Who am I?
The Greek aphorism: “Know thyself” or γνῶθι σεαυτόν in classical Greek, was inscribed in front of the temple of Apollo in Delphi. This saying is known with the authored by Socrates who, among others, takes it to explain his philosophy.
Self-knowledge, based on the study of one’s own biotype or constitutional types, usually provides a lot of information about ourselves. This self-knowledge has always been a reason of curiosity and desire for human beings. From the study of Types, we are given access to precise information, which usually provides a lot of data about ourselves. However, these methods in the form of questionnaires often reach limitations in that they do not turn out to be purely faithful to who we really are.
The typological study teaches us that there are important differences between individuals. If we want to know the biotype of others, we must first know our own, that is, go through self-research. This knowledge takes time and patience. As the Chinese proverb says: “The man who is master of himself will know no another master”.
In Ayurveda, three biological humors are distinguished, these humors are known as the name of doshas. Dosha refers to the ability to affect or produce imbalance and disease.
Doshas
The etymology of the word dosha derives from the root duṣ (dysfunction) and means “vitiating or corrupting agent” or “cause of disease”. There are three different body doshas or śārīrik doṣa, Vāta, Pitta and Kapha, whose doctrine can be traced in the Veda and forms the basis of the Āyurveda that we know.
The Five Element Theory is the one that underlies the idea of dosha, since every dosha is composed of two elements. Knowing your Ayurvedic constitution, this is your nature or Prakriti, there will be more awareness of how the environment, food, daily routine, emotions and thoughts can affect us.
Knowing our constitution or our dominant dosha, we will also know where we could become unbalanced.
The work of self-knowledge is centred on the description of types, emphasising those aspects to be developed or knowing those that can lead us to imbalance.
How can we know our constitution?
Frequent errors:
On the Internet and in books we can find many tests that give us a constitutional result. We have to consider that what we want to know is our dominance in the doshas since birth (Prakiti) and not our possible imbalance (Vrikuti), so the answers to the tests always have to reflect our natural tendencies from childhood. A possible error then would be to respond thinking that the imbalance we have is our natural tendency, so the result of the test would not indicate our constitution but the predominant dosha at that time.
On the other hand we have to take into account that to determine the constitution we have to consider the physical, physiological, psychological and mental traits (the three gunas (link)). In most tests, physical traits have a very large weight, when the most important characteristics to determine the constitution are all three (physical, physiological and psychological) in equal measure. On the other hand, we would also have a mental constitution to consider, this one, as we say on the web, is changing. Therefore, there are people with physical characteristics where a dosha predominates, while the physiological and psychological ones do not, and because the way the tests are done, they can also give erroneous results.
And finally the agni of each person, is also fundamental to determine constitution, and often in online tests is not given enough importance.
Solutions:
The important thing before taking a test is to make sure that the person who has done it has mastered Ayurveda and has the corresponding studies. The second thing is to do several tests always thinking about the natural tendencies since you were a childl, and if you doubt many times then better ask a professional.
Test 3 vedicas:
We know that this knowledge of who we are takes time and often help from a professional who can provide us with the necessary tools to do so. From 3vedicas we will propose an investigation of your Being under the aspect of an integration of Yoga and Ayurveda in an attempt to expand and enrich you. To do this and with the limitation that questionnaires have, we suggest that you do our CONSTITUTIONAL TEST (link), in which we have tried to correct the errors of other tests.
Taking into account to give the result the constitutions of the body (physical, physiological) and mind (psychological).
For this we have counted on the distinguished contribution of Ayurveda doctor Dr. Mahesh Patil together with our 3vedicas team .
Namaste