Traditionally, yoga was employed for spiritual development, while Ayurveda offered tools for mental and physical balance to enjoy a happy life and have the energy and strength to pursue goals.
Ayurveda, which means “knowledge of life,” is practiced all over the world. The World Health Organization recognizes Ayurveda as a complete medical system and hospitals offering Ayurvedic treatment for disease exist in many countries. At the other end of the spectrum is the increasingly-popular reliance on Ayurvedic wisdom for self-awareness and personalized self-care routines for health and happiness.
Ayurveda-inspired spa treatments fall right in the middle of the Ayurveda continuum. Because Ayurveda uses all five senses as avenues to affect balance, sensory-rich spa environments and therapies are perfectly-suited to deliver Ayurveda’s benefits through healing combinations of smell, touch, taste, sound, and sight.

Ayurveda Basics
According to Ayurvedic principles, every person has unique characteristics and different needs. As skin care professionals begin to see life through Ayurvedic eyes, they and their clients will notice the ubiquitous presence of Ayurveda’s triad of life energies, kapha, pitta, and vata, the three doshas, which are constantly at play.

The Three Doshas
Kapha appears as physical structure, tissue, fluid, and protective mucous. Kapha dosha is just like mud. Life can build something with kapha or protect from the heat and dryness with layers of thick, moist mud. Kapha’s main qualities are heaviness, smoothness, wetness, coolness, and stability.
Pitta appears as heat, coloration (red, yellow, and green), and transformation. In body and mind, pitta acts like steam or acid. Pitta shows itself in digestive acids, bile salts, and enzymes, and is the fire beneath the metabolism. It is warm, moist, mobile, and able to penetrate tissue easily.
Vata appears as movement and empty space. In body and mind, vata behaves like the wind. All messages sent and received by the nervous system ride on the wings of vata. Vata governs all fluid circulation, carries food through the digestive tract, and thoughts through the mind. Its main qualities are dryness, coolness, irregularity, and roughness.
Everyone has all doshas at play or they would have no structure, function, body, or life. However, everyone is born with an individual nature, (called ‘prakriti’ in Sanskrit) dominated by one or two of the doshas’ qualities.

Client Assessment
A rare soul may be born with the perfect tri-doshic proportions (33.3 percent of each dosha), but most people’s natures manifest one or two of the doshas more prominently.
While it does take some practice, it is not difficult to identify whether a person is mostly a heavy, stable kapha with thick, creamy skin, a highly-colored and warm pitta (redheads, and those with blue or green eyes), or a spritely and enthusiastic vata (clients that are small boned with enigmatic features, grayish skin, and brownish hair).
To discover a client’s prakriti, survey physical characteristics that remain unchanged from birth.

What to Recommend
To apply Ayurvedic wisdom, steer clients toward products and therapies that have sensory qualities opposite from the dosha that is prevalent in the client. It is simple and effective to offer cooling products and services for pittas, warming and grounding products for vatas, and lightening and stimulating treatments for kaphas!
Keep an eye on the client’s current state (called ‘vikriti’ in Sanskrit). While they may have a predominantly pitta nature, do they have cool, rough, dry skin? If so, vata’s qualities have accumulated in the skin and should be balanced with a warm, moist, and smoothing treatment. Avoid hot, moist treatments, like steam therapy or acid peels, which could aggravate the underlying pitta nature.

Clients today crave natural beauty, balance, and customized wellness care. While Ayurveda is thousands of years old, the stresses and toxic loads of modern living seem to beg even more for the comprehensive benefits Ayurveda offers.