So you’ve decided to do a spring cleanse – but where to start? Even a seasoned pro might need a little inspiration or something to deepen, widen, soften, or lighten the cleansing routine.

I used to do the same Apple Cider Vinegar Cleanse every Spring, until I really started listening to my body and realized that as my body aged, before- during- and after-pregnancy, and even with different stressors (like the pandemic – I didn’t cleanse at all last year!) I needed more tools in my cleansing toolbox.

Enter: Ayurveda

The difference between doing just any old cleanse, and doing a custom cleanse that really speaks to what your body needs NOW, is your constitution. There are lots of ways to understand the word “constitution”, but basically we are talking about the entirety of your whole being – body, mind, and soul – and how your being is adapting to your environment. Sounds pretty simple, right?

A great way to understand your constitution is a concept from Ayurveda called the “doshas”. Ayruveda is the ancient system of health and medicine from India. Dosha is another word for constitution. Once you understand your dosha, you have a foundation from which to build your cleanse. The three doshas in Ayurveda are:

Kapha: earth and water, heavy, moist, good memory, slow digestion and metabolism, steady, sturdy, stable

Pitta: fire, heat, robust, driven, ambitious, regular digestion and metabolism, passionate, creative

Vata: air, light, quick, visionary, ungrounded, unbounded, poor memory, poor digestion (too slow or too fast), fast metabolism, cold

Given these brief descriptions of the three doshas in Ayurvedic medicine, do you see some of your qualities described in one or two of these doshas? To get a more accurate picture of your present doshic picture, click here to take the Dosha quiz on Deepak Chopra’s website.

Why do I need to know my dosha?

Understanding your dosha gives you insight into how your natural equilibrium tends to get off balance. If you are lucky enough to be well-balanced in all three doshas, typically your overall health and wellbeing are optimal.

If, however, you lean too heavily toward one dosha like Vata, for example, some cleansing practices like fasting and living on fruit juice, vinegar or smoothies will only aggravate your condition.

Pitta dosha would do well to avoid spicy foods during a cleanse, so the well-known cayenne-and-lemon juice cleanse would be disastrous.

While Kapha dosha is the most stable of the three doshas, they benefit most from regular cleansing as they also tend toward stagnation and accumulation, particularly in the stomach and liver.

Start with the free dosha quiz, do some journaling, and stay tuned!