If you follow me, you know I’m all about the Goddesses. But did you know they also relate to the Ayurvedic Doshas? I’ve found:

Saraswati= Vata

Durga= Pitta

Lakshmi= Kapha

It’s amazing how similar these goddesses and Doshas are, despite Ayurveda preceding Hinduism several thousands of years!

Who is your Dosha and Goddess? Mine is Saraswati/ Vata!

Join the conversation on the Mind-Body Balancers FB Group.

Discover your Dharma with my free quiz at https://iamsahararose.com/

Transcription

Episode 010 – How The Hindu Goddesses Relate To the Ayurvedic Doshas

By Sahara Rose

Namaste, it is Sahara Rose, and welcome back to the Highest Self Podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your highest evolvement. Today I shot a project that I have been working on for the past year now, and it is to embrace the goddesses that exist inside of us. So if you know me, you know there are two things I’m very passionate about. One: which is Ayurveda, and the other is the concept of the goddesses and the goddess living inside all of us.

I love how they are both archetypes, and how we can connect to them. They both relate to the ancient Vedic system, so in this podcast episode I want to discuss a finding that I’ve come across, which is that the Ayurvedic doshas and the trifecta—the three main Hindu goddesses—are actually quite similar and mirror each other.

So again, this is a concept that I have come up with. I’m not saying that this is written in any books, or something like that. This is just something that I have found from studying the goddesses and Ayurveda that I think is a really helpful way of understanding both because you can kind of see the patterns and the similarities. And they don’t only exist in Ayurveda and the goddesses, but they exist in everything in life.

So Ayurveda has three doshas:

• Vata, which is air and space

• Pitta, which is fire and water

• And Kapha, which is earth and water

While Hinduism offers hundreds of goddess archetypes, they represent different elements of the Shakti, the woman, the divine feminine force. Which is the powerhouse of life, of creativity, of power, of motherhood. So the goddesses really are not actual people, but they’re rather sides of ourselves. They represent different elements that we have inside of us.

• We are all the warrior

• We are all the mother

• We are all the maiden

We have all of these sides to us. We are not—there’s not just one woman, and even inside of one woman there’s not just one woman. As you guys know, we’re all crazy, we have 50 sides to us. So the goddesses really just represent that, and you call upon the goddesses to evoke different qualities that exist inside of yourself. So really what I want to take home is these goddesses are not people somewhere up there, they are already inside of you.

So through studying both Ayurveda and the goddesses I’ve noticed similarities between the two philosophies. Now Ayurveda was created about 3,000 years before the vedas were formally written. The vedas are the world’s oldest texts. The word “veda” means “knowledge.” So the vedas are essentially classical books that were orally passed down traditions based on how to live your life. So Ayurveda is the science of life, how can you have a balanced mind and boda.

Yoga is about becoming one with brahma, reaching spiritual enlightenment. There are many, many, many parts of the vedas. There are secondary vedas, there’s upavedas. We’re not going to go into all of the vedas. But the goddesses come from Hinduism, which is derived from the vedas, but actually came much later when in India, in Hindustan, they wanted to create a religion. So they created a religion, the concept of a religion didn’t actually exist  in ancient India, they were Vedic. It predates any religion.

The gods and the goddesses were not like—there were no churches, or temples, or anything like that. It was all a personal practice. But then when they saw that there’s Hinduism—there’s Islam, there’s Christianity, there’s Judaism, there’s all these religions. They created Hinduism, which is a religion based off of the vedas, but it’s more almost in this western way because they had never had a formal religion before.

So these goddesses are based off of Vedic understandings, but they are part of Hinduism, which is much more modern to the vedas. So I noticed that each of these doshas, these very ancient doshas, relates to a particular goddess, and most importantly, a particular part of ourselves. So if you don’t know that vata, pitta, and kapha represent, I recommend taking my quiz on my website. You can take it on iamsahararose.com, reading up on the doshas, I write a lot about them, I have podcast episodes about them.

So I highly suggest learning about the doshas if you don’t know anything about them. I’m going to briefly go over them, but there’s a lot, a lot of depth that goes into those subjects. So vata, vata is the dosha that gets in balance most commonly, and is also the dosha that is the most, I think, common in the western world. Because we live in a very vata-centric society. So vata is the air and space dosha.

