By Vidya Reddy | Holistic Health Expert with 25+ Years in Ayurveda & Wellness | Co-Founder of Tea & Turmeric, Laguna Beach
My Amma Amma (grandma), moved from India to eastern Canada to help raise us. She brought very little with her in terms of things. What she did bring, completely intact and entirely non-negotiable, was Ayurveda.
Not Ayurveda as a system she had studied or a practice she had adopted. Ayurveda as the way she understood life. The way she cooked. The way she cared for us when we were sick. The way she thought about the body, the seasons, and what it meant to be well.
There were three of us, three sisters, and Amma Amma treated us differently from the beginning. When she gave us oil massages as babies and young children, she used different oils on each of us. Not because she read about it somewhere. Because she looked at each of us and understood instinctively what each body needed. When we got sick, she brewed different teas for each of us. Same illness, three different cups. Because we were three different constitutions and the same remedy did not apply to all three.
I did not have a word for any of this until much later. The word is dosha.
When I was a teenager I had bad acne. Bad enough that a dermatologist wanted to put me on steroids. Amma Amma was not interested in that conversation. She made me a face mask from turmeric, rose, and saffron. She made sure I used it consistently, the way she made sure of everything, which is to say there was no real option not to. Within months my skin had improved significantly.
I have been a holistic health practitioner for 25 years. I studied Ayurveda formally in Kerala, the birthplace of the tradition. I have a private practice behind me and a store in Laguna Beach in front of me. But the first teacher I ever had was my Amma Amma in eastern Canada, who never used the word Ayurveda once and lived it every single day.
This is what I want to give you a window into today.
What Ayurveda Actually Is
Ayurveda is one of the world's oldest complete systems of medicine, originating in India over 5,000 years ago. The word comes from two Sanskrit roots: Ayur, meaning life, and Veda, meaning knowledge or science. Together they mean the science of life.
But Ayurveda is not a collection of remedies or a list of herbs to take for specific symptoms. It is a comprehensive framework for understanding how the human body works, what throws it out of balance, and how to restore it through food, daily routine, seasonal practices, herbs, and spices. It treats the whole person, the physical, the mental, and the emotional, because in Ayurveda these are not separate systems. They are one system that must be understood together.
What makes Ayurveda different from every other wellness approach I have encountered in 25 years of practice is specificity. It does not offer one-size-fits-all recommendations. It starts with understanding your individual constitution, the unique combination of elements and energies you were born with, and builds everything from there. Your diet, your daily routine, your exercise, your herbs, your seasonal practices. All of it tailored to you.
My Amma Amma understood this without being able to name it. Three granddaughters. Three different oils. Three different teas. That is Ayurveda.
The World Health Organization formally recognizes Ayurveda as a traditional medicine system. Read the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy. This is not a fringe practice. It is a 5,000 year old medical tradition now being studied in peer-reviewed clinical research for its applications in digestive health, inflammation, stress, and chronic disease.
The Five Elements
In Ayurveda, everything in the universe, including the human body, is made up of five elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth. These are not meant literally. They are categories of qualities that describe how things behave in nature and in us.
Space is expansive, light, and subtle. Air is mobile, dry, and changeable. Fire is hot, sharp, and transformative. Water is fluid, cooling, and cohesive. Earth is heavy, stable, and grounding.
These five elements combine in different proportions to create the three fundamental biological energies of Ayurveda. The doshas.
The Three Doshas: Understanding Your Constitution
Your dosha is not a personality type or a wellness category. It is the specific combination of elements and qualities that makes your body and mind function the way they do. Understanding it explains why certain foods leave you energized and others exhaust you, why certain seasons feel impossible while others are your best months, and why the same stress that rolls off one person completely unravels another.
Every person is a unique combination of all three doshas, but one or two tend to be dominant. That dominance is your prakriti, your natural constitution. It was set at birth. My Amma Amma could read it in each of her three granddaughters before any of us could read anything at all.
Not sure which is yours? Take the free dosha quiz before you read further. It takes about two minutes.
Vata: Space and Air
Vata is made of space and air. It governs all movement in the body: breathing, circulation, nerve impulses, the movement of food through the digestive tract, and the movement of thoughts through the mind.
In balance, Vata people are creative, quick-thinking, enthusiastic, and light. They generate ideas faster than anyone else in the room and move through life with a curiosity that others find genuinely magnetic.
