Snacking Vata
Vata is made of air and ether. Imagine a breeze blowing this way and that – a lightness of being, but also an inability to land, or ground. Other Vata personality characteristics include: Changing of mind, multitasking without completion, and inability to settle down. In fact, sometimes, Vata is all over the place, changing tacks 2 or 3 times in one sentence!
When Vata snacks, and Vata very much likes to snack, she should seek weighty meaningful foods as opposed to crackers or chips. For what are crackers and chips actually? AIR! Light and fluffy, floating in the stomach, stoking Vata’s wind, causing gas and bloating and the opposite of satedness to boot. In other words, the old Ayuvedic saying is true: "Like increases like." To eat airy food is to make Vata lighter and flightier than ever.
So what is a Vata do? Quit snacking perhaps. Or schedule snacks at a certain time when Vata energy is low, say, in the middle of the afternoon. Vata should plan for a weighty snack. Perhaps figs, dates and nuts, or a banana and sunflower butter on toast. Weighty snacks will counter the flittiness of Vata's mind and deter her from filling up on the crunchy and dry.
Vata gets peckish often though. Temptation abounds. So let’s start a list of activities that distract Vata from snacking. OK? Here we go:
Gardening
Sweeping
Yoga
Lovemaking
Cooking (oddly, preparing for the next meal can distract Vata)
Singing and dancing
Walking - really any form of exercise, preferably outside
What are your suggestions?
