Inviting the Doshas Home

In Ayurveda, each of the three doshas, Kapha, Pitta, and Vata, has a homesite in which they rest. While all three doshas move through every cell, their individual homesite in the body is where they return to restore themselves. Each of these homesites is associated with traditional marma points, therapeutic touch points of Ayurveda and yoga.

When you think about balancing the doshas in Ayurveda, it is often with food, herbs, or asana. Yet you can also invite your own doshas home with this simple touch process. Sound can be used to enhance the experience, as we did here in this 3-minute video.

I’ve used this process for many years in classes and one-on-one sessions to support the doshas in rebalancing. As the doshas balance, the body, nervous system and psyche can experience tangible relief.

You can invite Kapha home

You can take more time to invite the doshas home than three minutes, if you like. You can rest your hands in the center of your chest, Hridaya marma, and take three or four breaths at your own pace, inviting Kapha home with loving kindness, noticing how this place on your body feels. Take as long as you like to rest here.

Let Pitta balance

Similarly you can rest one hand at the navel Nabhi and the other at the back of your waist to invite Pitta home with kindness and appreciation, breathing in a relaxed way, feeling how this area is now. Is there anything Pitta would like you to know?

Now it’s time for Vata to ground and settle

Then to invite Vata home, rest one hand at the lower abdomen, half way between the navel and the pubic bone. This is the marma point Basti. With your other hand, cradle the sacrum, with your fingertips resting gently toward your tailbone (Guda marma). As you invite Vata home with kindness and respect, take 3 – 4 breaths, or as many as you like at your own pace, opening to how this area feels.

This simple body explore can be relaxing, and also a bit eye-opening. Perhaps you’ve never felt your doshas’ homesites before. It’s interesting to experience directly what these three areas feel like, and how different they can feel from one another, in any given moment

Pairing mantra and marma

Calling the doshas home with sound offers another dimension for healing. Seed syllables, bija mantras, can be warming, cooling, light or heavy in quality, just as herbs or foods can be.

OM, light and expansive, can be used to invite Kapha home.

SHRIM, cooling and soothing, can attract Pitta home.

RAM, warm in quality, invites Vata home.

Other mantras can be used, or other songs. These are simply the ones I’ve appreciated over the years. You can hear them in the video.

Integrating this process with other healing flows - including a grounding legs flow

I often will invite the doshas home as part of an in-person or on Zoom Polarity Therapy session. The body and the doshas can feel “heard” and other Polarity processes can then take happen, sometimes more readily or easily.

This week in an Ayurvedic mentoring session with guided marma as self-care, I invited participants, after calling the doshas home, to feel into their pelvis and legs. First we rested our hands on our hip joints, breathing with loving kindness and respect. What do you notice here? I asked them.

Then we moved our hands to our own knees, front, back, sides, breathing slowly and with kindness. How does this feel? Is there a difference between one knee and the other? Between the front of a knee and the back?

Sweeping the hands down to our own ankles, I suggested breathing with kindness and respect here. How do the ankles feel?

We held the soles of our feet (Talahridaya marma), same story, breathing with kindness and awareness, simply noticing the feet felt.

Finally we played with connections: one hand on one’s own hip, the other on the knee of the same leg. How does this feel? Is there any kind of connection? Similarly, knee to ankle, ankle to foot, each side… The whole process, including inviting the doshas home, took about a half hour.

Participants felt more grounded, and surprised at what they’d noticed about themselves.

Often we struggle with pain in one area, yet may forget to consider how this part of the body relates to the whole, to the places around it. Connecting gently with loving kindness and respect can be quite healing.

Saraswati Cutler, my co-demonstrator in this video, currently has an active healing practice in Madrid, New Mexico. Her work can be accessed here.

This video was originally produced by OtherSide Wisdom Works with Tim and Lian Blair in 2009, as part of a Dhatu Rejuvenation program recording. Much appreciation to everyone responsible for this collaboration.

Seva Ayurveda offers a pre-recorded three-hour Polarity Therapy & Marma Therapy course with me, including a deeper explore of Inviting the Doshas Home.

Image: Saraswati Cutler and I, 2009, thanks to Tim & Lian Blair

Bio: I’m a writer, Ayurveda health educator and Polarity Therapist practicing in Santa Fe, NM. My most recent seasonal cookbook Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda is on special here.