This episode is a deep-dive on how to balance each Ayurvedic Dosha and a sample of what my Doshas + Dharma 4 Week Virtual Coaching Program is like. I discuss:
-What Vatas, Pittas and Kaphas are really good at
-What they could use a little work on
-How to balance out the Doshas within you for optimal health, radiant living, inner peace and wild success
Ayurveda is the world’s oldest health system and the sister science of yoga. The premise of Ayurveda is that we are each comprised of three Doshas, or energy types.
To discover yours, take my free quiz: eatfeelfresh.com/new-quiz
My Doshas + Dharma Program is designed to help you get to the root of what it is you are good at (which is part of your Dosha), that you enjoy (also part of your Dosha), that creates abundance (which is necessary to do it full-time) and the world needs (because we always must give back.)
Learn more about my program at : eatfeelfresh.lpages.co/doshas-dharma-program/
We begin on May 28 and I’m happy to answer any questions you have: [email protected]
Let’s take the discussion further in the Mind-Body Balancers FB group: www.facebook.com/groups/1213662491998309/
Intro + Outro Music: Silent Ganges by Maneesh de Moor
Get 35% off your Youveda supplements with code “sahara” at youveda.com
Transcription
Episode 075 – How To Balance Each Dosha With Sahara Rose
By Sahara Rose
Namaste. It’s Sahara Rose, and welcome back to the “Highest Self” podcast. A place where we discuss what makes you your soul’s highest evolvement. This episode is brought to you by YouVeda. YouVeda is an organically grown, family-owned modern Ayurvedic supplement company that delivers yoga and meditation advice directly to you through their app, along with plant-based nutrients and vitamins to your door. I am so excited to be partnered with them because they truly are a testament for making your mess your message.
The founder, Gunny, suffered from clinical depression and anxiety after the loss of his brother and turned to Ayurvedic plants and herbs to heal him. His father is a leading Ayurvedic doctor and helped him become healthier and happier with these herbs, and he made this company, YouVeda, to help other people deal with not only anxiety, depression, but adrenal fatigue, stress, immunity issues, digestive issues and all sorts of other things. So you can try out YouVeda on their website, youveda.com, and receive 35% off with code “sahara.” I’m so excited for you guys to try this, and please, tag me in your pictures because their products are adorable.
And now for today’s episode. The topic I want to discuss today is about how so many people out there are trying to get to know their purpose. They are going to career coaches, and guidance counselors, and therapists, and life coaches, and health coaches, and everyone in between. And they are searching for what that purpose is. But you will never know your purpose until you know yourself. Most of us, we jump the gun and we skip this step. We want to know immediately what am I meant to do with my life? Why am I here? What’s my career path supposed to be?
We want to know that end goal, but we don’t realize that you’re not even going to have an accurate understanding of your purpose until you really get to know who you are at this moment. And the more you get to know yourself the more that purpose becomes clear. So we go chasing the goal of this purpose when really rather what we should be doing is chasing the goal to really get to know ourselves from so many different levels. So in this podcast I’ve spoken about a wide array of ways that you can get to know what your purpose is. For me, I believe it starts with understanding your elements. What elements are you the highest in?
And there are five elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth. These five elements come together to create the three doshas: vata—space and air, pitta—fire and water, and kapha—water and earth. But to make it simple, I like to just think of vata—air—pitta – fire—kapha—earth. So we all are a combination of all three of these doshas and all five of these elements. And they look different for a set different points in our lives. For example, when you are a child you are more in the kapha stage.
I just put up a picture of me on Instagram of what I looked like when I was a kid, and it was like really, really kapha. So kapha people, they look very earthy, they are young,they have round faces, big eyes, full lips. Very, you know, earthlike characteristics. Earth gives life, it gives nourishment, it gives sustainability. So that’s what kapha sort of looks like in the body. And then the body, it can look round, it can gain weight, be chubby, and really just centered, calm, grounded.
Pittas, they tend to be more fiery, they tend to have more muscles, they tend to have red hair, red faces. Cause redness are round, and they tend to gravitate towards being hot. They have characteristics like the fire, so they may feel like they need air conditioning on all the time, they may have acidity, which is related to too much heat in the stomach, they could sweat all the time. Anything related to acid, acne is also pitta- related. And then if there’s too much heat in your body, it’s going to show up in your mind. So pitta people tend to get easily aggravated, they could snap easily, and they can get angry.
Now we’re talk about vata people, you talk about kaphas. So vata people tend to have air-like qualities, so in the body they tend to just get really bloated easily, constipated, gassy, they go float around from one thing to another, and then mentally, they have those same air-like characteristics. So they may get really excited about one thing one day, and then another thing the next day, and they’re just sort of floating around.
So have you ever talked to like an airy person? You’ll know because they’re like looking at you, and then paying attention to something else, or maybe every time you talk to them they have like a totally different thing they’re excited about. One day they’re like all about being like a personal trainer, and the next day they want to be a singer, and then the next day they want to be, you know, a gardener, and they’re always changing things.
So vata, changeable, pitta, fiery, and kapha, earthy, sustainable. Now the reason why it’s important to know these things to find your purpose is because the more you’re able to find these elements within yourself. You can seek the career opportunities that crave, that really admire having these elements.So for an example, if you are a vata person, naturally you’re going to be very creative. Your airiness is going to make you want to try a lot of things. You probably love to travel, you love trying new things, you love moving around, you are naturally someone who is just very free flowing in nature. So for you, a career that’s really going to honor these qualities is going to best suit you.
So for example, maybe you could be a travel photographer. Or maybe you could be a coach who focuses on bigger picture things. Maybe you could work in marketing, you could work in advertising. You have to be working on something that’s more big picture, otherwise you’re going to get way too stuck in the day to day and execution stuff can make you really just overwhelmed. Vatas, when there’s too much air energy, they tend to get really in their heads. So they anxious, they get insomnia, and they’re not able to sleep. So I have a lot of vata in my mind, my mind is definitely mostly vata.
