My patient Jeff was a thirty-eight-year-old architect blessed with a quick wit and a seemingly endless ability to devour new information and learn new skills. But the downside of his airy nature—changeable, highly mental, and able to move swiftly—was an overactive mind, always on the alert for signs of danger, most of which didn’t exist.
In theory, Jeff knew his worries were groundless, but he still couldn’t keep himself from worrying, especially at night. If he’d had a stressful day, he might lie awake for as long as two hours, unable to turn off his mind.
Even when Jeff did fall asleep, his rest was shallow and frequently interrupted by spells of wakefulness, sometimes brought on by one of his many tense dreams. Often he’d wake up with a sore jaw from grinding his teeth throughout the night. Jeff told me that he averaged only six fitful hours of sleep—and that during the day, he ran on nervous energy and caffeine. As a result, his hands tended to shake, his jaw was clenched, and he was subject to mild panic attacks—a racing heart, shallow breathing, and the vague but overwhelming feeling that something bad was going to happen.
Jeff had been taking 100 mg of Zoloft daily for more than three years, and frankly, he’d come to hate it. Although it did help him control his anxiety, he’d gained twenty-five pounds, and the extra flesh was readily apparent on his tall, thin frame. He felt not calm, but sedated, and he didn’t like his loss of interest in sex and difficulty reaching orgasm—both common side effects of Zoloft.
Besides, even with the Zoloft, Jeff felt burdened by his anxiety. If things went badly for him at work, his social life hit a snag, or he got a worrisome phone call from his wife, he went into a tailspin, sinking rapidly into a gloomy, stressed-out state in which he alternated between high-pitched worrying and the miserable sense that nothing would ever go right again. When I asked him what he did to soothe or calm himself at these times, he looked at me as though I’d inquired whether he knew how to fly. “I just keep worrying until the worry goes away,” he told me bleakly.
Jeff had come to me because he was eager to get off the Zoloft, and he’d heard I’d had considerable success in helping patients switch from medications to more natural ways of altering brain chemistry and overcoming depression. “I have to tell you,” he said, his long, thin fingers drumming nervously on the arm of the leather chair in my office, “I’ve tried to get off it before.”
Once, he explained, he’d forgotten to take it with him on vacation—“and within a couple of days, I was miserable. I felt sick to my stomach, shaky, moody—I felt like the whole world was spinning around me and I couldn’t get a grip.” His mood had improved as soon as he’d resumed his normal dosage, but the experience had left him shaken and pessimistic about ever going without the drug again. Still, he had tried a second time to lower his own dosage, reasoning that perhaps a gradual tapering off might work better than going cold turkey. Once again, his anxiety and depression returned with a vengeance, perhaps even more intensely than before he’d first been medicated.
“That’s my story,” he concluded. “Pretty bleak, huh.” Although Jeff had come to me with the specific goal of getting off Zoloft, I could see that he felt defeated before we’d begun.
“Actually, I don’t see it that way,” I told him. “Your symptoms sound painful, and frustrating, but they’re not necessarily a lifelong condition. I see them more as signs of an imbalance. From a Western perspective, you seem to be low on serotonin—a shortage that your medicine compensates for but doesn’t correct. And from an Ayurvedic perspective, you’ve got a vata nature—an airlike set of mental, physical, and spiritual energies—that has gotten seriously out of balance as well. But both your brain chemistry and your vata energy can be brought back into balance, as long as you’re willing to make a few changes.”
To Jeff, my optimism came as a revelation. He heard it not as wishful thinking or a generic hope, but rather as grounded in my understanding of both brain chemistry and Ayurveda. I didn’t see Jeff’s condition as a permanent state that would require lifelong medication, but rather as a temporary imbalance that could be corrected. Even though he might have a chronic propensity toward this particular type of imbalance, that meant only that he had to take special care with his diet, exercise, and lifestyle choices, not that he was necessarily doomed to a lifetime on Zoloft.
“If you had heart problems, I’d help you find the diet and exercise you needed to support your heart,” I told him. “And if you were born into a family with a genetic tendency to heart disease, I’d stress that you had to be extra careful about what you ate and how you exercised. In your case, we’ve got to make sure that you understand the lifestyle choices—the types of eating, breathing, sleeping, and exercise—that will improve the health of your brain.”
