Cultivate your own unique energy with attention to the elements
- Anita Lindberg
- 24 hours ago
- 6 min read
To truly balance yourself and your life, the systems and principles of Ayurveda are an invaluable help. Maybe you live a life focused and with energy-consuming routines and habits. Maybe you are extremely outgoing, happy to be around, free-spirited, hate routines and get involved in everything and everyone, or maybe you are more into peace and quiet, don't like big surprises and love routines and everything that is familiar.
Our body type - also called dosha - means that one of the three gunas (translated as tendencies/quality) is more dominant than the other two and this can help create imbalances in our lives. When you get to know the gunas and your dosha, you can really start to look at where and when you are physically and mentally drained, perhaps you are a type that needs more time to recharge or perhaps you need an energy boost for more commitment, fire and passion.
Typical things that can create imbalances and drain energy:
Lack of grounding typical of - Vata and Pitta imbalance.
Too much talking - Pitta and Vata imbalance
Extreme extroversion - Vata imbalance
Inability to relinquish control - Pitta imbalance
Lack of exercise and activity - Kapha imbalance
Lack of curiosity towards new things - Kapha imbalance
Introduction to the three gunas - Tamas, Rajas and Sattva.
Within Ayurveda, everything in the illusory world can be divided into three types of qualities. These qualities are present in everything living and dead, in everything material and esoteric, which means that an energy, a mood, an atmosphere, your day, your mood, your food, your surroundings - everything can be categorized within the three gunas which are:
Tamas - heavy, dark, dense, material, lazy, stagnation, rest
Rajas - active, passion, action, movement, dynamism
Sattva - purity, harmony, upliftment, expansion, goodness, joy, insight
Tamas - stability - grounding - foundation
Tamas is an energy vibration that can be described as slow but also stabilizing and grounding. It is found in the persistence of nature, in trees and plants with roots firmly planted in the ground. In nature, tamas provides the part of the eco-cycle that breaks down plant fibers, decay, etc. so that the energy/nutrition from all matter returns to the earth and is absorbed. In your physical body, tamas energy is represented in bones, muscles and tissues.
We all need the tamas state in the body to be able to charge, heal and recover.
It is dominant when you are resting and sleeping.
It is important to have tamas in your energy constitution, as it calms us, gives us balance, focus and overview.
We build/cultivate tamas through yoga poses with a focus on grounding down through the legs and feet, exercises called bio-energitic grounding, and through balance exercises. We also cultivate tamas when we sit still in meditation or lie down in deep relaxation.
Imbalances in tamas
Tama imbalances manifest themselves mentally as laziness and a lack of initiative.
When you mentally feel heavy, depressed and down. When you lose your initiative and your ability to be creative. Tamas is considered the consequence of ignorance that prevents us from seeing reality, so we must try to counteract tamas in our mentality, thought patterns and mood, so that we do not get stuck and waste our precious time - our life.
Physically unbalanced tamas is overweight, edema, accumulations, varicose veins.
Kapha dosha people may have more tamas than the other two doshas.
How to balance Tamas:
Get out of the starting blocks from the morning and get into a good routine of moving your body, possibly with at least 10 minutes of active sun salutations that warm, uplift and cultivate fire and energy in your system.
Do uplifting light meditations and supplement with active warming breathing techniques such as kapalabhati and bastrika.
Rajas - fire - dynamics - activity
All movement, growth, transformation, commitment, perspective and creation. This quality of energy that gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you on your toes all day long. The energy that makes plants grow, life unfold! You have the energy to reach for your goals, mobilize a daily routine full of important tasks and the courage, desire and energy to realize your dreams!
If rajas becomes too dominant, life becomes stressful, hectic and intense.
In a busy city full of people, cars and noise there is rajasic energy. If your day is full of too many things on your "to do" list it can feel too rajasic. You need to be aware of always balancing the qualities - always having time to relax and find yourself. Otherwise you can get too much rajas in your system.
Signs of unbalanced rajas: You may be stressed, too busy, and have difficulty relaxing.
You talk too much and tend to become too intense and perhaps controlling - taking up too much in social situations. In short, have difficulty noticing/taking into account others.
It can often be difficult to see it yourself and it takes an honest friend who dares to point it out to you. This condition is harmful to your health. You are more or less constantly in stress mode - fight and flight - and you secrete a lot of stress hormones into your system, which wears down your immune system and in the long run you can become seriously ill. In the end, you exhaust yourself completely - the air eventually goes out of the balloon.
Pitta people usually have a little more rajas than the other two doshas.
How to balance Rajas:
Gear down, make sure to ground yourself. Reduce the drama in your life and observe if you have old hectic habits and thought patterns that no longer benefit you but are just running on autopilot! Drop all forms of performance activities/sports.
Unplug/turn off your phone, go for a walk in nature and just be present.
Do yoga practices that are slow and stretching close to the floor and be mindful to avoid competing with yourself and others. Do breathing techniques that balance the energy channels in the body such as Nadi Shodhana and the cooling Pranayama Sitali that calms the nervous system.
Eat alone in quiet surroundings, avoid strong food and stimulants such as strong coffee, alcohol, etc. that create more fire in your system, drink plenty of water between meals which has a grounding effect.
Sattva - consciousness - expansion - bliss
This guna is full of purity, balance, stability and joy and is most beautifully reflected when you are selfless, inspired, loving and happy.
In nature, it is beautiful harmony full of life, flowers and beauty. The bliss that exists in a beautiful quiet sunrise. Anything that brings peace and harmony is sattvic.
We are in a sattvic state when we disconnect ourselves from our eternal thought flow and are in the present, are impulsively excited and happy. We are here loving towards all living beings, connecting here with our higher self, free from duality and ego.
In yoga you can go in and out of these moments where you forget time and place, you look inward and listen to and are one with your body, moving in time with your breath in the yoga poses, - a feeling of union - the word yoga means to unite! (body and soul)
Everyone can reach a sattvic state if they create balance in rajas and tamas.
Tips for cultivating more Satva in your life:
1. Make your surroundings more sattvic by creating lightness in your home with plants and flowers, bright colors, and uplifting music. Burn essential oils in an oil burner with your favorite scents,
Put beautiful art on the walls and keep your home clean.
2. Practice positive communication. Surround yourself with people who charge you up instead of people who drain you. Have inspiring friendships.
3. Recognize that you need to cultivate your own spirituality and possibly read inspiring texts by spiritual masters, go to a fun yoga workshop and possibly start meditating.
The more you connect with uplifting and positive thoughts and images, the more healthy and important neurochemicals, neurotransmitters, oxytocin and dopamine are secreted.
4. Sattvic food has a high level of prana/energy and this is highest in fruits and vegetables. Prana disappears from cooked food after a few hours, so do not save it for the next day. Meat has no energy frequency and drains your body of the more refined energies as it is difficult for the body to digest. Watch this talk from Sadguru talking about vegetarianism!
5. Take a Silent Retreat day where you look inward and notice yourself, preferably with some time in nature.
6. Try to be open-minded. Stop your inner critic, stop your habit of always having to have an opinion about everything. Just try to be present and observe.
7. Practice Bakti yoga - the yoga of devotion - cultivate a sense of gratitude for what you have and be kind and welcoming by looking for the beauty in everything and everyone.
8. Light a candle with a small flower next to it - meditate on joy, light and unconditional love!
I have posted one of my sattvic marma-point meditations on my YouTube channel here:
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