So for me, the hardest thing was always figuring out what I wanted to do. Because there were so many different things that I liked, and I would be all about one thing, all about the next thing. It was really hard for me to like ground down and just do one thing. And the thing is, in life you have to only kind of do one thing until you get good enough at it that you can move on to the next thing. And in the spiritual community there are a lot of super airy people. When you have a lot of vata, that really opens up the crown chakra so you’re receiving source energy all the time. But when you’re not able to ground that down it can make you really just flaky, and those people who are like, “Hi, yeah, let’s be friends.” And you know, you feel like they’re not fully even in their bodies. And you’re not going to trust someone, you’re not going to invest in someone if you don’t even feel their full presence being there.
So airy people need to focus on grounding, making themselves finish the tasks that they started, but still seek career paths that honor those elements. Now pitta people, they are naturally more fiery, so they like to get things done, they are really structured, they have like this like boss, C.E.O type energy. They’re like, “Okay, this is how it’s gonna go. People, make this happen.” Like that is how they come in, they are not looking around other people for the answers, people are actually coming to them for the answers, naturally.
So pitta people, what they need to work on is sometimes cooling down. Because they can get really riled up and really angry when things don’t go their way. And in life, things often don’t go our way, so for pitta people, they need to focus on, “Okay, I’m just going to allow, I’m going to surrender, and I’m going to trust.” And that is the biggest lesson for them, and that helps expand them as people. But for pitta people, it doesn’t mean you have to fully go into vata mode or kapha mode. Still use those fiery qualities that you have to achieve, and do, and organize because that’s what you’re really good at. But at the same time, you just don’t want to be overly dominated by it.
And then for kapha people, they’re really grounded, they’re calm, they’re peaceful, they’re centered, kumbaya, hakuna matata, they’re in their bodies. But fir them, they need to maybe work on getting things going a little bit. They may be getting ready to get ready. They’re waiting for that perfect moment, which never happens. So kapha people need to learn how to take action. They need to learn how to get that ball moving.
And when kapha energy is stuck, and again, you don’t have to naturally be born a kapha person to have a kapha imbalance, anyone can have a kapha imbalance. But it happens in periods of your life where you just feel stuck, or you feel like you don’t want to go out and try new things. Maybe you feel like you’re in a rut, and that’s when kapha energy has increased too much and you need to stimulate, you need to shake it out, you need to try new things, move, go to different places, get things moving, and that’s what’s going to get you stimulated. It’s going to help you lose weight, and it’s also going to help you have more creative ideas and execute, and get things done.
So, a question that I know Shaman Durek just asked in the Instagram Live is what are some exercises that I can do to help balance my excess pitta energy? So let’s talk about lifestyle and exercises we can do to help balance each of our energy. So if you are a vata, you are feeling very airy, spacy, you’re having a hard time following through with things. It’s going to be really important for you to ground your energy.
So one really grounding thing you can do is to literally walk on earth. Walk on earth with your shoes off, this practice is called earthing, and you literally help balance your ions. You know, we have a positive electromagnetic charge, and the earth has a negative electromagnetic charge. So when we walk with our shoes off just getting the charge of the earth. We help recalibrate our electromagnetic field, which is very important. It sounds really scientific, but that’s basically why you feel so good like after a day of going to the beach, or spending time in nature because you actually helped chance your DNA to go back to the way that it was supposed to be.
But we, as a society, have become very, very vata. Because if you think about it, we are living in apartment buildings, we’re up in the air, we are wearing rubber shoes almost all of the time. Rubber does not let the negative ions of the earth come into our bodies. So there are amazing studies that you can find online showing the rates of diseases and the invention of rubber sole shoes. So when rubber sole shoes began to be popular, the rates of diseases started to go up because we were no longer basically recalibrating our bodies with earth.
And that’s whey when you sleep that’s also so important. You know, astronauts and people who don’t sleep, they end up getting diseases, especially later on in life because they’re so not grounded, and the human bodies were designed to be connected to earth. So grounding, spending time in nature, particularly with your shoes off, your feet in the soil, spending time with animals. Chubby is right here, he’s going to help our electromagnetic charge by just loving us.
So spending time with your animals is really good because it’s a really great reminder of just primal source energy. It’s really easy for us, especially online technology and all of that stuff to kind of forget that we are humans, that we are living beings that we have animalistic needs. So I find spending time with animals, spending time with kids, people who are still inherently in their divine primal nature is very happy. Because it reminds us that we are just animals at the end of the day with Wi-Fi, and that’s really what this discrepancy is.
Another thing with grounding is multi-tasking. Multi-tasking will make us really airy, really up in our heads, and that’s the opposite of what we need if we want to be more grounded, calm, collected, peaceful.So if you find yourself, you’re eating, on your computer and you’re answering Instagram DMs, and you’re doing a million things at once, remember that our bodies were not designed to multitask. So when you multitask you’re actually inefficiently doing everything. You think you’re doing everything, but you’re actually not doing at your full capacity.
So for example, when you’re eating, your body has to know that it is time to absorb nutrients, assimilate the waste, go through the whole digestive process, which takes up about 80% of our daily energy expenditure. But when we are eating while driving, while texting, while doing other things, our bodies don’t know that it is time to digest, and they don’t do so as efficiently. So that’s why you might notice that when you’re in a deep intense conversation, you’re just scarfing food down your face, and you feel a belly ache after, it’s because you weren’t actually digesting that food.
So in Ayurveda it’s not you are what you eat, but rather you are what you digest. And if you are not digesting your food, you’re not only wasting the food, but you’re actually harming your body. So it is essential for us to sit down, breathe, just taking a few breaths before you eat is such a game changer. Because you know, oftentimes we’re going through life with a very shallow breathe. We’re like… go, go, go, go. And our breaths are going about to here, whereas a healing breathe is supposed to go all the way down to the bottom of your belly and really inhale, exhale, deep belly breathing. And that’s how children breathe, and that’s the most restorative, regenerative breath.