The first step, I told Jeff, is to understand what can throw vata energies off balance. There were two ways to look at vata disturbances. One is to remember that all of us possess all three types of energy—vata, pitta, and kapha—and that our vata systems are the most prone to imbalance. Just as air is less stable than fire or earth, so are vata energies more easily disturbed than pitta or kapha energies.
Interestingly, the instability of vata energies in Ayurveda corresponds with the Western scientific notion that a serotonin deficiency is the most common problem associated with depression. Just as vata energies can become unbalanced even in pitta and kapha types, so can serotonin become deficient even in people with other types of brain chemical imbalances, such as norepinephrine/dopamine excess or deficiency. So when people have either vata imbalances or serotonin deficiencies, I usually try to treat those first, no matter what other problems they’re experiencing.
But while all of us are prone to vata imbalances, such imbalances are most likely among vata types. These Air types are not necessarily more prone to depression—but when they do get depressed, that’s how they tend to do it: with a Western diagnosis of anxious depression, characterized by all the symptoms Jeff was experiencing—nervousness, sleeplessness, and excessive worry.
• feeling restless and fretful
• feeling anxious and expecting the worst to happen, as if “looking over your shoulder” or “waiting for the bottom to fall out”
• feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth
• trouble sleeping
• irregular appetite
• poor digestion
• cravings for starches and sweets
• impulsiveness
• scattered thinking
• frenetic or compulsive behavior
Factors That Lead to Vata Imbalance
• stresses—even short-term, seemingly minor stresses
• working long, excessive hours
• not giving yourself sufficient breaks and down time
• feeling unappreciated at work or at home
• adding stimulants to the body, such as caffeine, nicotine, or sugar
• overstimulation, such as noise, movement, being too busy, or being overscheduled
• eating too many foods that don’t fit your body type, such as raw, cold foods or bitter and astringent tastes
• skipping meals, especially breakfast
• insufficient or poor quality sleep, having a poor bedtime routine, and/or keeping erratic hours
• having an inconsistent schedule generally
• the changing of the seasons
• a cold, dry climate, such as in fall or winter
• going through a major change, even a positive one like a move or marriage
• suffering a recent loss, or not having dealt with a more remote loss
• failure to identify or express feelings of grief, loss, or fear
“I still don’t get it,” Jeff said when I’d explained the notion of vata imbalance. “If it really is the same thing as serotonin deficiency, why do you need the Ayurvedic stuff? Why not just stick to the Western diagnosis?”
Certainly, the Western vision of brain chemistry had much to offer, I told Jeff. But the Ayurvedic approach extends this scientific view with rich imagery that offers a multidimensional approach to treatment. Doctors who restrict themselves to a purely chemically oriented view limit their treatment options to the very medications from which Jeff was now trying to get free. While these medications might be useful, I believed they should be supplemented with broader and more variegated responses.
“Think of the way air is unsettled when a storm front moves in,” I suggested. “In fact, picture a mental storm, with the wind blowing this way and that. Think of the qualities of the wind and the air it stirs: light and moving, cooling and drying. This imagery helps us understand that a vata imbalance calls for qualities that will help calm the storm and balance the wind, therapies to settle the mind while adding warmth, moisture, and substance to the body.”
Drawing on Ayurvedic imagery, I explained, pointed the way toward rebalancing both body energies and brain chemistry. It gave both Jeff and me many ways to think about his condition, rather than simply reducing him to a chemical imbalance. This broader range of thought would eventually translate into a broader palette of solutions than simply prescribing antidepressants (even if, in some cases, antidepressants were also needed).
Because vata energies are the easiest to disrupt, they are also the easiest to rebalance. So if any of us has a vata imbalance—whether we’re a vata type or some other type—sometimes all we need is a little patience, a casual attempt to avoid the stressors mentioned on the list above, and an effort not to aggravate matters any further. Just as a storm often blows over, vata imbalances often pass by themselves.
Sometimes, though, you want to move things along faster. And if the imbalance is prolonged or recurs frequently, you might apply some more vigor to overcoming or preventing it. In those cases, here are a few basic steps you can take:
• Eliminate stimulants: Reducing the presence of stimulants is probably the single most useful thing you can do to correct a vata imbalance. Start by cutting out caffeine, decongestants, nicotine, and refined sugar. (Although under most circumstances, vata types can tolerate moderate amounts of refined sugar, excessive sugar can overstimulate the delicate vata system, and when vata types are stressed, even a small amount of sugar can tip the balance.)