• it is light

• it is moving

• it is creative

• artistic

Vata people are very idealistic. I like to think of it as like Steve Jobs energy. They’re like always like thinking about things of the future. Vata is in charge of any creative pursuit.

So this really relates to saraswati, and saraswati is the goddess of creativity. She’s also the goddess:

• of knowledge

• of books

• of literature

• of art

• of music

• intellect

So saraswati is like my goddess. She is like my go-to. I really relate to her. I even named my clothing line Saraswati Couture after her, and even my name is very similar to hers. And she just reminds me so much of myself, and I’ve always been very attracted to peacocks, and she always has a peacock with her, and has a pen with like a peacock feather on the end. And even before I knew this, I’ve always just been so attracted to peacocks, it’s my spirit animal. And even my logo has always been a peacock. Years later I found out saraswati.

So she is like the goddess that really comes through for me. And vata is the dosha that I relate to by far the most today, even though I was born more kapha, today, I am very, very vata. So I find huge similarities between these two because:

• both are very creative

• they’re intellectual

• they’re artistic

• they’re airy

• they both have very strong imaginations

• and bring beauty into everything that they do

So if you are:

• an artist

• a creative

• a philosopher

• a writer

• or a big idea person

then saraswati is your goddess, and vata is your dosha—at least of your soul.

So the second one is pitta, and the goddess that pitta relates to is durga. So durga is the warrior goddess. She is extremely powerful, she’s always seen riding on top of a tiger, and she has all these different arms, and one is with like a sword, and she has her like her amazing crazy jewelry. And she’s like

• she’s fierce

• she’s strong

• she’s determined

• she is a go-getter

And she’s also the divine mother because the warrior, she’s a warrior that protects. She’s protecting her children. So she is the warrior of this planet earth, really.

And if you ever seen a mom when their kid is like in despair, like that mom will turn into a warrior. She will be able to pick up a car if it’s going to get in her child’s way, and that’s the energy that durga has. She’s a fierce warrior, but it’s to protect. That’s the difference between the feminine and the masculine. For the feminine, even her fierceness comes out of this maternal instinct.

So durga really relates to pitta. They are both very powerful energies. So pitta is the dosha in charge of:

• energy transformation

• organization

• determination

And durga contains all of these qualities. She even is always wearing red. She’s represented by that color. If any time you feel weak, you feel that you need guidance, you need support, you need someone to point you in the right direction, call upon durga. And if you’re someone you feel like you have just a lot of fire, you just take control, and you’re a natural-born leader, that’s your durga channeling through you.

So definitely, when I was writing “The Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda,” it was obviously a very saraswati creative process. But I had to call upon a lot of durga. I am actually always praying to durga because it’s something I need more of. Because for me, as a primary vata, secondary kapha, lastly pitta, I need more of that warrior strength like energy because I can be overly empathetic, overly giving, et cetera.

So for me, durga is something I constantly am channeling, I’m constantly saying mantras, I draw yantras. Yantras are Sanskrit kind of drawings that you can do to evoke different energies. Constantly trying to—even when I’m in yoga class and it’s like warrior II, and like bring out the durga, I am durga right now. I am fierce, I am riding my tiger with strength, and grace, and gust.

So whatever energy that you are lacking in is the goddess that you can call upon. So it doesn’t necessarily mean whoever you relate to the most, but sometimes who you really need is the one that you relate to the least. So the last one I’m going to discuss is kapha, who relates to Lakshmi. So Lakshmi is a beautiful, beautiful goddess of fertility and abundance. So she is frequently seen with an elephant by her side, and she wears pink, and she has flowers in her hand, and coins coming out of them. And she represents wealth.

So if you ever travel to India, you will see many, many temples and shrines dedicated to Lakshmi because people are asking for her when they are needing financial assistance. So fertility and abundance go hand in hand because it is both giving of life. So what I love about this Hinduism and vadic mythology is like money is not inherently evil. It’s not like you have to like totally give up your money to be happy. No, it’s having a healthy relationship with money and understanding that money is an energy exchange, it’s a currency.

So when you are in a giving space, when you are able to give freely, not out of a place of destitute and lack, but out of a place of fullness, then money will come right back to you. So I love this feeling and this relationship with money because it’s just so much juicier when it’s not like uh, like money sucks. Like I don’t want to talk about that word. Like that’s actually how we create money problems because we see it as a sin, when really, it’s just an exchange of energy. And when we’re able to see it like that and understand that it comes, and it goes, and it flows. And we can do certain things to evoke more of it, then our relationship with money totally shifts, and it comes to us much more easily.