Out of balance, Vata becomes dysregulated in exactly the ways you would expect from too much air and space: anxiety, racing thoughts, insomnia, irregular digestion, dry skin, and a feeling of being scattered and ungrounded. Vata goes out of balance quickly during travel, seasonal change, irregular eating, and periods of overstimulation.
Warmth, routine, grounding foods, oil massage, and stillness are Vata's medicine. Read the full guide on balancing Vata in winter for a complete seasonal picture.
Pitta: Fire and Water
Pitta is made of fire and water. It governs all transformation in the body: digestion, metabolism, the processing of food into energy, and the conversion of experiences into understanding.
In balance, Pitta people are focused, organized, ambitious, and sharp. Natural leaders. Strong decision-makers. Their digestion is typically strong, their energy consistent, their drive genuine.
Out of balance, Pitta's fire becomes excess: irritability, inflammation, heartburn, acid reflux, skin rashes, and a perfectionism that exhausts everyone including themselves.
Cooling foods, time near water, less competition, and more stillness are Pitta's medicine. Read the full guide on balancing Pitta in winter for the complete seasonal picture.
Kapha: Water and Earth
Kapha is made of water and earth. It governs all structure and stability in the body: lubrication of joints, integrity of tissues, the protective lining of the digestive tract, and emotional groundedness.
In balance, Kapha people are calm, nurturing, patient, and deeply loyal. They are the ones who hold a room together, who show up when things get hard, who remember everyone's birthday.
Out of balance, Kapha becomes stagnant: lethargy, congestion, weight gain, resistance to change, and a heaviness that feels immovable.
Movement, stimulation, warming spices, and lighter food are Kapha's medicine. Read the full guide on balancing Kapha in winter for the complete seasonal picture.
Agni: Why Digestion Is the Foundation of Everything
One of the most important concepts in Ayurveda that most introductions skip is agni, your digestive fire. In Ayurveda, your digestion is not just one system among many. It is the foundation of your entire health.
When agni is strong and clean, you digest food, emotions, and experiences with ease. You absorb nutrients properly, eliminate waste efficiently, and maintain clear energy. When agni is weak, everything suffers. You feel bloated, heavy, foggy, and tired in a way that sleep does not fix.
Amma Amma understood agni without calling it that. She adjusted what she fed us based on how we were feeling, what season it was, and what each of our bodies could handle on any given day. She cooked with ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander, and fennel not for flavor alone but because she knew instinctively that these spices kept digestion moving the way it should.
If you want to understand how Ayurvedic cooking works in everyday life, the guide to Ayurvedic cooking and Indian spices covers exactly that. And for the most powerful Ayurvedic reset you can do for agni and your whole system, the kitchari cleanse guide explains the protocol in full.
Ayurveda as a Way of Life, Not a Medicine Cabinet
This is the most important thing Amma Amma taught me, and the thing I spend the most time trying to convey to people who come into our shop in Laguna Beach.
Ayurveda is not something you turn to when you are sick. It is not an alternative to Western medicine when Western medicine has not worked. It is a daily practice. A framework for living that keeps you well rather than treating you after you are unwell.
The daily oil massage. The warm water in the morning. The seasonal foods. The spices in the cooking. The different tea for a different constitution. These are not treatments. They are maintenance. And maintenance done consistently is why some people seem to age differently, sleep better, digest more easily, and move through stressful seasons with more resilience than others.
Ayurveda is the framework behind all of those differences.
In my years of practice I have watched people experience genuine lasting change when they stop following generic wellness advice and start understanding their own constitution. The changes are not dramatic or overnight. They are the kind that come from consistently living in alignment with how your specific body actually works. That is what Ayurveda gives you. Not a protocol. A framework for a lifetime.
How to Start
The most useful first step is understanding your dosha. Everything else follows from there.
Take the free dosha quiz to find your dominant constitution. Then explore our full Ayurvedic wellness collection, including dosha-specific teas, spices, kitchari, and balancing kits built around each constitution.
Explore our dosha-specific kitcharis and Ayurvedic teas built around each constitution, alongside our full Ayurvedic wellness collection.
I talk about Ayurvedic daily practice, seasonal living, and the stories behind the herbs on The Tea on Wellness Podcast.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Ayurveda scientifically proven?
Ayurveda as a complete individualized system is difficult to study using conventional clinical trial methods, which are designed for standardized interventions. However, specific Ayurvedic herbs and practices have solid clinical evidence behind them. Turmeric and curcumin have been extensively studied for anti-inflammatory effects. A systematic review published in PubMed found beneficial effects of curcumin on multiple digestive disorders. Ashwagandha has multiple trials supporting its role in stress and cortisol reduction. The evidence base is growing consistently and the WHO formally recognizes Ayurveda as a traditional medicine system with a 5,000 year record of practice.