Other stimulants are less noticeable and perhaps more difficult to eliminate, but if cutting back on coffee and cigarettes doesn’t help, consider a second round of cuts. Too much noise, visual stimulation, or even movement can make it hard for a vata type to remain focused and balanced. I know one sensitive vata type who finds it difficult to digest his food if he eats in a restaurant where the music is too loud. Likewise, if you’re having troubles with anxiety, worry, or depression, you might want to avoid loud, fast, music; exciting action movies; or even loud parties crowded with lots of people. Activities and environments that might be perfectly fine under normal circumstances can be too stressful when vata energies are disturbed.
In Jeff’s case, we agreed that he’d reduce his caffeine intake, first by switching from coffee to black tea, and then by moving from black to green tea, a beverage that has even less caffeine and offers many healthful antioxidants besides. Jeff began sleeping better just from making that change. The immediate benefits he experienced from giving up caffeine provided him with the positive reinforcement he needed to make more difficult changes.
• Identify and address stress. Removing or reducing excessive stimulation is the first line of defense for vata imbalances, but only rarely is such stimulation at the root of the initial problem. Vata-based anxiety and depression is almost always based in some type of stress, and once you know what the stressor is, you’re well on your way to addressing the disorder.
Sometimes it’s easy to identify the stress that set off your vata imbalance. If you had a major life-changing event, including a positive occurrence (falling in love, getting a promotion, having a baby), look no further. Change is stressful, even—perhaps especially—changes we have sought and worked toward for many years. Or if you’re working extra hard, dealing with an unusual or prolonged set of family issues, or just haven’t had a vacation in a while, chances are that your vata anxiety and depression are caused by the overload.
Sometimes, though, it’s harder to identify a vata-imbalancing stress. Perhaps you’re not as happy with some aspect of your work, your family, or your relationships as you thought, and this buried discomfort is emerging as a vata imbalance. Maybe you had an unpleasant experience with a friend or loved one and convinced yourself it didn’t matter—only to find yourself feeling anxious and uneasy “for no reason” a few days later. Or perhaps you’re simply responding to the change of the seasons or some other normal and expected transition, which is nonetheless throwing you off balance.
There is a third type of vata imbalance that I see in many of my patients. This is the anxiety or discomfort that results from your own mind and thoughts. Suppose, for example, everything in your life is going along fine, and then you have the sudden thought that you might not have enough money to retire when you had planned. That thought would cause no problem if you simply let it pass through your consciousness, but what if it lodges into your mind and won’t let go? You start to nurse your worry, and suddenly you can think of little else. You begin to be driven by the fear of a poverty-stricken old age, a thought that prevents you from falling asleep and troubles your dreams. You start working extra hours to ensure your financial security, feeling driven and insecure. Soon you’re bingeing on junk foods to soothe your worries and compensate for how bad you feel. That little seed of a thought has created quite a disturbance in your vata energy, a mental and emotional disturbance that goes on to stress your body, leading to muscle tension, headaches, and alterations in your weight. If your worry continues unchecked, your vata disturbance can develop into a more serious problem, such as chronic low-back pain, fibromyalgia, hypertension—or depression.
As a psychotherapist, I help my patients identify and remove their stressors, such as toxic relationships or toxic thoughts. If taking this approach to your depression appeals to you, I highly recommend it. Although it can be painful, frightening, and sometimes daunting to undertake a journey of self-discovery and attempt to undo long-established patterns, the rewards are well worth the effort. But whether or not you choose to find a therapist, you always have the option of self-healing. On a physical level, the best thing you can do is follow the Step Two suggestions for your Ayurvedic type or for the type of disturbance you’re experiencing. On a mental, emotional, and spiritual level, you can experience a world of benefit from the Buddhist Psychology of Mindfulness described in Step Three.
If you’re suffering from a vata imbalance, take particular care to follow the dietary guidelines I laid out in Chapter 4, with special attention to the suggestions for serotonin-deficiency depression. Sweet, salty, and sour tastes appeal to an unbalanced vata, who are looking for strong, “solid” sensations to balance all that light, windy energy. Sweet and starchy foods also provide immediate—albeit temporary—boosts in serotonin levels, although when blood sugar falls rapidly in response to the sugar high, serotonin levels crash as well. Over the long run, too much sugar and too many refined carbs will lead to serotonin depletion, making the brain-chemical problem worse and worse.
