Where balance is a question of health

I'll admit it: I've been avoiding ayurveda. Several of my friends - mostly yoga buddies - have suggested I look into this ancient Indian system of medicine. But whenever I tried to read up on ayurveda, my eyes glazed over. Jennifer LaRue Huget takes a deep breath.

It's not the Sanskrit terminology: I've practiced yoga long enough not to be put off by the language in which both disciplines' core texts are written.

But to my Western brain, descriptions of ayurveda have seemed, frankly, kind of flaky, at once complicated and simplistic - and far removed from my own experience. What I really needed was for someone to explain the system to me in straightforward terms that made clear how it might be useful in my life.

So I was happy for the chance last week to visit the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts, and listen to a presentation by Hilary Garivaltis, dean of curriculum for Kripalu's school of ayurveda.

Here are the basics:
In the ayurvedic scheme of things ("ayur" being Sanskrit for life, and "veda" for science or knowledge), every aspect of life is governed by five elements: ether (the element of space), air (movement), fire (transformation), water (chemical energy) and earth (structure or form).

Those elements combine in different configurations to form doshas, the three life energies that characterise every individual and everything else, from seasons and times of day to the foods we eat and the manner in which we live our lives.

Keeping one's doshas in balance is the cornerstone of physical and psychological health, and imbalances can lead to everything from anxiety, grouchiness and exhaustion to serious disease.

Balancing those energies (called vata, pitta and kapha) requires daily vigilance, as our doshas shift according to what we are doing and what's going on around us.

Although, for most people, all the life energies are present in varying degrees, one usually dominates.

Vata, the combination of ether and air, is all about lightness, dryness, quickness and cold; vata-dominated people are thin and tendon-y, active and restless.

Pitta, combining fire and water, is hot, sharp, oily; pittas can be stubborn and tend to be driven, workaholic types.

Kapha, comprising water and earth, is cool and damp; kapha is common among people with larger, round body types, who tend to be laid-back, even lethargic.

Still with me? Whether you're self-administering ayurveda or following guidance from a pro such as Garivaltis, the practice starts with evaluating your own mix of doshas.

Any book or website about ayurveda is likely to offer a questionnaire to help pinpoint which dosha is dominant in your makeup at the moment: Are you irritated by loud noise? (That's a vata trait.) Do you anger easily? (That's pitta for you.) Do you feel sluggish? (Your kapha is showing.) Doshas are governed in part by things beyond our control, such as the change of seasons - vata rules in winter time, while summer is pitta's season - or one's stage of life. (Teens tend towards pitta, while post-menopause might be vata time for many women.) But one of the main tools by which doshas are regulated - and the reason I'm writing about ayurveda here - is nutrition.