So when you’re shallow breathing and you go into a meal with this rushed state, you’re going to eat that meal with the same rushed state. And first of all, you’re not going to enjoy it, but you’re not going to digest it, and you’re going to be left really vata, airy, spacy. What is the biggest problem that vatas have? Does anyone know? It’s digestion. Vatas have the hardest time with digestion because their energy is so up in their heads and not in their bodies that they can’t do the most primal, instinctive thing that humans were here to do, which is digesting food.
So taking a pause, breathing, spending time in nature, eating root vegetables. So root vegetables literally grow under the earth; they have earth-like qualities. If you pull them out of the earth you can see there are roots, and there are vines, and there’s dirt all over them. You’re literally eating a piece of the earth. So if you want to be more grounded, you need to eat more food straight from the bottom of the earth.
So what are some root vegetables? Sweet potato, ginger, turmeric, beets. Every sort of root veggie is going to be very, very healing for a vata imbalance. Now vatas also want to avoid anything that is raw or cold. And this is again, when you have a vata imbalance, if your vata’s not out of balance, you can have some raw foods. But when it’s out of balance, you definitely don’t want any because it’s going to be too hard to digest.
So when we cook foods we kind of break down the enzymes and all of the hard to digest fibrous cell walls. So when we cook them, it’s much easier for the body to digest, and we can absorb the nutrients, and then discard the waste. Now when the food is raw, the fibrous cell walls are very, very thick and basically creating a barrier to the nutritional value of the food. So some may say, well, when you cook a food you’re killing some of its vitamin c, and you’re killing some of its nutrients. So isn’t it worse?
But if you are not digesting that food, doesn’t matter. Because that food is just going to end up getting stuck in your gastrointestinal track where it’s going to rot and rot and rot, and then eventually ferment, and then eventually from fermentation it putrefies and it turns into something called ama in Ayurveda, which literally means toxins. And how do those toxins show up? The white stuff on your tongue, those are toxins. So if you’re noticing that every time you scrape your tongue there’s a lot of white stuff, that means you haven’t been digesting your food properly.
And then toxins end up showing up in different ways. For vatas, bloating, gas, constipation. For pittas, hyperacidity, acne, inflammation, irritation, hives, rashes. For kaphas, mucus, hypothyroidism, sinus issues, allergies, and then gaining weight, diabetes. So toxins don’t show up differently for everyone, which is why there’s no such thing as a one size fits all diet because we all have different things going on.
So with the vatas we talked about the grounding, eating one thing at a time. Think about anything that’s up in the air, we want to bring that energy down. We want to connect to the lower chakras, root and sacral chakra. We want to stay away from getting too heady. So you know, probably the best thing if you’re a vata is not to like watch these intense like TV dramas with all these mysteries and action things going on at night. Because that’s going to put you even more in your head. You need to connect into your body, you need to do things and activities that bring you out of your head and into your body. Like exercising, or dancing, or just spending time in nature hiking.
And again, vatas don’t want to overpush themselves. So vatas may naturally be drawn to doing like a lot of cardio, a lot of like spinning, and running, and doing things really fast because vata energy wants to move really fast. Because it’s like the air, it’s sporadic, it’s the wind, it’s always flowing. But what vatas actually need is to ground down. So for vatas, instead of working out at SoulCycle, maybe you should just lift some weights really slowly, and just feel your muscles work.
So for me, I had a really bad vata imbalance. And what I started to do was Pilates reformer, and before I was like Pilates reform is not a real exercise, that’s for injured people. But actually what it teaches me to do is to really isolate the smaller muscles of my body. So instead of just like… getting it done like Jane Fonda style, you’re actually really working those small muscles that we often overlook. And when we’re doing, you know, just like jump squat, jump squat, and going really fast, we’re not actually maybe using the weaker muscles in our body, which is what need to be used.
And vata people tend to have a lot of muscular irregularities, as well as bone deformities. So if you have bowlegged legs, if you have bunions, if you have flat feet, any just bone-related issue. If you have double jointed—like my skeletal structure is super vata as I’m showing you guys on the screen. You know, your fingers turn out like this, all the just irregularities, you’re popping, you’re cracking, these are all signs that you have a lot of vata in your body. So when you’re doing a lot of cardio, you’re actually setting yourself up for injury. And I see a lot of vata people, they go long distance running, they go spinning, they do all of these things. But that’s, you know, like attracts like, and if you’re already too vata, you’re doing all of these vata increasing exercises, you’re going to fall into an imbalance.
So do the Pilates reformer, do the slower yoga class, focus on building strength, focus on building balance. Vatas are very, very poor in balancing, so it’s really important for them to practice balancing on one leg. And again, why do these body things for anxiety in the mind and finding your purpose. Like how is that connected? Because the body is a reflection of the mind, and anything that’s going on somatically, the word soma, Greek word “in the body,” anything that goes on in the soma is happening in the mind as well.
So when your body’s out of balance, your mind is out of balance. When your body is weak, your will becomes weak. All of these things are a reflection of one another. So when you look at what are the ailments that are going on in my physical body? That will tell you exactly what you need to work on in your life. So vatas, focus on grounding, focus on stability, focus on building strength. And all of these things are going to make you more strong, stable, and supportive in your life so you can go out and achieve that dharma.
Now pittas, you have a lot of strength, you’re really going, maybe you’re already at that Barry’s boot camp, but what you need a little bit more of is the fluidity, a little bit more of the relaxation and the letting go, and letting go of control. Because when fire is in excess, it can burn yourself and the people around you. And pitta people love, they’re very passionate, they really care for others. But what ends up happening is they can hurt the people they love the most because they’re not thinking about the long term how the way they acted is going to sit with that person later on.