Your Brain-Healthy Vata Diet: How Air Types Need to Eat
• Ideally, you’ll have a meal or snack every four to five hours, including some high-quality protein and complex carbs each time you consume food.
• Never skip breakfast! You need the protein and complex carbs to ground you, or you risk “flying into the air,” unmoored by moodiness, anxiety, and stress, with any random worry able to blow you off course.
• Seek warm, moist, and moderately heavy foods, with healthy fats and solid textures, to balance your light and airy nature. Nuts, with their healthy oils, are a good choice for vata snacks.
• Pay attention to taste, a key aspect of Ayurveda. Focus on foods that are soothing, the comfort foods that you naturally gravitate toward anyway. (See the chart at the end of this chapter.)
• Likewise, reduce or avoid cooling or drying foods, which tend to aggravate Air types—bitter greens, excessively sour foods, or highly spiced meals.
• Ayurveda stresses the need to balance the six tastes it recognizes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent (spicy), and astringent. So although you’re favoring some tastes, try to get a bit of each taste every time you eat. You may be amazed at how much more balanced you feel.
• Eat only when you’re hungry and drink only when you’re thirsty. Eat smaller portions so that you can follow my other recommendation of a slow, steady supply of food—a meal or a snack every four or five hours that you’re awake. I also recommend that you drink very little just before, just after, and during mealtimes, since fluids dilute the digestive enzymes and make your metabolism less efficient. Sipping just a little water while you eat will give you sufficient liquid to aid digestion without diluting your digestive juices.
• Eat with attention. Avoid the temptation to read or watch TV while you’re having a meal. Give your attention to the food. Try to discern the different flavors and texture of the food. And when you begin to feel full, stop eating. If you eat slowly and mindfully, you’ll be able to feel when you’ve had enough to eat, and you can then choose to end your meal.
• Choose your drinks with care. You can balance your vata with warm drinks: teas, warm milk, even warm water.
• Eat with the seasons. Staying in sync with seasonal changes can help keep you in balance. Summer, for example, is not the time for hot, spicy foods, which aggravate your pitta energies—your hot, fiery aspects. You don’t need any additional heat during the warm summer months, so when the temperature is high, eat light. If you pay attention to your own seasonal clock, summer is probably a time when you are attracted to cooling foods with high water content—salads, fresh fruits, seafood, smaller amounts of meat, and smaller portions generally. Autumn, on the other hand, is the time to gravitate toward vata-pacifying comfort foods—and so nature provides us with the complex carbs of the autumn harvest, such as squash, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes. As the days shorten and grow colder, we often crave warm soups and stews and hearty fall vegetables. But if you’ve got a vata imbalance or are a vata type, you can use these soothing autumn foods to balance your airy nature all year round.
Your Brain-Healthy Vata Detox: How Air Types Need to Cleanse Follow the detox suggestions I shared in Chapter 6, with these special suggestions for vata types:
• Air types need to keep their fasting brief, one to three days at most. If you’re undertaking a juice fast, choose a sweet juice like grape juice. You might also find it helpful to try a one-day warm-water fast. While you’re fasting, you may find it helpful to use spicy herbs, such as pepper, ginger, or curry, to help eliminate toxins and encourage healthy digestion.
• Sweating out the toxins can help cleanse your system. You can sweat through a vigorous workout, or enjoy heat therapies, such as saunas and steam rooms. Moist heat is especially good at soothing your vata nature.
• If you follow the twice-yearly detox month I suggested in Chapter 6, make a point of taking a wet sauna or sitting in the steam room a few times a week. If you have easy access to a sauna or steam room, twenty to thirty minutes once or twice a day would be ideal for air types during their detox.
Exercise was a major aspect in Jeff’s ability to reduce his medication and boost his spirits. Previously, Jeff had seen exercise as primarily vigorous, competitive sport—activity that tended to aggravate his vata nature and contribute to his anxiety and stress levels. But for vata types, I explained, it was more important to engage in regular exercise, four or five days per week, ideally with an activity involving a rhythmic or repetitive movement and the chance to be out in nature. I encouraged Jeff to go for brisk half-hour walks, light jogging, and bike rides, all activities that he enjoyed. As his health and spirits improved, he branched out to cross-country skiing in the winter and canoeing on summer weekends, benefiting from the combination of deep breathing, rhythmic movement, and the grounding, balancing experience of contact with earth and water energies.
