference as they manifest through the products of disease; such as phlegm, swellings, inflammation, bleeding, nervous imbalance and dry skin. In perfect health they remain blissfully out of sight.

The meaning of ‘dosha’

‘Dosha’ is described and translated in many different ways; ‘constitution’, ‘functional principle’, ‘humour’. I am going to call them ‘humours’ as it is the nearest English word that describes them. ‘Humour’ comes from the Latin ‘umere’ meaning ‘fluid’ and as the doshas are semi-liquid and all flow and this is an apt description. There are three humours (tridosha: vata, pitta, kapha) that I will discuss in detail below. Your constitution is described in terms of the doshas.

Your constitutional make-up means your inherent nature (prakriti). You have a mental nature (manas prakriti) as well as a physical humoural constitution (dosha prakriti). When the humours are balanced the dosha prakriti brings you health and support. Conversely, when there is an accumulation of a particular dosha (or doshas) an aggravated state of the humours (dosha vikriti) arises. This brings ill health. It is important to note that it can be easy to confuse vikriti with prakriti as many health imbalances appear on the surface. We will look at this further below.

The literal meaning of dosha is ‘fault’. This comes from the Sanskrit ‘dush’ meaning error and relates to the prefix ‘dys’ (from the Greek), as in dysfunctional, dysentery or dyslexia. The word dosha is commonly used to refer to the three humours of vata, pitta and kapha.

It may seem ironic that the constituents of an individual’s physiological constitution should be referred to as destructive ‘faults’. Yet Ayurveda clarifies this irony through its broad approach to understanding the processes of the body-mind.

As we saw in the last edition of Spectrum some of the hatha yoga texts mention the doshas and how they can be removed from the system. Some more examples are where Mahayogi Gorakhnath gives the medical benefits of four pranayamas in the Yogabija (102-112) as:

1. Suryabhedana stops vata problems in the stomach and prevents throat trouble.