Vata Season (Fall and Winter) Symptoms & Healing Approaches

Fall and Winter are times of the year with a lot of Vata energy in the climate. "Vata Season" brings us a lot of the qualities of Vata - coldness, dryness, depletion, and dispersal can be felt in our climate, our bodies, and our minds. 

For most of us, it is a time when we are caught up in the whirlwind of life and are perhaps feeling a bit overwhelmed and scattered. Anxiety is common this time of year, as is difficulty concentrating, restlessness and insomnia. If you'd like to check in with yourself, the chart below will help you see if you have signs of Vata imbalance, and to what degree. 

Self Check In

Balancing Approaches

Not only can we balance, but we can prevent the depletion to a great degree by choosing different energetics during this time. As always, we can ease these signs and symptoms of Vata imbalance by brining in the opposite qualities: warm, moist, nourishing, heavy, grounding, safe, familiar, still, structured, etc.

Simply feel towards these qualities in your micro-decisions. Choose the soup instead of the salad; take a warm bath, schedule less, give less of your energy to things which aren't essential. You get the idea. The sum total of these day to day choices adds up way more powerfully than you would think - and it will mean you step into Spring ready to shift into more active and clearing energetics. In this way, we adjust our lifestyles to be balancing for us in a responsive, real time approach. 

While the ways you can bring in balancing qualities are infinite, some of my favorite, practical Seasonal shifts are below. 

Mindset & Decision Making

• Be careful this season with allowing the wind to blow you towards extremes–try to find the middle-ground in your choices.
• Take a look at how you can choose to deplete yourself less, and  where you could use more nourishment
• Try not to start new things or make big transitions

Lifestyle

• Root yourself, by doing less, and find any level of routine you can manage
• Go to bed earlier
• Oil your skin, scalp, hair, nose, and ears
• Stay connected to intimate relationships, and deepen. Cuddle your loved ones.

Nutrition

• Enjoy moist, warming, grounding foods of this season is another way to calm signs and symptoms of Vata. Spicing up your cooking, eating warm stews, and avoiding cold and dry foods helps as well.
• Bring in more root vegetables which are in Season.
• If you are starting to crave sweets this season, that's normal. Keep natural sugar sources and healthy treats on deck. Be present when you eat.

Vata Season isn't "bad." There are also the great energetics of Vata we experience. This is a season where creativity abounds and you can envision how you would like to make changes in your life. Just in time for the New Year coming.

Simply envision for now, allow yourself to enjoy the holidays and just become aware of obstacles to those changes. Then, you can prepare to make those changes with the stability of Kapha season and the momentum of the New Year supporting you.