So I like to say look at the relationship of time and you can tell what the dosha is. So vatas are very fixated on the future, they’re future tripping. They’re thinking about, “Oh, what’s going to happen? You know, next year, and in ten years, and what’s by big vision plan? Future, future.” Well what are you doing now? “Hm, I don’t know.” Future tripping.
Kaphas are fixated on the past. “Oh man, five years ago I should have done this. Oh, I wonder what my ex-boyfriend’s doing. Oh, if I were back in college, the things I would have done differently.” But what about right now and what do you want in the future? Now, pittas, they can be very, very present. But sometimes that presence can get them into trouble. So pittas may be so present that let’s say a catastrophe happens and they just go crazy and they start screaming, and shouting, and going nuts because that thing is not working out well. And they forget about how much the people around them were there for them in the past, and what it’s going to be like in the future with their reaction. Because all they can think about in the present moment this is not how it’s supposed to be.
So pittas need to work on cooling it down, connecting with the air, and connecting with the earth, and bringing in the water that they already have to recalibrate their energy. So in terms of lifestyle, that looks like anything that’s going to be cooling and calming. So instead of going to the power yoga class in the heated room, which is really going to bring your pitta up. You want to do the yen yoga, you want to do the tai chi, you want to swim, do something that’s going to afterwards make you feel like I feel like I’m refreshed. That’s what pittas really need.
You know, pittas naturally gravitate towards the most competitive type of activities because they have a lot of fire in them. So they may want to go to run that triathlon, and they may want to go to the Orange Theory class where everyone scores on the TV so they can like compare how they’re doing against other people. But that’s not what they need. They already have enough of that competitive streak. They need to learn how to cool down, and calm down, and accept, and trust, and surrender.
So activities that can bring that up, you know. Just floating in the water is a pure act of surrender. Giving in to other people, it’s literally surrendering. There are so many different types of modalities that we can do. For example, there’s a Japanese modality that my friend, Alexandra Roxo, practices. And this Japanese modality is they tie themselves up, and it’s literally to practice that art of surrender. And they just tie themselves up and they hang there. And for them, it’s very, very cathartic because especially in Japanese culture it’s so on the go, and structured, and very pitta-oriented. That for them to literally just be tied up and like hang there like this, they cry, it’s so deeply emotional for them. So if you’re a really pitta person, maybe look into that.
Another example are those floating pods. You know, you’re in a float tank and it’s with salt water, so you literally feel like you’re floating, the water is the exact same temperature as your skin, so you don’t feel any difference between the temperature in you. And it’s silent, and it’s dark, and there’s no sensation around you, and you just go inwards. And for some people, that’s like, “Oh my god, I’m going to get an anxiety attack. Like no stimulation, no colors, no sounds? What am I going to do for an hour?” But for most—I haven’t tried it yet, I really want to—for most people who do it, after they get through that level of fear, they feel such a deep sense of coming home again into themselves, which is something that we haven’t experienced.
You know, think about the last time that you truly, truly sat and did nothing with nothing around you—no TV, no book, no cool crystals, no essential oils, nothing. Because sometimes—and I’m telling you this as a spiritual person, we get lost in the toys. And I love my crystals, I know they have healing properties, but if they leave, I’m not going to become a shitty person. And we pay so much reverence to I need this tool, I need this workshop, I need this essential oil, whatever it is that we forget that these are just tools that help you become your highest self. But if your house burned down, if pitta took over the world, which is kind of happening right now, are you still going to be the same person without them?
So this is why it’s important for us to practice this level of surrender. To go to the sensory deprivation tank, or to hang yourself, or to just turn the lights off and sit in your room, which is freaking free. Just to do something to remind yourself that you don’t actually need anything around you. And this is an important conversation that I should do a separate podcast about because in this conversation of spirituality and self-care, we have brought on spiritual materialism.
This is actually totally going to be an episode, but the spiritual materialism is believing that we need more things to be spiritual. And it’s the exact same rat race as the consumerism’s materialism. It’s the same thing. But now you need this shirt with this cool saying and this headpiece for your hair, and these feathers, and this… Yoga teacher training 500 hour, 800 hour, 20 million hours for me to take myself seriously. And that’s not, you know, spirit is there already, we are born like ultimate level, atman, spirituality.
And then we forget, and then we start to remember, but then we bring on these humanistic ways of I need this, and I need that, and I need more, more, more, more. Give me all the crystals so I can be enlightened. And then we forget, oh shit, the whole point of this was so I wasn’t like my former self who used to do the same thing with handbags. So spiritual materialism, this is a real thing, guys. It can happen to anyone, not just when you’re pitta imbalanced, but it’s important for us to practice this law of surrender.
And if you noticed you are that kind of person who needs to control everything, and you get frustrated, and you get irritated, and you end up snapping at people, even when you really don’t mean it, and you can just kind of say something and it comes off way harsher than you intended it to. And then afterwards you feel a little bit awkward and bad about it, but you feel like if you bring it up again it’s going to be even more awkward. So you just ignore it and think that’s going to diffuse the situation, it’s not. People don’t forget how you made them feel. And it may be over for you, but it’s not over for them, and they’re never going to forget the way that you snapped, the way that you treated them, and especially the way that you didn’t apologize for it.
And then the people around you are going to become more distant from you. And you’re going to wonder, “Why are they treating me like this? I did nothing wrong. They’re not treating me the same as they used to. They’re not treating me the same as they did other people. And these walls and walls and walls and boundaries and boundaries and boundaries keep growing thicker and thicker and thicker and you don’t realize that you are the cause.
And a lot of us have parents who were that pitta role because the Baby Boomer generation was a generation where these types of dialogues did not take place very often, and patriarchy was deeply, deeply instilled in the culture. So especially a lot of men are very angry, have a very strong pitta imbalance, and they took it out on their families. So a lot of us had pitta imbalanced fathers, you may have had a pitta imbalanced mother, and you could either go one direction, which is I want nothing to do with you pittas, bye bye, I can’t stand angry people.
