Slow and steady: Recognizing kapha doṣa

We come now to the last of the three doṣas: Kapha, combining the elements of water and earth. Come with me on one last hike to reveal Kapha’s qualities. This time you’re walking in a valley, close to a stream that meanders slowly over rocks and past tree trunks covered with soft moss. The growth around you is dense and lush, the path a little muddy from recent rain. Your shoes squelch in the squishy earth. Boulders strew the stream bed and outcroppings of rock overhang the trail. Far above, the sun peeks through the heavy foliage, dappling the forest floor, where it’s cool and moist. You’re glad for the sweater you brought along. You pause at a small waterfall to touch the face of a massive boulder and find it smooth, with a slightly slimy residue on its surface. Just beyond the boulder, there’s a pool of opaque, stagnant water, with froth bubbling at its edges. As you sit, inhaling the sweet smells of the earth and listening to the carpeted silence, you feel enveloped by a deep calm and abundance. 

Welcome to the wonderful world of kapha with its many attributes that come with the combination of water and earth: heavy, hard, gross, cold, oily, liquid, dense, smooth, static, slimy/smooth, slow/dull, stable/static, and cloudy/sticky. Of these, the ones to pay particular attention to are slow/dull, heavy, cold, oily, dense, and stable/static. Kapha, when in balance, is the energetic principle of support, nourishment, lubrication and protection in our gross and subtle body, and its qualities are pretty easy to spot when you start looking.

Physically, your kapha-dominant clients will present with a broad build. Dense, heavy, stable and static qualities will show up as big bones, strong muscles, a stout frame, and great stamina. Think Serena Williams and the solidity and strength she embodies. Serena has plenty of pitta as well, which makes her such an extraordinary athlete. A more typical kapha-dominant person without a lot of pitta drive will much prefer sitting on the couch and relaxing to running around, though once they get past this inertia, kapha types display excellent endurance. Not surprisingly, your kapha clients are the ones who have a tendency to gain weight, even though they report being able to skip meals without much difficulty and have a moderate, steady appetite. Slow quality shows up in their metabolism, and that, along with lifestyle choices, can also contribute to putting on extra pounds. You’ll note smooth, soft, oily, and cool/cold qualities when looking at the skin of your Kapha clients, which is often pale and a little clammy. They usually have soft and rounded features–full cheeks and lips, large eyes, and lustrous wavy hair. 

In conversation with a Kapha client, you’ll note a slower cadence to their responses and a sweet quality to the timber of their speech. Think of the melodious sound of opera singers, who often have a bulkier frame that supports their exquisite voices. During intake, your Kapha-dominant clients will give you methodical answers to questions, often with excellent recall of long-term memories. These are folks who, no matter how slow they are to get started, never forget what they’ve learned (compared to vāta types who may learn quickly but just as quickly forget what they’ve learned!).

Emotionally, the soft, smooth, dense, and stable qualities of kapha result in clients who, when in balance, are loving, calm, compassionate, nurturing, supportive, grounded, cheerful, and content. No matter what profession they choose, your Kapha-dominant clients make great team members, because they value relationships, and thanks to their stability, handle stressful situations with grace. Their solid, calm, slower approach to life makes them less reactive and more level-headed when difficulties arise, qualities further supported by good sleep. Your kapha clients will be blessed in this regard–the presence of heavy quality means they don’t have much difficulty falling or staying asleep. In fact, a telling sign of excess kapha is a tendency towards sleeping long and late, and daytime napping, which, instead of refreshing, can create even more lethargy. 

Lethargy is, in fact, a good summation of what kapha looks like when out of balance. Too much slow/dull, heavy, cold, oily, dense, and stable/static results in accumulation, sluggishness, and stagnation. It’s what you might expect when earth and water mix. Remember that expression “stuck in the mud?” That’s aggravated kapha in a nutshell. What would that look like in a client? Physically and physiologically, you might see weight gain, nasal congestion, phlegm, water retention, high cholesterol, fatty liver, and excessive growth of tissues–lumps, fibroids, tumors, etc. Interestingly, the list of kapha diseases (20) described in the Charaka Samhitā is much shorter than those described for vāta (80!) and pitta (40), because kapha’s stability also confers excellent immunity. 

Think kapha imbalance when a client reports feeling weighed down and describes what seems like an excessive attachment to people and things. Where vāta’s airiness creates anxiety, kapha’s heaviness produces depression and grief. Stubborness is another hallmark of aggravated kapha–someone who can’t or won’t let go of people, ideas, or things, is stuck. 

No doubt you have clients in your practice exhibiting kapha qualities both in and out of balance. And if you’re putting two and two together and guessing that kapha is more likely to be aggravated in the cool, moist season of spring, you’re spot on. Or that eating ice cream, with its lethal combination of fat and sugar mixed into its wet, cold, and melting glory, might push kapha into imbalance, you’d be right once again. In my next and final blog post, we’ll put it all together and talk about how client assessments that include an Āyurvedic perspective might inform your therapeutic recommendations. 

Check out Lisa’s Real-Life Case Studies video series, available exclusively to Sequence Wiz members. Learn more about Case Studies at Sequence Wiz >)

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