January is a natural time for a health and wellness reset – whether that means major shifts or simply getting back to healthier choices. For me, it involves a conscious return to balance through Ayurveda. Discovering Ayurveda was a game-changer for me, in both life and work. If it's new to you, here's a quick overview.
What's Ayurveda?
Ayurveda combines ancient, natural health wisdom with a way of daily living to bring you into harmony with nature and bring balance to your mind, body and spirit. It's a holistic system that focuses on prevention and healing by balancing three fundamental energies (doshas).
In Ayurveda, the science of life, everyone has a unique combination of doshas that's established at conception. All doshas – vata, pitta, and kapha – are present in everyone and shape our distinctive physical, emotional, and mental characteristics. Your signature blend is your prakruti; it's fixed and specific to you. When we're in balance, based on our pakruti, we're healthy. Imbalance can lead to disease.
Our personal health is essentially a constant balancing act, as internal and external factors disturb our natural doshic balance. Given the shifting forces in our lives – from diet, exercise, sleep, work, and relationships to thoughts, feelings, seasons, and our environment – maintaining health and wellbeing requires awareness and moment-to-moment adjustments to our lifestyle choices and diet.
Examples at work
Practicing Ayurveda not only made me feel healthier and happier, it also changed the way I view and interact with others – for the better! In learning about Ayurveda, I discovered small changes I could make to feel balanced and more energetic. Plus, it gave me another tool I could use to better understand and work with colleagues.
A few work-related examples:
I avoid scheduling meetings around mealtimes anyway, but I NEVER schedule a meeting with someone who exhibits high pitta energy if I think it will disrupt their mealtime. That meeting would not go well.
If I'm working with someone who is noticeably distracted or fidgeting, I'll adjust to their vata energy with a calm, grounding approach. I'll repeat key points more than I typically would and make sure to follow-up because it’s likely they’re quick to learn and equally quick to forget.
If there's a lot of kapha energy in the room, I'll liven up my presentation. If there's more vata or pitta, I'll favor an engaging but relaxed delivery because stimulation intensifies these energies and can aggravate folks with a lot of vata and/or pitta going on.
Where to start?
Knowing which changes to make to restore our balance requires that we first know our starting point. We recommend starting by getting to know your dosha. The guides below will help.
If you're working in the corporate realm or consulting, as I am, you've seen your fair share of "one-pagers." Something as ancient and nuanced as Ayurveda cannot be captured in a one-pager, of course, but I created a series of one-page guides to make learning the key concepts easier. Why? Because Ayurveda changed me fundamentally, and I want to expedite the process for you!
More to explore!
In addition to the guides above, Deepak Chopra offers a free dosha quiz. I also highly recommend this cookbook by Sahara Rose Ketabi. Once you've learned a little more about doshas, it can also help to ask a close friend or family member for input on yours too, since they can see things we don't! Subscribe on the Executive Hippie Life site and follow us on social media channels (@ExecHippieLife) for more holistic wellness content, recommendations, and resources.
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