Or you could have gone the other direction of, “I’m so angry at you, I’m so angry at you, and now I’m an angry person.” So it goes that one way over the other. And if you don’t heal it, you end up becoming that parent or dating that parent, or marrying that parent that hurted you. And they often say if when you don’t heal your wounds you end up marrying the parent that left the worst scars in you, and we don’t want to do that. Which is why it’s so important for us to do the inner work. So if you’re noticing you have this pitta imbalance going on in you, you’re getting angry, you’re getting frustrated, and you don’t even really know where this angry comes from. Well look at your parents, or the people who raised you and see, is this how they acted towards me?
And go deeper into that emotion because oftentimes what we do when we graduate, when we leave our homes, we say, “Oh, got out of that mess. Never going back there. See you guys next Thanksgiving.” But we’re still carrying those wounds. And until we go deep into them, and dissect them, and then forgive them, they’re going to keep replaying in our lives.
So let’s say you had that father who was really angry, and didn’t show love, didn’t show compassion, didn’t respect the divine feminine. You need to go deep into why that person has even gotten to where they are. Because chances are, their own parents probably treated them this way. They probably wished that they were treated with love, and respect, and admiration and were deprived that. So they don’t know how to pass it onto their kids.
And again, this is not excuse, but you have to deeply understand why someone behaves the way they do to have compassion for them. And then once you sink into this, okay, I understand why you were that way, you didn’t have a dad growing up, or your mom was never there for you, or you lived in World War II, or you survived a famine, or you were an immigrant to this country and had two daughters to your name, or whatever the story is, and you can understand it, and you can have compassion for it, even if you’re still angry, you sink into the forgiveness.
Because you realize that it’s not even about them, that this darker, deeper imbalance is just moving through them, and it’s probably been moving on intergenerationally. But you make the decision that it stops with you, and that you don’t want to raise your kids with a pitta imbalance, and you don’t want to walk around your day and honk at someone for taking two seconds too long to drive on the green light. Because that person’s gonna get frustrated, and flustered, and taken on to someone else, and then we’re just a domino effect of pitta.
And this is what’s going on in the world today. We are dealing with a global pitta imbalance. All of the inflammation that’s going on inside of ourselves is manifesting as a society. And we are seeing it in war, in chaos, in Donald Trump, and ego, and oil money, and all of these things. And all of it has to do with a direct reflection of what’s going on inside of us. Because when that one person honks at you, you get on edge, and you pass it along, and it turns into this mass epidemic.
So we heal it by addressing the pitta imbalance within ourselves. And when you come forth with this calm, cool, collected energy, you are like the water that puts out the fire for everyone around you. And when that father figure or whoever it is comes forth with that rage, you’re able to not get identified with it. Because when we become angry we are identifying with the anger, and we are empowering that anger, and we are saying that anger is true when that anger is really always a dissolution.
So we have to learn how to come forth with equal pitta energy because pitta, guys, is not just fire, it’s also water. And water is the most delicate fragile element, but also the most powerful. Because when there’s a fire going on in your house, hell, you’re going to bring out the water. And that’s the only thing that will blow it out. So we need to come forth with active tidal waves of compassion. And when we see that anger, we do not dance with it, we do not get identified with it, but we come forth like a tidal wave of peaceful loving energy.
And again, it doesn’t mean you even interact with that fire. Let that fire talk, talk, talk until it realize that you’re not giving in, and then it naturally goes inward. You are creating a sensory deprivation tank for that anger. Because when someone’s screaming and going crazy, and everyone around them is just like not reacting, just witnessing, that person first of all thinks they’re crazy, but second of all, they don’t have anymore fuel to fight with that they’re like they’re probably going to start saying something louder, and meaner just to get a reaction out of you because that fire needs the air to fuel. Which is why sometimes pittas and vatas when they’re together, the vata keeps talking, and the pitta keeps getting angry, and it’s like the fuel to the fire, and the fuel to the fire.
But when you come through with that kapha, and not the shadow side of kapha of “Oh my god, I need to help you and make everything better.” But that strength of the water, which pitta also has, the water element, and just hold that space and witness it, and watch it move through, and watch it crash and burn, and become the child that it is. Because anger is always a child that seeks to express itself, and then you ask it to just breathe.
And I remember witnessing this in my shamanic training. And there was this woman who was on the training who she was from Germany, and she was very, very aggressive, pitta energy, and the second day of the training, she just had a meltdown. And she was like, “Malaika, I hate this training, I fucking hate you. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, this shit is a waste of money. This is bullshit, this is a fucking joke.” Like going ballistic, like screaming, having a panic attack. And this is not like a “I’m going through something about my childhood,” she is screaming at Malaika, the teacher.
And she’s like, “I’m leaving, I’m getting on the next flight back. Give me back my fucking money.” And we were all just like… And then Malaika just looks at her, and she’s like, “Now breathe deep into it.” She’s like, “I’m not joking. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a training process. I’m telling you the truth. I fucking hate you, you’re full of shit, and I’m leaving.” And then Malaika’s just like… And this woman, she kept screaming louder, louder, louder, collapses to the floor. She’s fetal position, shaking on the floor, crying so hard, cathartically releasing like a child.
And then from that anger she just softens into this sob. And she’s just crying like the kind of cry that you want to—like before you want to run away, now you kind of want to come hug her. But Malaika’s like, “Don’t, just don’t go near here. Just witness the process.” And from this angry dragon she turned into this soft crying kitten, and then Malaika’s like, “Just keep breathing.” And as she’s crying she starts doing the breath. She didn’t leave her room the rest of that day. The next day, she was not the same person. This tyrannical, angry woman had softened into a goddess, and the look in her eyes had totally shifted.
