Seasonal Tips

October - 7 Ways to Please Vata This Autumn

Come October, change is in the air. Leaves turn colour and fall. The air feels cool and dry. Inside your body, Vata dosha, the dosha of the season, tends to increase, often commanding Pitta and Kapha doshas to play second, and third, fiddle. This is how it is likely to be till February, when the season both outside and within you will change once again.

When Vata dosha takes over for these few months, its restless, sweeping quality can throw your physiology and psychology completely out of balance. Constipation, dry skin, irregular appetite, lack of sleep, stress, fatigue an out-of-sync Vata can cause all of these problems and more - Understand Vata, Pitta & Kapha. But in nature's scheme of things, the Vata environment outside is supposed to synchronize perfectly smoothly with changes within our bodies and minds. If that is we stay in tune with some simple rhythms of nature.

It's really quite logical. Autumn, being the onset of dry and cold days and nights, needs to be offset by a diet, routine and temperatures that are warming, unctuous and nourishing. That's how all three doshas work: if you have a Pitta imbalance, you try to cool down. If your Kapha shows signs of aggravation, detoxify. And if it's Vata that has increased, well, there's a healing tip to soften every aspect of this volatile dosha.

The Council of Maharishi Ayurveda Physicians offers you a whole bouquet of such healing tips. To begin with, they say that the keyword in Vata-management is "regularity." Being a mobile dosha, Vata is always in need of stability, especially in these months when it becomes dominant. Therefore autumn and early winter are the most important times to pay attention to the basics of your daily routine.