What is the difference between Ayurveda and Western medicine?
Western medicine excels at acute care, emergency intervention, and treating specific diagnosable conditions. It is extraordinary at what it does. Ayurveda operates in a different space: prevention, daily maintenance, and addressing the underlying imbalances that precede disease. Most people find the two approaches complementary rather than competing. My father was a Western medical doctor who also believed deeply in Ayurveda. He saw both systems clearly and respected both.
How do I find out my dosha?
The fastest starting point is the free dosha quiz. Keep in mind that your result reflects your current state, which can shift with seasons and life circumstances. Your prakriti, your birth constitution, is fixed. Your vikruti, your current state, fluctuates. Over time, working with an Ayurvedic practitioner gives you the most complete picture.
Can I practice Ayurveda if I am not Indian?
Ayurveda belongs to all of humanity. It is a system of understanding nature and the human body that has been adopted across cultures for thousands of years. The Kerala school I studied at had students from every continent. What matters is approaching it with genuine respect for its origins and learning its principles properly rather than cherry-picking convenient parts.
What does Ayurveda say about diet?
Ayurveda says that food is your most immediate medicine. It does not prescribe a single diet for everyone. It prescribes a diet for your dosha, your current season, your age, and your digestive strength. In general, Ayurveda favors warm, freshly cooked, simply spiced food over raw, cold, or processed food. It includes six tastes, sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent, and recommends including all six in daily meals in proportions appropriate to your constitution.
What is the connection between Ayurveda and yoga?
They are sister sciences that developed together within the same tradition. Yoga works primarily through breath, movement, and meditation to cultivate awareness and balance. Ayurveda works primarily through diet, herbs, and daily routine to maintain the physical foundation that makes yoga and meditation possible. Pranayama, the Ayurvedic science of breath control, is the practice that links the two most directly.
What is agni and why does it matter?
Agni is your digestive fire. In Ayurveda, virtually every disease begins with impaired agni. When your digestion is strong, your body absorbs what it needs and eliminates what it does not. When agni is weak, food becomes ama, undigested waste that accumulates in the tissues and creates the conditions for illness. Supporting agni through the right foods, spices, and daily practices is the central focus of Ayurvedic health maintenance. My Amma Amma supported our agni every single day through what she cooked and how she cooked it.
How is Ayurveda different from wellness trends?
It is 5,000 years old. Every wellness trend eventually rediscovers something Ayurveda has known for millennia, whether it is the importance of gut health, the relationship between stress and immunity, the role of circadian rhythm in hormonal balance, or the anti-inflammatory properties of turmeric and ginger. Ayurveda did not discover these things recently. It built an entire medical system around them thousands of years ago. The difference between Ayurveda and a trend is that Ayurveda is a complete, internally consistent framework that has been tested across generations and cultures. My Amma Amma was not following a trend. She was following something her mother taught her, and her mother's mother before that.
The Tradition Behind Everything We Do
Amma Amma never used the word Ayurveda. She did not need to. She lived it in every meal she cooked, every oil she chose, every cup of tea she brewed for three very different granddaughters who each needed something slightly different.
That is what we carry forward at Tea & Turmeric. Not a trend. Not a collection of supplements. A 5,000 year old framework for understanding your body that has been tested across generations, cultures, and kitchens, including a small one in eastern Canada that changed everything for me.
If you want to know where to start, take the dosha quiz. Two minutes and you will have a foundation to build everything else on. And if you are ever in Laguna Beach, come in. We would love to talk.
Originally published April 30, 2023. Updated May 20, 2026 with Vidya's personal Ayurvedic lineage, expanded dosha guides, and frequently asked questions.
About the Author
Vidya is a holistic health practitioner with 25 years of clinical experience. She grew up in eastern Canada with an Indian grandmother, Amma Amma, who practiced Ayurveda as a way of daily life long before Vidya had a word for what it was. She went on to study Ayurveda formally in Kerala, India, ran a private practice in Canada, and co-founded Tea & Turmeric in Laguna Beach. Everything in the store's Ayurvedic section traces back to what Amma Amma knew.
Tea & Turmeric is at 1175 South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, CA 92651. Hear more from Vidya on The Tea on Wellness Podcast.
This post is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult your healthcare provider before beginning any new wellness protocol, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, taking medications, or managing a health condition.