You know some people are just angry you could see in their eyes. Her eyes had become just joy, and love, and not in a fake way, in a like something literally, some old dark vale you were holding onto is just lifted. And Malaika gave her a new name, Ananda, which means bliss. And for the rest of that training was truly the most blissful woman ever, and she ended up teaching the work, and she teaches shamanic activation in Germany now.
And just from that one breakdown she was having, most of us, I myself probably at that time would have, “Oh my god, are you okay? Okay, let’s talk this out. Do you need anything?” People would have been like, you know, making sure to keep everything calm. But when someone is going through that pitta imbalance, you need to let them go through all of the waves of the emotion until there is no sensation around them, and they can go deeper into the emotion within. That’s why they call it holding space, you’re literally holding the space around them to go through their own experience.
And once they go through and they go deeper into it, and that child that just wanted to be seen, and recognized, and loved comes out, and they realize they’re not a child anymore. They’re here, and they don’t need to hold onto that anger anymore. It was just an illusion holding them back from who they truly are—ananda, bliss—and then they can move forward. So when you see that pitta rage, I want you to just hold the space.
Okay, narcissistic behavior. Narcissistic behavior definitely stems from that same wounded child, and it comes from a pitta imbalance as well. So narcissistic behavior truly stems from not being seen, heard, and witnessed in your childhood. And when you were deprived that, you know, the kid naturally, children want affirmation from the outside because they’re so new to this planet, and things were so different in the astral plane that when they come on this planet they’re like, “What’s going on? Oh, I have to do these tests. Is this a good job?” Because they have no idea what’s going on here.
So when they don’t get that affirmation, when they don’t get that love and that validation, then they end up trying to seek that validation from themselves, and this is when the narcissism begins.And it’s coming from a deep sense of self-survivalhood, and it’s a root chakra imbalance, guys, also. So the root chakra’s in charge of all survival-related issues. So when you don’t feel safe, when you don’t feel heard, you don’t feel loved, you begin to think that no one cares about me on this earth, it’s not safe for me here, I’m not wanted here. So I’m going to just validate myself. And if I validate myself enough, then other people will validate me, too. It sort of comes from this fake it till you make it, but a really deep shadow side of it. And when I say shadow side, that means a darker side.
So then that person starts to say, “Ah, I’m the best, I got this, I got it going on.” And at the beginning it could be great, it could be like positive affirmations in the mirror, but it’s not coming from a sense of healing. They’re not actually healing that part of them that wasn’t seen and heard. They are surface level just saying, “I’m the best, I’m the greatest, I got it going on,” which is why I’m not a big affirmation person. Because I can tell myself in the mirror, “I am strong, courageous, and beautiful.” And if I don’t believe it, what am I saying? You know, it’s just words.
So with the narcissism, it’s just this shallow confidence that comes from this deep, deep sense of insecurity. And they feel like if they don’t projectile their ego, their ego will be shattered. So oftentimes narcissists had very overbearing parents or no parents at all. It’s normally from these extremes that we see. They either were slammed to the ground or weren’t validated and this rises in a false sense of egohood.
So it’s very easy for us to confuse a narcissist with a confident person, which is why so many of us have. And that’s where, you know, sociopaths really come from because they seem totally normal, and cool. You know, a lot of times narcissists are very good at reading people and they’re good at telling you what you want to hear. But it’s not really to please you, it’s so you like them because again, narcissism comes from a very deep sense of insecurity.
So detaching yourself from the needs of narcissists. If you feel like you need that narcissist’s love, validation, approval, that is slipping out of your kapha side. Because the pitta and the kapha can get into this narcissist-savior relationship. Because the kapha’s like, “Let me hold space for you. Let me make sure you’re okay. Let me help you get through this. I’m gonna be here.” The vata would kinda be like, “Uh, bye.” The kapha’s like, “We got this, we’re gonna work through this.” But what ends up happening is the pitta takes advantage of that kapha energy, and the kapha, the shadow side it really deeply wants to be needed.
So the narcissist wants to be heard, the kapha wants to feel needed. So they can really fit in each other’s holes very easily, creating a very frustrating and bad relationship. So for the kapha, they need to heal that part of themselves that wants to be needed, you know. A lot of times kaphas go through life helping everyone around them. “I’m helping my mom. I’m helping my brother. I’m helping my grandma. I’m helping all of these people.” But when you don’t first work on having validation in yourself, then you’re actually just trying to help all of these people because you want to feel loved and approved by them.
So if you feel like there is this narcissist in your life that is taking away from your energy and just trying to use your energy to lift themselves up, and it’s coming from this deep sense of insecurity, I’m sorry, the only thing you can do is walk away. There is no way you can heal a narcissist. Not saying they can’t heal, but they can only heal themselves. You can provide, you know, suggestions for workshops they go to. There’s Narcissists Anonymous, and there are a lot of things like that. You can suggest they go to a shadow work healer, they can go to a shaman, they can go to a lot of things. But you can’t be that person because you are too invested in their life.
And when there’s too much to tango, they’re not going to take you seriously, and they’re not going to see you as a teacher because you’re too mutually invested on a personal level. So if you want to truly heal them, you can give them some tools and resources, but they have to want to heal themselves. And the sad thing that happens is most of the time narcissists don’t see it, and then they say, “I’m not a narcissist, you’re crazy. Ah!” They go crazy on you because you would not get so offended if you weren’t that thing.So the fact that you even calling them a narcissist makes them goes ballistic shows that there’s something there that needs to be healed.
But if you keep trying to be the punching bag for them, they’re not going to change, and you’re going to end up weak and hurt, and I’ve seen this happen, guys. The only thing you can do is walk away. And by you walking away, you’re actually doing the most healing and help you can do to that narcissist. You want to know why? Because that narcissist is able to see that everyone around me that I love has left me. And when they see that, when they see they are left alone in their pity party, and their brother, their wife, their sister, their kids have all left them because of the same exact reason that they are a narcissist or they’re an angry person, they will have no choice but to change. Otherwise they will die alone, which is the exact opposite of what they want because they’re deeply insecure people and need the validation of others.
