\n<\/em>so is that of v\u0101ta, pitta, and kapha in the body.
\n<\/em>Caraka Samhita VI 28:246<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This post\u00a0deconstructs what I feel are some common but avoidable problems with the practice of Ayurvedic constitutional typology. I realize that there are several\u00a0forms of Ayurveda (including that represented by\u00a0the modern BAMS syllabus) that do not necessarily foreground\u00a0constitution in practice. My focus\u00a0here is limited to the popular and global modes of practice supported by\u00a0English language\u00a0literature and often associated with modern global yoga culture. My intention is to clear a path for future research into what the old\u00a0insights of typology might reasonably offer today. Because this piece is\u00a0lengthy, I’ll begin with\u00a0a redux of themes:<\/p>\n
- \n
- While Ayurveda and contemporary science share a common empirical root in the\u00a0systematic observation of natural patterns, Ayurveda\u00a0no longer\u00a0belongs to the discipline\u00a0of \u00a0\u201cscience\u201d as it’s commonly understood today.<\/em> It is now perhaps\u00a0more properly understood\u00a0as an interpersonal and intersubjective art form<\/em>, ideal for any therapy and counseling that seeks to bridge categories of body and mind. Claiming that it does more than this makes Ayurveda vulnerable to the charge of pseudoscience.<\/li>\n
- The popular and now global practice of Ayurvedic constitutional typology (prak\u1e5bti) is particularly<\/em> vulnerable to pseudoscientific claims, cognitive fallacies, essentialism, unchecked transference and countertransference, and blindness to how bodies are assigned meanings through social construction. These flaws are often amplified or excused by romantic Orientalism.<\/li>\n
- If they can first uncover and then reach beneath these flaws, modern Ayurvedic practitioners may be able to access layers of awareness\u00a0rooted in the intimacy of their mirror neurology — a kind of \u00a0“hardwired empathy.”\u00a0Their task, if it is possible, would be to isolate\u00a0this\u00a0“first sense” of how another person feels themselves\u00a0in the world towards therapeutic ends, before<\/em> it is distorted\u00a0by the sweep\u00a0of cultural ideology, whether global-capitalist or\u00a0antique-Orientalist.<\/li>\n
- If it resists cultural ideology, the art<\/em> of constitution\u00a0can utilize the poetry of bodily states to initiate empowering dialogue about how different subjects experience the world organically, emotionally, and socially. In this way, a truly dynamic theory of \u201cconstitution\u201d might take shape and be of benefit to a wide spectrum of healing disciplines.<\/li>\n
- The most empirically honest and psychologically effective use of typology leaves the subject unlabeled and undetermined, and therefore\u00a0able to construct for themselves a rich dialogue with their evolving body-mind patterning.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
![\"different-body-types-olympic-athletes-howard-schatz-14\"](\"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/different-body-types-olympic-athletes-howard-schatz-14.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nimages by Howard Schatz<\/a><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
What does the body really<\/em> say?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Let’s talk about Alexi, Brandon, Alonzo, Lisa, and Rulon (left to right above). They’re some of the elite athletes captured by Howard Schatz in this riveting collection of photos<\/a>. They also make for rich speculation in the game of beginning Ayurvedic constitutional analysis. I project this image in the classes I teach as a learning tool.<\/p>\n
What do we see first? Rulon’s barrel chest, Lisa’s leg-to-torso ratio, Brandon’s heated forward gaze? Do we see the upward movement of Alonzo’s frame? Do we see his top quarter weighted by heavy\u00a0conditioning that pulls\u00a0his upper arms into internal rotation and cervical spine into kyphosis? Or does he just feel more assertive\u00a0standing like that? Did he discover that it felt\u00a0safer\u00a0to keep his head ducked a bit\u00a0during that first growth spurt at nine years old?<\/p>\n
Do we see how confidently Rulon and Alexi seem to present, ready\u00a0for any challenge, earthy, resilient, knowing they shall not be moved? What qualities will their postures and quiet strength afford them? How far can we go into “What kind of people are they? What are their strengths? What will they do under stress?”<\/p>\n
If you bring Brandon and Lisa to the blood donor clinic, who will have the easier time (i.e., feel less queasy or faint) with the needle and the blood loss? If you sit Rulon down at a desk job for a decade, what health issues would he be vulnerable to? Who is more prone to anxiety? Depression? Rage? Diabetes? What do you think each of these five would be like as friends? Or lovers?<\/p>\n
If you have Ayurvedic language on board, or are a practitioner already, are you satisfied with visually classifying Alexi and Brandon as pitta-kapha, Rulon as kapha, Alonzo as vata-pitta, and Lisa as more vata than Alonzo? So what? What will you do with these immediate impressions? Are you already predicting things\u00a0about Lisa’s digestion or sleep habits, Brandon’s aggression, or Rulon’s attachment to family and oversleeping? How well can you hold yourself back from what you cannot know, but are encouraged to guess at<\/em> through Ayurvedic constitutional practice? How can you protect your client and yourself from the confirmation bias that every initial visual contact with a person sets you up for?<\/p>\n
