Demystify Ayurveda: Love vs Attachment, a Kapha dosha imbalance.
Love and Freedom are the foundation of our joys. True-love is to offer true freedom to someone you love, including yourself. What happens when your love is going out of whack?
I’ve been wanting to discuss about Love in the realm of Ayurveda. Like many of us, I have been searching for love all my life and only until recent years I began to understand what “True-Love” really means. Love is never limited to romantic kind of love; it includes all, from our national heroic kind of love to having empathy of every living down to the molecules beneath us. And the most important love is Self-Love, what you feed your body and mind will always return to you the way you give out. We cannot truly love anyone unless we start to love ourselves.
We cannot truly love anyone unless we start to love ourselves.
And what happens when our love is getting a little out of whack? What are the signs when our body is not digesting our Love experiences well? How do we manifest these in Ayurveda?
I want to use this opportunity to address a specific dosha imbalance called Kapha when it comes to Love. Kapha is the combination of Water and Earth. Visualise a clay-like, dense and heavy mixtures in your body that pulls you down to the ground, that is Kapha. Physiologically, Kapha is cold and wet. The flavor is “sweet.” Its animal symbol is Elephant. It sits in lungs and stomach. It moves slow and accumulate. Do you have a tendency to hoard? Do you feel heavy on your legs? And do you feel lazy these days with very little desire to do things? These are the manifestation of excessive Kapha dosha in you, as the first layer.
When we have too much Kapha dosha in our body and mind, it tells us one thing: we are unable to digest efficiently our current life experiences and food. When we have a separation from our loved one, a divorce, a break-up, a death, a job loss or a personal identity loss – Vata dosha increased then followed with Kapha dosah imbalances. Vata dosha is increased due to the trigger event but Kapha dosha is stored as grief, sadness, inertia and attachments. The inkling between psychological and physical is admitted by Ayurveda and Vedas. We must examine the 3 Gunas in all beings to pivot the human personalities: Rajas, Tamas and Sattva. Rajas means actions. Tamas means Inertia. And Sattva means harmony/ peace. Kapha is a form of Tamas, a manifested bi-product in the body from the mind. When we are going through a loss of relationship, our mind slows down to cope and our body craves for sweetness.
If you are reading this, you may have or know someone who have challenges with Love. It’s a good time to take a score on where you are if you have below symptoms during the past 2-4 weeks. Assess with true honesty to see if your Love event is causing you any degree of Kapha dosha imbalances:
- Recent new craving towards sweetness, pastry, diary and bread
- Start to eat more root food (potatoes, pumpkins, taros)
- Enjoy snacking more than proper meals
- Over sleep (more than 8 hours a day)
- Thoughts are more cloudy, unclear and most related to past memories
- Hard time to throw things away and start to hoard
- De-motivate to move, exercise and go out
- Cry for no reason
- Dwell to past memories – with regrets
- Feel more greedy towards money and affections
- Become more needy towards family and friends
- No desire towards sex, physical intimacy
- Feel heavier on lower body, especially joints
- Lower back pains increased
- No motivation to make any change in life
Just notice how many ticks you have recently – this exercise is to assess any of your recent love & relationship event triggered your Kapha imbalances
Kapha imbalances manifest when we are having challenges with people relationship. And what we over look is those with Ourselves. Self-love is the most important loving relationship we have to develop in our life time as human beings. If we are too busy nourishing others, we easily forget about ourselves. This is very common in any motherly love to children relationship, which the mother gives it all to her children and family and eventually dismisses herself. When we neglect ourselves, Kapha also increases and manifests into the 2nd layer, diseases.
Diabetes, arthritis, gouts, rheumatic disease, asthma, tumors, cancer, eating disorder (anorexia, obesity), to name a few. These are manifested for different purpose to serve our psychological and even spiritual needs. When we have too much Kapha, we become less mobile. It takes years of suppression emotions to confront of your true needs as an individual to manifest any above diseases. The single event triggered Kapha imbalances can be treated by creating a better life style habits and diet. A disease driven by Kapha that is a sign to go deep into your root of cause, that is your “heart.” Without tracing back to the original event historically, the experiences coming with it and the responded behaviours dealt with – you can only treat the symptoms not the whole.
We must be brave to start asking ourselves this important question: am I happy? if not, what is causing my unhappiness?
We must be brave to start asking ourselves this important question: am I happy? if not, what is causing my unhappiness?
And when Kapha is balanced. We are cultivating warmth, compassion, empathy, social work, charity and nourishment. Kapha has a quality of calming, security, rooting down and love. Kapha is like Moon, the gentle and unconditional love.
How do we shake Kapha off when we don’t need them?
Exercise, exercise and exercise. Sweating will do us good to pacify the heaviness muds.
Give-back. Helping other people will make us feel good, which also pacify Kapha.
Our body is a wonder and serves us with no exception. Pay attention on how your body feels today. Close your eyes, ask your heart: what do I need to heal today?
Your happiness starts when you start to love with freedom. Your love to yourself will be the greatest treasure.
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