So the best thing you can really do is walk away and say, “No. I refuse to be treated like this. This is not how you treat me or anyone, and I’m going to walk away because I’m only going to show up for people who treat me like an actual human being, and you are treating me like a fucking animal.” And they may be mad, and they may try to bring you down, down, down, down until you get to that place of needing them again, but you have to walk away until you can regain your strength. Because if you stay, you’re going to end up so weak that you will never be able to stand up for them.
But if you walk away, and you do your thing, and you build yourself up, and you live your life, one) that narcissist is going to call you because they can sense that strong energy and they want that. So they’re going to call you, they’re going to try to bring you back into their life. But you can say, “Listen, I’ll come back into your life, but you need to get help. And if you ever treat me like that again, without hesitation, I will hang up the phone or I won’t talk to you.” And you know, if it’s like a geographical thing, and you moved away from the narcissist, I recommend not going and meeting in person again because you might get back in that situation.
But maybe trying to once you’ve gained the strength, which may take months, which may take years, once you’ve gained the strength and you feel like you’re strong enough to come back into their life without them bringing you down, entertain the relationship on the phone, and then set clear boundaries when you meet in person. I’m going to stay in this hotel, and you can stay here, and we can meet up in a public place. And meet in the public place because that way the narcissist can’t go crazy, and scream, and have a you know, a crazy fit.
But sometimes when you’re in private, or when you’re in the same places where a lot of the fights have taken place before, then the same patterns can reemerge. So it’s like taking baby steps of coming back together, it’s almost like that. Be in separate places, meet in a public place until you feel like they have—and make sure they’re doing the work, they’re getting help, and that help is not from you. That help is from a coach, a shaman, a professional of some sort. It doesn’t have to be a psychologist, it can be any sort of transformative healer. They can sit on ayahuasca ceremony, but they need to be doing something that’s actively helping them. And if the narcissist is not willing to help themselves, all you can do is set those very, very clearly defined boundaries, and keep your space. But you continuing to live with them, to listen to them, work with them, is not helping anyone, so you need to set those boundaries.
So let’s talk now about the kapha. So kapha energy is calm, it’s collected, it’s peaceful, it’s loving, it’s humorous, it is the friend that everyone comes to when they have a problem. But the shadow side of that, which everything has its shadow side, is that it can often take on other people’s issues. Kaphas want to make sure everyone around them is okay, but what ends up happening is they don’t set the clearly defined boundary for themselves. And they end up getting so tangled in everyone’s life that they lose themselves. So I think of, you know, the grandmother who’s making sure all the grandkids are okay, and taking care of the kids, and doing all of the things. But when you ask her what’s your purpose? “I don’t know, my purpose is you guys.”
And, you know, we look at this from this place of deep love, which it is, but are you actually showing up as your fullest self when your fullest self is just what everyone else around you needs? Because then you are not being yourself, but you are actually just showing up as the gaps of other people. Oh, you need this, I’ll be that. Oh you need me here, I’ll be there. But who are you without that? And that’s why we see so much the mothers whose kids go off to college and then they have no idea who they are underneath it all.
And that is coming from the exact same energetic space. And this is a space that society has encouraged women to be a part of. They told you, you must sacrifice everything for your kids. You must do everyone for your husband. Who are you without your family? So the sense of self has not really been activated in former generations of women. And those who did were seen as selfish, as masculine, as unfeminine and domineering because they were someone else outside of their families. Whereas a man was someone else outside of his family, he’s just a normal man.
So the kapha carries the deep wounds of the feminine because kapha is that mother earth energy. And it naturally wants to give, you know, why do women keep on giving so much because a deep desire in them wants to provide. You know, motherhood is innately distilled in all of our DNAs that even if you don’t have a child but you’re handed one, you instinctively know what to do. So this is our super power while it can be our Achilles heel. It is our super power because the maternal instinct is what keeps life moving. Without sacrifice, the child would never be raised. So it is a beautiful energy, the energy of the earth’s wisdom of mother nature, but it can also turn into forgetting who you are.
So kaphas will often find themselves in jobs where they’re providing service for other people, they may be in customer service, human resources, they really care about relationships. And this is what they do best, and this is great for them. Kaphas don’t want to be the C.E.Os and have all of the expectations on them and have to persevere every day. They like to be able to turn off, they like to help people, they like to provide. But when left out of balance, they end up taking advantage of and depleted. And the thing is, for them it’s not even taking advantage because they don’t realize it. It’s almost like human nature for them to, you know, go out of your way for someone even though it’s not even work hours. Or to not sleep all night because a friend called you on the phone, like that’s how they are, that doesn’t even seem like a sacrifice for them.
And as long as that feels okay, it’s okay until it doesn’t. And when there are no clearly defined boundaries there, the people around you don’t really know what’s okay and what isn’t. You know, you may have been annoyed that your friend wanted to talk and call all night, but you did it anyway. So then when your friend does it again the next night, and the next week, and the next month, and is always calling you with all of their problems, they honestly think that you like doing it because you’ve never said anything.
So you’ve sort of created this expectation of I’m always here whenever you have a problem, and you did mean it, but you didn’t always mean it, but you didn’t really say, “I’m here unless X, Y, Z,” because that just sounds kind of bitchy. So there isn’t this skewed understanding of what’s okay and what’s not. And kapha, if you’re in this kapha dynamic, you have to know that it’s never too late to set a boundary. And you can say yes, and then say, “Actually, it’s feeling like a no,” or, “You know, that was okay with me before, but I’ve shifted some things in my life and now it’s not.” Or, “I would prefer instead of texting me all day, you sent me an e-mail. Or once a week, we can meet in person and talk on the phone. And I’d love to also share with you what’s going on in my life if you’re interested in hearing.”
