Returning to your nature

Sometimes we balance our doshas intuitively. We all know that when we feel overheated, we need to cool off — we jump in a pool or reach for something refreshing to drink. In the same way, emotional balance can be instinctive. When a baby cries, we offer love and comfort, and they settle.

Balancing can be natural when we listen.

As I’ve studied Ayurveda, I’ve often heard teachers say not to focus too much on your birth dosha (prakriti), but instead to concentrate on balancing whatever is currently out of alignment. While I understand that perspective, I believe we must first know who we are at our core. Only then can we truly love, nourish, and become that person fully.

For example, imagine your prakriti is vata. As a child, you were creative, imaginative, expressive. But as you grew up, perhaps that creativity wasn’t encouraged. Instead, you were pushed to compete, to win, to conform. You didn’t quite fit in. You struggled to concentrate. You felt overwhelmed and anxious. Yet when you went home, you painted, you wrote, you created — and you felt relief.

Then you went back out into the world trying to be who you thought you were supposed to be.

In doing so, you were not nourishing your true nature. You were cultivating opposite qualities in order to become someone you are not. Over time, that misalignment can manifest as stress, illness, fatigue, even depression. When we live in contradiction to our innate constitution, the body and mind eventually speak.

But when you recognize your true, born dosha — and accept yourself as you are — something shifts. You begin to honor your nature instead of fighting it. You nourish yourself with the qualities that keep you balanced. You stop striving to become someone else and start becoming more fully yourself.

That is when healing begins — mind, body, and spirit.

If we constantly try to be something we are not, we create chronic imbalance. We feel exhausted. We feel “off.” We wonder why nothing works. There is no single blueprint for a meaningful life — only many paths toward purpose, service, and fulfillment. There are many ways to live, to serve, and to succeed.

When we work against our nature to achieve a life we’ve been told is the goal, we unknowingly create stress and imbalance. It isn’t the dream itself that harms us — it’s the way we pursue it when it does not align with who we truly are.

Understanding our prakriti is not about limitation. It is about remembrance. It is about recognizing our true purpose and the unique way we are meant to serve.

First we acknowledge.

Then we accept.

Then we love.

And from that place, we nourish balance — and health, wellness, and happiness follow.