Your Brain-Healthy Vata Exercise Plan: Activities for Air Types
Check out my suggestions in Chapter 6 for serotonin-building exercise suggestions, supplemented with these additional principles:
• Soothing, repetitive exercise is best for balancing vata. Vigor is less important than rhythmic activity.
• I recommend light aerobic activity for only about twenty to thirty minutes a day. While three to four times a week is your basic minimum, daily exercise is best.
• A moderate-paced walk is the perfect balancing exercise for Air types. Light biking or dancing are also good choices.
• Yoga or simple stretching are good choices for Air types.
• Exercise in a natural setting is particularly soothing for Air types.
• Don’t overexert! A vata constitution does not tolerate exercise that is too vigorous. If you push yourself, you might injure or overstimulate yourself, with counterproductive results.
• Golfing, canoeing, biking, and hiking are all good choices for vata types—anything out-of-doors, relaxed, and enjoyable.
• Yoga promotes strength, balance, and flexibility all at once. It is good for Air types because it can be gentle and soothing, stretching muscles and strengthening joints. Choose a teacher and type of yoga that is relaxing and not overly vigorous, and don’t go beyond your own limits. “No pain, no gain” has no place in a life of balance, especially for Air types.
• Tai chi is really meditation in motion. It’s wonderful for Air types because it engages the body in light, fluid, and calming movement. Some schools focus more on the martial-arts aspect of tai chi; Air types would do well to find a more relaxed and meditative approach.
• Qigong is related to tai chi, a wonderful practice involving breath work, meditation, and energizing movement. Like tai chi, this is a moderately demanding practice that helps calm both body and mind.
Although Jeff showed slow, steady improvement from his improved diet and exercise, he still needed to work on a steady, regular sleep routine. He was staying up too late, then trying to catch up by sleeping late on weekends. His irregular sleep cycle threw off his biorhythms, making it hard for him to feel good. To restore Jeff’s balance, I had him follow the sleep suggestions I make in Chapter 6, to keep him in tune with the earth’s cycles.
Jeff found it difficult to maintain an early bedtime, but he did his best. Within a few weeks, his sleep had vastly improved, providing him the reinforcement to stay on his new regime. His energy and mood were getting rapidly better, and we were able to reduce his dose of Zoloft to 50 mg after three weeks, and to 25 mg three weeks after that.
Just as Ayurvedic typing matches Western scientific understanding of brain-chemical types, so does the Ayurvedic understanding of circadian rhythms resemble the views of modern science. As we saw in Chapter 6, each period of the day has its own special energy. While Western science sees the day’s rhythms in terms of adrenal hormones and other biochemicals, Ayurveda sees the day in terms of the relative activity of our different doshas:
• 6 a.m. to 10 a.m.: a time of increased kapha energy, with a slight feeling of heaviness even after a refreshing sleep.
• 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Pitta increases. You start feeling hungry, your body becomes warmer, and your mind grows more focused and discerning, making this a good time for mentally demanding work.
• 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.: Vata rises. You feel active and light during this period—a good time to move and get some exercise.
• 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.: kapha time again! Your body cools and you feel a drop in energy as you move toward sleep.
• 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.: Pitta increases, as your body digests food during the night.
• 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.: Vata rises as our bodies prepare to move with the coming of dawn and our awakening.
Based on these cycles, the times of greatest stress for Air types are the hours between two and six, whether during the day or night. In the morning, restless minds awaken vata people early from sleep, while in the afternoon, their energy and mental focus disperse and they become less productive. If you’re a vata type, take advantage of this information to plan your days and nights, making the most of your energy’s ups and downs.
Besides stress, I think that the biggest reason that Air types become imbalanced is that they ignore the need for rest. Adequate rest is more important for Air types than for others, yet they are least likely to get it because their sleep is easily disrupted and their schedules tend to be erratic. They often average about five to seven hours per night of sleep— but they need more. One of the easiest and quickest ways for vata types to regain their equilibrium is to get a good night’s sleep. So if you’re a vata who can’t sleep, check out the sleep-inducing suggestions in Chapter 6. But more often, Air types can sleep, they just don’t give themselves enough time to do so.
Here are my recommendations for a daily—and nightly—schedule for Air types:
Twenty-four-hour Schedule for Vata People
• Awaken between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m.
• Take a long, warm shower or bath.
• Allow twenty minutes for conscious breathing or meditation, light stretching, or gentle yoga.