And most of the time that person’s going to say, “Yes, of course, thanks for telling me,” but they just didn’t know that you felt that way because you didn’t express it. So kapha, you have to let people know what’s up, they can’t read your mind. They’re reading your actions, and when your actions are always yes, it seems like it’s an always yes. And it’s never too late to begin standing up for yourself. It’s never too late to say, “This doesn’t feel right anymore. I know I agreed to this, but situations were different at that time. And this is what’s going on now, and I hope you can respect it, and I love you so much.”
And just come from a place of love and compassion, and say what it is you need to say to be okay because no one wants you to run yourself dry. No one is deliberately doing that unless It’s the narcissist. But most people think that your boundaries are just something different than what it is. So exercising that speaking up for yourself, that saying, “This is actually how I do things and it’s a little bit differently than how we have been doing things, or I’m going to make a shift in how, and I hope you can respect that, and I respect if you no longer want to work with me, or you want to be in a relationship with me, or you want to be friends with me,” or whatever that thing is.
And again, you don’t have to be a kapha to be in the situation, we’ve all been in this situation. Especially in this day and age, it’s like we are like asking for favors for each other all the time because there’s so much going on that we don’t really know what we can ask for and what we can’t. And back in the days of the villages there was like a few mothers who took care of the kids, and they all took turns, and different people had different tasks, and there was no real question about it. Everyone was like, “This is your role and this is how you serve in society.”
But now we are playing so many different roles, we are all so many different archetypes, and wear so many different hats that it’s hard to know what you can ask people for, what you can do yourself. All of this is really blurred for everyone right now. And this is the time that we all have to practice speaking our truth, and setting our boundaries, and being open also to the fact when someone else may change or voice their boundaries. Because we’ve also been in situations where we were doing things and things were going well, and then maybe that person we were working with was like, “Actually, I wanted to tell you that this isn’t working.” And you’re like, “Huh? What? This is what I’ve been doing the whole time.” And part of you is sort of angry at them. You do sort of get into this pitta state. But you have to also have compassion because you have been the other person in the situation, and you will, again, be the other person in the situation.
So when someone says, “Yeah, I know that we’ve been posting giveaways on each other’s Instagrams every week, but now I don’t really want to do that anymore. My vision has changed, and I’m sorry, like this is just where I’m at right now.” Don’t be like, “Well, we’ve been doing it this whole time, what did you change? This was set in stone.” Don’t be that pitta. Be like, “Oh, okay, cool. Thank you so much for expressing that, I appreciate it, and let me know how you can envision us supporting each other in the future, and I’m all ears.” Because then that person’s going to be like, you know, that person’s probably really nervous to tell you, so they’re going to be like, “Breath of relief.”
And then you’re going to be able to tell other people things because you’re going to see, “Oh wow, this person told me that, I responded calmly.” So people can have these calm reactions, and you’re also manifesting those sort of understanding reactions as well at the same time. So everyone’s able to have a more clear law of communication than this like rigidity, set in stone, pitta dynamic, which the patriarchal era was very full of. So be open, be open to new rules, and new conversations, and potentially uncomfortable moments that will make our life a lot more comfortable in the long term.
So how is this connected to our dharma, our life purpose? So each dosha has its own strength and its own weaknesses. And it’s only when we truly get to know ourselves that we can find out what our purpose is. So I created a system called the “Doshas and Dharma” program. And it’s where I discuss these three doshas in-depth, help you understand how they show up in your life, and then guide you through a four-week journey on how you can discover your life purpose.
It comprises of five group meetings with your Doshas and Dharma coach, four weekly calls, live calls with me, five videos and PDFs all made by me, all about finding your purpose, discovering your strengths, finding the things you’re good at, what you can make money doing, what can support the world, and how you fit into all of this. And we end the whole four-week program with writing out your purpose statement and speaking it out into our group in a safe, clearly held space where all voices are welcome.
And you will leave this program knowing clearly why you’re here, what your purpose is, what your mission is to serve the world so you don’t waste anymore time, end up in situations that you easily could have diverted, like the narcissist-giver situation, or not being able to speak your truth, you’re floating around to too many jobs and too many things without grounding. All of these things stem from doshic imbalances. So when you address the imbalance going on in your mind and in your body, you can address the imbalance in all areas of your life.
So I invite you to join my “Doshas and Dharma” program. You can find it on my website, iamsahararose.com. And we begin on January 28th, this is an annual program once a year, so it will not be held until next year, and it is my only live coaching program. So if you’re interested in working with me, asking me live questions, if you think my podcasts are good, these go so much deeper. I’m giving you step-by-step approaches that you can enter into your life for actualized results. And this is the second time I’m guiding the program, I already have 22 graduates, all of which are living out their dharmas now. So I’ve learned a lot from that first time, but the message is the exact same, which was all channeled through me in just a day, and I created into this program.
So I’m so excited to share this wisdom with you and watch it transform your life, and the lives of those around you. Because we are all interconnected, and when you rise, the world rises. I look forward to having you, check it out on my website, again, iamsahararose.com. You can also click the link in iTunes or Soundcloud, wherever you’re listening on highestselfpodcast.com. We begin May 28th, it’s application only, and I can’t wait to meet you there.
And if you loved this episode and you’d like a little gift for reviewing it, I would love to send you the first half of my unreleased book. It’s called “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type.” It is not available for sale anywhere, it never will because now it is “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type” 12-week guided program infusing Ayurveda with modern nutritional science. So as a free gift for reviewing this episode in the iTunes store. You just head over to iTunes on your phone, on your computer, click “Write a Review,” write a nice review, take a screenshot of it, and e-mail it over to me before you hit “Submit.” My e-mail is sahara, S-A-H-A-R-A, @eatfeelfresh.com and I will send you back the first half of my unreleased book “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type.” I hope you loved this episode, and I’ll see you on the next one. Namaste.
Episode 075 – How To Balance Each Dosha With Sahara Rose