When you start asking Rulon your consultation questions, will it “innocently” occur to you to ask\u00a0about sweet cravings? How will this drive the rest of the conversation? When Lisa tells you that she’s not particularly\u00a0anxious, that she’s just fine at the Red Cross — she gives blood every month in fact and never feels dizzy afterwards — how will this alter your understanding of her vata frame? If you feel her pulse and it\u2019s broad, slow, and rolling \u2013 what will you do?<\/p>\n
But wait! There’s more! What about the performance<\/em> embedded in their presentations? Aren’t they trying<\/em> to project themselves in a certain way, coherent with their professions? Can structural constitution be a show? Is Brandon wearing a kind of pitta-competition-drag? Could he pretend to do\u00a0otherwise? How would these athletes\u00a0look minus their intense conditioning? How early in life did they start to train? How did their work either change them, or quite literally guide their development? How did their work become<\/em> them?<\/p>\n
And finally \u2013 how are we constructing these humans through the endless imagery that has trained us to see certain people in certain ways? What ableism, sexism, and racial stereotyping informs what we think<\/em> we are instinctually seeing?<\/p>\n
Welcome, everyone, to the mess of popular Ayurvedic constitutional analysis. Here, practitioners try to cultivate their initial visceral impressions of others into a sense of who they are, what their patterns might be, what they may need, and how to best interact with them. It is an ancient practice, fraught with fallacy, and reified by contemporary forces of reductionism and commodification. But it also hearkens to a bygone developmental\u00a0innocence and a neurological honesty we may be missing or suppressing. Something deep and distant in us asks: Can\u2019t one body see and feel and understand another body directly without the stories of the social mind intervening?<\/em><\/p>\n
Ayurveda says yes<\/em>.<\/p>\n
I say\u2026 maybe<\/em> \u2013 but we\u2019re going to have to work out how.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Prak\u1e5bti: a lens to examine an\u00a0entire system<\/strong><\/h2>\n
In a previous discussion<\/a>, I laid some groundwork for how contemporary Ayurveda carries temptations toward pseudoscience, and how it can and should avoid\/resist them. I argued that its practitioners must own up to its prescientific heritage, poetic use of language, subjectivist bias, and lack of testability and peer-review. These are features that will always\u00a0limit\u00a0Ayurveda’s full participation in biomedical discourse. Further, I suggested that this barrier is a good<\/em> thing, inasmuch as it can allow Ayurvedic practitioners to focus on how their practice is both distinct from and complementary to biomedicine — empowering clients with holistic self-inquiry, encouraging them to value the phenomenology as well as<\/em> the biomedical data of a condition, and contributing a wide range of \u201cmeaning responses<\/a>\u201d (Moerman, 2002) to the self-care journey.<\/p>\n
If Ayurveda tries to go head-to-head with biomedical practice in addressing complex and\/or acute conditions, and\u00a0tries to use\u00a0biomedicine\u2019s definitions of successful cure, it will likely fail. More importantly, it may\u00a0lose its soul. Lab-testing Ayurvedic theories\u00a0and methods may be\u00a0both impossible and antithetical. Its theories are constructed from\u00a0poetic, indefinable quantities like agni<\/em> and ojas<\/em>, and its methods are never repeated exactly, because treatments must be\u00a0completely individualized. The drive to medicalize Ayurveda seems to be\u00a0the inevitable result of its integration with the commodification methods of global capitalism.<\/p>\n
In this article I\u2019ll dig a little deeper to\u00a0argue that Ayurveda today may be\u00a0more properly regarded as an interpersonal, intersubjective art form<\/em>, with great potential for fostering an appreciation for embodied difference. I\u2019ll suggest that nowhere is this potential skill more called upon than in the practice of considering \u201cconstitution\u201d: the individual\u2019s unique psychosomatic profile, known as prak\u1e5bti<\/em>. And in no other subject, in my experience so far, is the promise of Ayurveda more confused and oversold.<\/p>\n
I would like to argue through this and future articles that the principle of constitution as popularly practiced is an ideal lens through which we can see not only\u00a0the shortcomings of an old medicine that has not consistently\u00a0exposed itself to the epistemological rigours of our time, but\u00a0also the potential Ayurveda has to model therapeutic intimacy in an increasingly data-driven world.\u00a0When it stereotypes, pigeonholes, and essentializes, the theory of constitution presents the shabbiest type of pseudoscience. When it sees, feels, reserves judgment, resists interfering, and strengthens the intersubjective feeling of a healing encounter, the practice of Ayurvedic typology \u2013 and we really need to find a better word for it \u2013 holds promise as a dialogical tool.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s taken me more than a thousand clients to come to the conclusion that the theory of constitution (prak\u1e5bti) as it\u2019s typically presented doesn\u2019t work very well, and confers questionable benefit. Typically presented, Ayurveda is said to be able to identify the essential, stable, unchanging, almost-destined psychosomatic qualities of a person. This is impossible, because there are none. (I\u2019ll get into this near the end of this post.) It can also be unhelpful for a host of disempowering reasons I\u2019ll also describe. But my intention is to\u00a0try to show that if the theory loosens up on its claims and understands its potential fallacies, I believe that it has power to help a client enter into dialogue with the qualities of her internal, social, and environmental relationships with such refinement that she becomes more resourceful and responsive to her challenges, in ways that biomedicine rarely encourage. This responsiveness, I will argue, depends on both her and her practitioner leaving her constitution, like a work of art, ultimately undefined.<\/p>\n