Trust me, I was one of those people who was like, “Money sucks, I hate money.” And once I shifted that relationship, it’s coming to me so much easier than it ever has before. So Lakshmi is the goddess related to that. She relates to kapha, the earth dosha because they are both very calm, peaceful, grounded. They actually have very similar body types. So Lakshmi is always depicted as very curvy. She has a round face and big, warm eyes. She has long hair, she’s very just like luscious and womanly. When I go to India, they’re like, “You look like Lakshmi.” So I guess I look like her.

But she’s just very, very feminine. Very, you know, estrogen dominated. There’s no sharp lines on her body, she’s just very like womanly. And kaphas have that same type of body, too. They have round faces, big cheeks, full lips, soft curves. So I see the two go really hand in hand.

And both kapha and Lakshmi have this motherly energy that they care for others, they come for others, they give. They’re very, very giving. So sometimes kaphas, you know, they over give. They give so much that they deplete themselves. But when kapha is balanced, you have ojas. And ojas is the universal energy of life force. Of someone who has like, you know, goes on a run and has like rosy cheeks. That’s the ojas running through them. You can just tell they’re like healthy, and alive, and full, and rich. And that’s the quality of kapha and of Lakshmi. So if you are a very earthy mama with a peaceful vibe, then your goddess is Lakshmi, and you relate to the kapha dosha.

So I would love to know which dosha and which goddess do you connect to the most. And which one is your mom? And how about your best friend? So I would love for you to share this podcast with them and just increase the knowledge about these goddesses. I think we are all so used to all spiritual beings being male. You know, Jesus, and Buddha, and Moses, and all these people, and they’re always male.

And what I love about this is it shows that it’s not just men. There’s both male and female gods and goddesses. And all of these gods and goddesses exist inside us. We have male gods in us, we have female goddesses in us, and so do men. It’s not about gender. It’s about the quality of the masculine and feminine. Both which need to be balanced within.

So we’ve really, as a society in the past few hundred years, only been in the patriarchy and the male dominated spectrum. And right now, since 2012, we’re shifting back into the feminine, and that is why the talk of the goddess is coming back up. And you’re hearing about it, you’re seeing like full moon circles, and this, and that. And people want to know who are these goddesses? Like how can I evoke them in my life?

So we are definitely ready to get this conversation started, and realize that we are divine beings. Durga, Lakshmi, saraswati, they exist inside of us. We are a reflection of them. Every single one of us has that creative vata-saraswati side. Every single one of us has that powerful, strong, determined pitta-durga side. And every single one of us has that abundant, motherly, giving, kapha-Lakshmi side.

So embrace all parts of you. Embrace your fullness. Allow yourself to become whole. Because when we cut off a certain of ourselves, that hole gets bigger and bigger over time. So whichever goddess that you don’t relate to that you’re like– I remember when I first heard about the goddesses a few years ago, it was the first retreat that I ever ran, and it was India, and it was a goddess retreat.

And I heard about durga, I was like, “I don’t like her. I don’t want to be a warrior.” And warrior’s like my least archetype. I’m just super not a warrior, I hate fighting, I hate all of that stuff. But now she is the goddess that I call upon the most and has helped me extremely because it was something that I naturally was lacking in.

So whatever energy you are lacking in is the one that you need to cultivate. And you can cultivate that by calling upon that goddess. You can chant her name, you can sing songs to her, you can just talk to her if you want. Whatever feels natural to you. There’s no formula. If you want in a future podcast episode I can talk about different mantras that relate to every single goddess.

If you just go on YouTube you can find tons of mantras. There’s like dozens of them for all of the goddesses. Singing Kirtan is the practice of singing a devotional song to the goddess. So you can definitely find tons and tons and tons of ways to honor these goddesses, but it just starts with honoring that part of yourself. Because really, the goddess already exists inside of you.

So I hope this was helpful, and I’m really looking forward to you seeing the pictures that I took today of me dressed like all three of these goddesses. And I hope it inspires you to cultivate more awareness of the divine feminine in your everyday life. Namaste. Bye, guys.

Episode 010 – How The Hindu Goddesses Relate To the Ayurvedic Doshas