Kate Taylor's Yoga Site

I went to the ayurvedic doctor up the street for a health assessment/dosha consultation. The dosha concept is basically this – the body is healthy when the three body “humours” are in balance. These three doshas are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Vata is related to the nervous sytem and associated with air. Pitta is associated with metabolism and associated with fire and water. Kapha is associated with mucous and the circulatory system and is associated with water and earth.

She started out asking me a lot of questions about my eating and sleeping habits, my digestion, my cycle, etc. She took my pulse, eyeballed me, and took lots of notes. I told her my lower back was really bothering me and she asked a few questions about it and then recommended that I come back later for a massage (sign me up!)

As for my dosha, she explained that she does not typically tell people they are one dosha type or another because we are almost all a combination of the three. In fact she told me that I was not strongly any one type, but that I currently have an excess of  vata. She told me that I could balance this out by following certain eating guidelines – she would give me a list of foods to avoid and food to take. The bad news is that she proceeded to rattle off a long list of all my favorite foods – and they were all on the Avoid list. Here is a sampling (I can hear my Mom laughing as she reads this, since this is truly a list of my favorite foods):  Cheese, Yogurt, Hot Chilies, Cold Salads, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Beans, Peas, Pineapple, Papaya, Other Sour Fruits, Coffee, and fermented grains like leaven Bread, Idli, and Dosa (my two favorite South Indian foods). I suppose this last restriction means beer too, though she did not mention it specifically. Argh.

So what can I eat? She strongly recommended Milk, Buttermilk, Whey and Ghee. Um…not exactly my favorites. Some of the other foods on the list of “Foods to Take:” Pancakes, Rice, unleavened bread like Chapattis, Almonds, Walnuts, Figs, Bananas, Pomegranates, Chicken, Eggs, and Goat Meat (great, my favorite). I am allowed to use mild spices like Ginger, Cumin, Curry Leaf and Coriander. I am also supposed to eat my biggest meal at lunch time and light warm food for dinner – which does not exactly match my pattern at home in which Brad and I usually eat a big dinner sometime after 8:00 pm. This is not going to be easy.

After I left I went to lunch and tried to follow her advice. I had Vegetable Bhat at the Stand Up Café while I longingly eyed the other diners’ dosas and idli. I am not sure what Bhat means because you get something different every time you order it, but this was basically like a veggie and rice mixture. It came with a spicy coconut chutney which I decided must be made with something other than chilies and promptly poured it over my rice. Not a great start, but at least I didn’t order the idli.

I then went and read a little and took a nap before my 2:30 massage. As you can see, life is hard here.

This was my first ayurvedic massage so I was not sure what to expect. When I got there I was asked to strip down and climb up on a big wooden table face down. I was covered with a sheet from the waist down and they proceeded to cover the upper half of my body in warm oil. There were two women working on me at the same time, massaging the oil into my back and arms with long upward strokes. Even if this did not fix my back, this was definitely bliss.

After about 10 minutes of this they began patting my back with very warm hands and something that felt like a cheesecloth bag filled with sawdust that had been dipped in warm oil. Dr. Padma told me they were using a special poultice of fried herbs. Yes, fried. I could here them crackling in the wok in the corner as they proceeded to stamp me in unison with these two round thingamajigs filled with hot herbs. After much reheating and stamping, they started to rub me again in long strokes using the herbs. I was becoming one with the wooden table.

At the end of the treatment they wiped most of the oil off of me and I dressed and went to speak to Dr. Padma. She told me that my sacrum was very “dry” and tight, but that there was no inflammation and that probably I just needed to take it easy in practice. Oh, and a few more massages would be good too.  I promptly signed up for another one the next day. At $10 a pop, this was not a tough decision. As I was leaving she reminded me that I should eat a light, warm dinner and avoid anything cold.

For dinner I went to Sixth & Main with my friend Mauricio who is from Mexico. He raves about their noodles – which are not on the list of Foods to Avoid. The noodles were great, but the traditional way of eating them is to dress them up with soy sauce and a mixture of vinegar and chilies. Five hours into my new dosha regimen I cracked. I loaded the noodles up with the spicy sauce and loved every bite. Maybe I’ll start the plan tomorrow.