• Eat breakfast between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m.
• Take a fifteen-minute walk after breakfast (and all other meals).
• Work between 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. and 12 noon.
• Take a break midmorning for a walk, stretch, or light snack.
• Eat lunch between noon and 1, preferably in a calm and peaceful environment.
• If possible, take a short nap sometime between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. At least take a break for twenty to thirty minutes sometime between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.
• Eat a snack at about 4 p.m.
• Take time to wind down from your day before dinner. This is a good time to get some light exercise.
• Eat dinner by 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., preferably with friends or family— relaxed social time and creating connection are very helpful at balancing vata energies.
• Enjoy a relaxed evening. Go for a walk, read, hang out with friends or family. Evening is also a good time for a spiritual practice, meditation or aromatherapy.
• Go to bed by 10 p.m. or 11 p.m.
In addition to a good night’s sleep, it is essential that Air types give themselves rest breaks during the day. Follow the section on breaks in Chapter 6 to make sure you know when and how to use break times.
Just as the day has its cycles, so does the year, with seasons that are more or less conducive to the different energetic types. Vata is aggravated in the fall and winter, when the weather becomes dry, windy, and cold. If you’re an Air type, you need to stay warm and keep your skin moist with baths, showers, saunas, and steam rooms, and use moisturizing oils and lotions. This is a particularly important time to follow the dietary suggestions in the chart below, sticking with favored foods and avoiding foods that are not recommended. When the weather is cold and windy, you need to pay particular attention to maintaining your exercise routines and daily schedule.
Your Brain-Healthy Vata Routine: Daily Life for Air Types
• Have a daily routine, even on your days off. When it comes to routine, the problem for Air types is that they often don’t have one. Their tendency is to be scattered, rushed, and erratic. Many of my vata patients flounder when they have too much unstructured time, such as when they are between jobs or after they retire. For most Air types, structure is a good thing, and if they don’t have it, their lives tend to become increasingly disarrayed. Think of what happens to air when it isn’t contained within an adequate structure. It simply dissipates and disperses. Air within a balloon, or contained and channeled within a bicycle pump, or forced through a radiator can be focused, productive, and effective, a dramatic demonstration of how Air types need schedules, routines, and obligations.
• Don’t become too rigid. As we’ve just seen, Air types need routine. But when their routines are harsh and unforgiving, Vata people tend to get stressed out, and the routine becomes counterproductive, an airless room or a burst balloon. Remember, your goal is balance—structure and rhythm, but not a punishing schedule.
• Make time for rest, renewal, and slowing down. I personally advise Air types to make a regular weekly time to recharge, in the spirit of the ancient suggestion: “Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy.” I’m not suggesting a religious retreat (though that may be a good thing for some) or even an abandonment of all work and routine. But I am advising you to attend to your need to rejuvenate both body and spirit. Take a day each week to go for a walk, see a funny movie, take a luxurious scented bath, or listen to inspiring music. Become more tuned in to the needs of your spirit, and devote at least some time each week to meeting those needs.
• Choose simple, self-nurturing activities, including a slow stroll alone or with a friend; time spent out of doors, especially in the sun; and books and movies that are light, humorous, romantic, entertaining, uplifting, or inspiring. Avoid overly stimulating books and movies during periods of imbalance; no “edge of your seat” thrillers or horror movies.
• Warm baths and showers are great for warming and moistening cool, dry vata, especially when the weather is cold or when you’re feeling out of balance.
• Engage your senses with massage—soothing, warming, moistening, and relaxing. Seeing a qualified massage therapist can be a terrific investment, but self-massage works well, too, especially of the neck, shoulders, or feet. Air types should add some sesame oil to their massage oil, try to get massages in the evenings, and stay with gentle, light massage.
• Sound is the second-most-important sense for Air types. Nurture your sense of sound with soothing music such as slow classical, soft jazz, or New Age. Nature sounds also bring your Air spirits into an almost magical balance—listen to real or recorded babbling brooks, waves crashing upon the shore, birdcalls, or light breezes rustling through the trees.
• Engage your sense of smell, balancing your vata nature with such calming oils as lavender, clary sage, ylang-ylang, geranium, sandalwood, bergamot, and melissa. Ayurveda also recommends basil, clove, and orange for vata types.
