Ayurveda teaches us about the three bio-energy centers, or doshas, in our bodies: vata, pitta and kapha.

Vata contains the elements of air and space, also called ether. When it comes to people with the vata dosha, we are prone to anxiety or depression, fatigue or hyperactivity, and digestive issues when imbalanced.

That’s right, I am a self proclaimed vata!

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Read: The 3 Doshas of Ayurveda

That is why my yoga practice typically leans towards more grounding asanas and slower styles. I am also a believer that our society promotes vata imbalance due to how quickly we move from one task to the next.

For this reason, I lean towards teaching slower styles of yoga in hopes to balance the overall imbalance of vata I perceive on a day to day basis in the world.

In this article, I will present a strategy to sequencing your own vata pacifying yoga practice. I suggest some poses and give the rationale for these as well.

Slow Down and Breathe

Vata is movement. People who have too much vata are often moving quickly and sometimes their mind is also racing very quickly.

My favorite way to start a practice whether its my own practice or teaching is with the pranayama, anuloma viloma or nadi shodhana.

These pranayama are very similar whereby they allow you to alternate your breath through each nostril, which creates balance and calms the overactive vata mind. I find this practice to be extremely effective.

Read: Hidden Magic: The Power of Nadi Shodhan Pranayama

Warm Up the Cold Vata

Another quality of vata is cold. When I feel cold and try to sit in meditation, or move through a slow yoga practice, it can feel torturous especially if my mind is overactive.

To prevent an unpleasant experience like that, you could start with more movement to warm up the body and focus the mind.

Something like surya namaskar (or sun salutations as they're called in English) can warm up the cold vata and also start the blood pumping.

Read: Sun Salutation A Versus Sun Salutation B: The Difference You Should Know

However, it must be done in a slow and mindful way as to not create a further imbalance.

Focus on alignment and the breath.

After a practice like this with more movement and warmth, it may be easier to move into your slower and grounding asana sequence without feeling mentally restless or too cold.

The Poses

Some commonalities or qualities you may want your poses to include, if your intention is to pacify vata, are:

  • Slow and mindful movements
  • Grounding through the lower body into the earth physically and through breathing into the sacral and root chakras
  • Restful (not increasing heart rate too much which could cause an increase in anxiety)
  • Physical focus on lower back, hips, and thighs as well as stimulating the digestive system (twists)
  • A consistent practice (ie. time of day and same daily routine)

If you are creating your own practice, you can feel free to use these poses or pick and choose from each of the sections below.

Grounding

Some great poses to get grounded include:

Tree Pose

Warrior Two Pose

Tadasana

All three of these poses emphasize grounding in through the legs down into the earth. When practicing these poses, focus on stability, strength and rooting down.

You may benefit from visualizing energy traveling up from the earth and into your body, through the soles of your feet. You are also focusing on strengthening the hips, thighs, and pelvic muscles in these poses.

Read: Ground Into Tadasana to Connect With Your Root Chakra

Forward Bends

Forward bends are great poses to calm the nervous system. Some great forward bends to practice in order to pacify vata are:

Standing Forward Bend

Seated Forward Bend

Be gentle and slow in these forward folds. Bringing the head down in these folds helps to calm and soothe the mind, creating a feeling of ease and safety. In paschimottanasana, you are also creating compression, which stimulates the internal organs.

Balancing Internal Organs

Any pose that stimulates the internal organs can assist with vata imbalance and aid digestion. Some other great poses to include for this are:

Ardha Matsyendrasana

Supta Matsyendrasana

Twists are also incredibly valuable to improve digestion as well as soothe lower back pain. They also are said to calm anxiety and stress. These are all great tools to balancing vata.

Read: Why We Twist in Yoga: The Benefits of This Simple Action

Opening the Hips and Lower Back

Any pose that opens the hips, lower back, pelvis, and thighs are balancing for vata. My favorites are:

Wind Relieving Pose

Butterfly Pose

Child's Pose

Pavanmuktasana combines digestive aid with hip stimulation. Stimulating and opening the hips is also so important to release trapped emotion, as it is believed the hips store repressed emotions and stress.

Vata imbalance creates susceptibility to anxiety, fear, and becoming overly emotional - another great reason to incorporate hip openers into a vata pacifying practice.

Read: 5 Yoga Poses to Release Tight Hips

Rest

After resting in a child’s pose, you can continue to rest by moving to a final savasana (corpse pose).

Savasana

To pacify vata, I recommend staying in savasana for 15 minutes to allow yourself to relax fully.

Read: End Your Practice (and Your Week) in Savasana

Creating Balance

You can move through the above poses in sequence or work with them on an individual basis as your intuition calls you to.

Throughout the day, it can become clear that there may be an imbalance of vata. Any of these poses and/or the pranayama mentioned can be called upon to balance the vata at any time.

Remember that balancing vata requires warmth, love, patience, nurturing, grounding, and release.

With these yoga poses, you can slow them down to create the space to release the overflow of vata energy and create more balance in your mind, body, and spirit.

Read: 7 Yoga Poses for Balancing the Pitta

During These Times of Stress and Uncertainty Your Doshas May Be Unbalanced.

To help you bring attention to your doshas and to identify what your predominant dosha is, we created the following quiz.

Try not to stress over every question, but simply answer based off your intuition. After all, you know yourself better than anyone else.