Know Your Body Constitution

Ayurveda not only offers curative medicine but also talks about preventive measures. By understanding our body constitution, we can accordingly change or modify our lifestyle, food habits, thus build a behaviour to live healthily and happily. Knowing our body constitution also helps to know the condition of the disease,and also helps to prescribe the medicine and diet for the disease.

 

According to ayurveda, our body is made up of 3 basic components called Vata, Pittha, Kapha. Each of us have all these three components with a predominence of one or the other.

 

Kapha-Dominant Individuals

• oiliness of skin
• shining and well defined organs
• pleasing appearance, tenderness and clarity of complexion
• increase in the quantity of semen, desire for sex act and number of procreation
• firmness in discussion making, compactness and stability of the body
• plumpness and roundness of all organs,
• slow in action, intake of food and movement
• slowness in initiating actions, getting irritated morbid manifestations
• non slippery and stable gait with the entire sole of the feet pressing against the earth
• lack of intensity in hunger, thirst, heat and perspiration
• firmness and compaction in joints
• happiness in the look and face; happiness and softness of complexion and voice.
• more liking sweet and salty food.

Pittha-Dominant Individuals

• intolerance for hot things, having reddish complexion, tender and clear body with port-wine marks, freckles, black moles, excessive hunger and thirst;
• quick formation of wrinkles, early greying of hair and baldness, some soft, brown hair on face, head and other parts of body.
• very powerful (strong physical strength),strong digestive power ,intake of food and drink in large quantity, cannot tolerate excess emotional stress.
• looseness and softness of joints and muscles, voiding of  more sweat, urine, feacal matter(bowels)
• some kind of putrid smell of their sweat, mouth, and sometime body also.
• less desire towards sexual desire, insufficiency of semen and procreation.
• taste wise more liking towards spicy and sour food

Vata-Dominant Individuals

• excess dryness of  the body,lean and short body structure,more prone for fracture of bones,dark complexion,obstructed and hoarse voice,less sleep.
• body weight usually under weight,fast and unstable body movements,walking,eating habbit(spilling around the plate while eating).
• unstable movements of joints ,eyes,eye brows,jaws,lips,tongue,head,shoulder,hands and legs.
• excessive ,fast with jumbling not very clear talking nature,visible and many veins and tendons in their hands legs and body.
• quick in intiating actions,gets irritated quickly,more prone for disease,quick in affliction with fear,quick in likes and dislikes,quick in understanding and forgetting things.
• intolerance for cold things,often getting afflicted with cold,shivering and stiffness.
• roughness of hair of head,face and other parts of body,dry and rough nails,teeth,hands and feet.
• crackling sound in joints when they move,cracks in hands and feet.