While everyone’s life path is unique, certain themes tend to be predominant for Air types. Self-acceptance is one prominent issue for such people, since fear feeds their tendency to feel insecure, unworthy, or ashamed. Believing that they are not good enough as they are draws many vata people to the pursuit of “self-improvement.” Ironically, what would really be healing and balancing for them is self-acceptance.
Fear likewise drives vatas’ frequent belief that they risk not having enough—not enough food, activities, friends, love, or anything else they find valuable. This fear-based belief can lead to a grasping quality, underlying some of the excessive movement and inability to rest that is so unbalancing to Air types. Remembering that there is enough—with the help of the techniques in Step Three—can free vatas from this prison of scarcity.
Vatas can likewise benefit from techniques designed to help clear the mind, particularly meditation with awareness of breathing, and then meditation with awareness of thoughts and feelings. The emotions that Air types find particularly “sticky” are fear and insecurity. Learning to release these toxic emotions frees you from their control.
Reflection is also useful for vatas—taking the time to step back, get out of the fray, and reflect on what you are truly thinking and feeling. Using a journal is one way to reflect; finding a therapist or counselor is another. You can also just give yourself some downtime to sit and ponder a question or even daydream. Just don’t move into fretting or worry. That will only undo all the good balancing work you’ve achieved.
It’s not only your mind that needs balancing if you’re an Air type. Your spirit also needs sustenance. Inspiration is one key form of nourishment for vatas, who thrive on becoming enthusiastic about new things and are drawn into spiritual practices. Inspiration may come from a wide range of sources: friends, books, speakers, tapes, movies, sermons, worship services, prayer. You can also find inspiration within yourself, from listening to your inner voice—a great and never-ending source of inspiration, as we’ll see in Chapter 15. Contemplation—time spent in solitude, in relationship with the divine—is also a key balancing practice for vatas. You can experience contemplation through many of the practices described in Step Three as well as through prayer, reflective reading of Scripture, and chanting.
Although Jeff and I were able to get his Zoloft down to a much smaller dose, he began to notice the lack of serotonin. We boosted his biochemical levels by giving him a twice-daily dose of B-complex vitamins, along with 100 mg of 5-HTP. Jeff’s mood rebounded right away. Then we waited until spring to reduce his dosage further, trying to take advantage of the natural rise in mood that occurs for most people in springtime.
Jeff did really well with all the changes he had made, and by springtime, he was able to go off Zoloft entirely. Should he face an especially rocky time in the future, he can always support his mood temporarily with serotonin-boosting supplements or even a low dose of a medication. Meanwhile, though, he’d broken his physiological and psychological dependence on medication.
Jeff’s temperament and constitution may make it hard for him to find and maintain balance. After all, it is the very nature of vata, or Air types, to be constantly changing. “Balance” then becomes a moving target. But Jeff found it very helpful to understand and accept his nature, and then to find ways to work with it, learning through observation what threw him off balance so that he could be prepared to cope. As his mind and body calmed down, Jeff also found the time and inner freedom to pursue a more engaged spiritual life, following the mindfulness practices described in Chapter 15. With these, he found more peace than he thought possible, even in the midst of the never-ending stream of stress in which he lived.
Foods:
Overview: regular mealtimes, some protein with each meal, plenty of complex carbohydrates, sweets in moderation.
Recommended Foods:
Dairy: milk and cheese
Meats: turkey, chicken, seafood
Beans and legumes: soy, lentils, chickpeas
Nuts and seeds: walnuts, almonds and almond butter, sesame seeds and tahini, flaxseeds
Grains: whole-grain breads, hot cereals; cooked grains: rice, wheat, or oats
Vegetables: root vegetables: carrots, onions, beets, radishes, turnips, sweet potatoes
Cooked vegetables: asparagus, green beans, okra, garlic
Fruits: sweet, ripe fruits: grapes, melons, oranges, mangoes, berries, cherries, dates, figs, pineapples, plums, nectarines, bananas
Emphasize: warm soups and stews, “comfort foods”
Spices:
anise basil
cardamom
cinnamon
fennel
ginger
licorice
nutmeg
thyme
Activities:
• seek calm and regularity of schedule
• warmth and moisture
• warm baths, steams, or showers
• drink warm fluids throughout the day
• plenty of sleep, brief naps (if sleeping well at night)
• walks in nature
• seek sunlight
• inspirational or humorous reading
• soft or classical music
• light movies, comedies
• massage
• yoga or qigong
• prayer or meditation