By: Victoria Raven Hyndman
It’s Kapha season, and nature is calling us to let go.
In Ayurveda, late winter and early spring are dominated by Kapha dosha (or “energy”), and our bodies and minds will feel the effects of its qualities: heavy, slow, cold, oily, dense, soft, and static. This can sometimes lead to a “stickiness” or a feeling of being stuck, so it makes sense why we naturally gravitate toward cleansing our systems in springtime. Why else do they call it “spring cleaning”?
Kapha’s stickiness likes to hold onto what it loves - things, people, emotions, or memories. While it’s beautiful to love so deeply, too much Kapha energy can also lead to us clinging onto things that no longer help us grow and thrive, keeping us stuck in a negative place.
This is very much a deep choice when you choose from your heart. To say to yourself, “That's it, I've suffered enough and I want to change. That’s it, I want to liberate myself from this person, from this trauma, from this stickiness, from that deep pain.” The choice to do this is also where the change happens.
In this blog, we’ll suggest simple Ayurvedic practices that will help you let go and move forward into a fresh space - one that creates new life. When you are doing these, tap into that feeling of creating movement to shed and release anything that is stuck in your tissues, any kind of stickiness to set yourself free.
If you’ve never dry brushed your skin before, Kapha season is the perfect time to start (see our blog for all the details and instructions).
The next time you dry brush, add a new understanding of why you’re doing this. On the one hand, you can say you’re scrubbing your skin to activate the fats. But it’s useful to keep in mind that we want to do these movements to have the waters churned and refreshed. Kapha’s stickiness in your blood and liver will create a sticky mind and sticky emotions where we get stuck. Doing the dry skin brushing will activate and stimulate whatever is stuck - both physical and emotional - so that it can enter your body’s water system and be shed from your system.
Use the support of an Ayurvedic classic: cumin, coriander, and fennel tea in Kapha season. Not only does it balance every Dosha, but it is great for the kidneys and cleansing for the whole urinary system.
Every time you go to the bathroom, feel that you’re releasing and shedding the past in fluid form. You can even connect it to being “pissed off”! That's the bladder holding urine when we’re angry, and we hold this heat in our urine, in our waters. You may have never thought of this before, but you can use peeing to let go - to literally let go.
Drinking water or coconut water with a teaspoon of wheatgrass powder is a really great way to clean the plasma and the whole lymphatic system. We want to clean these filters out so that we have fresh fluid moving through our system. These waters are connected to our emotions, and by refreshing them, we are creating beautiful fresh waters to experience fresh new love in. By cleansing yourself, you are creating a new way of being - not a sticky way - first towards yourself and perhaps then towards others.
You can also connect this to diabetes and blood sugar imbalances - the blood and the plasma are too sticky because there's too much sugar in the water. The sugar water creates a stickiness. Wheatgrass powder, Neem, and tumeric are awesome combinations of herbal formulas to take for these imbalances, which are connected to both Kapha and Pitta.
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We now offer an Ayurvedic Care Package for those who want to treat themselves or a loved one to personalised, holistic self-care.