How do the terms “interpersonal,” “intersubjective,” and “art-form” relate to the practice of typology?<\/p>\n
Ayurveda is interpersonal<\/em>\u00a0in the sense that its\u00a0insights are not theoretically static (or preservable by statisticians) but continually created within the full range of human-to-human, human-to-society, and human-to-environment relationship. It matters far less what\u00a0I\u015bvarak\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a might say\u00a0about “earth element” in the <\/span>S\u0101\u1e41khyak\u0101rik\u0101<\/em> than how practitioners and subjects\u00a0create and recreate the meanings of earth element situationally, in dialogue.<\/span><\/p>\n
Ayurveda is intersubjective<\/em> in the sense that a practitioner cannot analyze the constitution of a subject except through his or her own unique, sensual responses. When the practitioner encounters a\u00a0subject, they are also encountering their own subjectivity. Feeling\u00a0the other reveals the feeling self. This is why practitioners should learn all they can about modern psychodynamic psychotherapy, which resists the common fallacy of telling people who they are without recognizing that other-description is also\u00a0self-description, and that the real point of any meeting is to acknowledge shared subjectivity, and to explore the sensations of that sublime paradox.<\/p>\n
Ayurveda is an art-form<\/em> in the sense that its meanings are co-created by its participants, and because\u00a0it is never finished. In these ways, it is very much like science,\u00a0but without the definitions and\u00a0controlled repeatable\u00a0testing. Truth in art is leveraged through ineffability and unrepeatability, which is why it mirrors the experience, if not the data, of life so well.<\/p>\n
<\/h2>\n
Why is constitutional typing so attractive?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
To analyze how the popular presentation of constitution fails the broader potential of Ayurveda, it might help to start by describing why it is so popular. I can think of four dubious reasons that the practice of Ayurvedic\u00a0typology feels so good:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Typology can validate\u00a0our first impressions of others, which are commonly repressed.\u00a0It permits the feeling that our impulses don\u2019t necessarily imply harsh or cruel judgments.<\/li>\n
- It allows us to indulge cognitive fallacies that are otherwise forbidden.<\/li>\n
- It nurtures an orientalist fantasy of pre-and-post scientific enlightenment.<\/li>\n
- Without constitutional typology, Ayurveda loses target markets.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
1. Freedom to feel taboo things.<\/strong> Typology can feel like a new door of honesty opening. When Ayurveda gives us permission to relax some of the disembodying effects of the morally necessary values of liberal\u00a0democracy, i.e., \u201cwe are all the same\u201d, it gives us permission to look again at all the silent things we feel when we encounter the mysterious differences of others. We typically try to control our “othering” impulse by throttling it through a spectrum of controls. At best, we understand othering as a form of superficial, style-based categorization: goths, suburbanites, yuppies, hipsters, DINKs. At worst we know it can be at the root of ableist, healthist, or racial or gender stereotyping and hatred. But when an Ayurvedic practitioner suggests that there\u2019s essential psychosomatic meaning to be drawn out of a person\u2019s skeletal structure, weight, complexion, and movement patterns, we can feel relieved from repressing what seem to be the \u201cpure\u201d or \u201craw\u201d responses that we have to people. Ayurveda promises a gaze that can see through the social constructions of personhood, to a definable essence. What a relief this would be to generations of humans abused by commodity advertising to feel that every uniqueness is a liability.<\/p>\n
Morris Berman (1989) describes the relief of this apparent\u00a0embodied honesty as overcoming the \u201csomatic gap\u201d: the persistent social repression of our knowledge that we are bodies before we are citizens, and that as bodies we are strange to each other, unconsciously welcoming, motivating, inspiring, or repulsive. Our shapes and movements and smells are sending out distinct codes to which our pre-civilized selves are alert. Typology seems to forgive us for our unconscious and instantaneous classifications of fellow citizens as being more or less attractive or copasetic or suited to a particular type of work or interaction.<\/p>\n
2. Relaxing into cognitive bias.<\/strong> Common constitutional analysis can validate deep-seated cognitive fallacies that are exhausting to struggle against if we ever\u00a0become aware of them. Here\u2019s a short list, paraphrased from the ever-useful and accessible Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The anchoring effect<\/em>: the tendency to rely too heavily on a single datum when assessing a system. I.e., a person\u2019s square frame becomes the determining factor in assigning \u201ckapha\u201d as the primary constitution.<\/li>\n
- The clustering illusion<\/em>: to actively look for apparent\u00a0streaks of data (phantom patterns) in large random samples. I.e.: clustering \u201csquare frame\u201d, \u201cbroad teeth\u201d, and \u201cthick hair\u201d into a \u201ckapha\u201d designation, while downplaying\u00a0data beyond the cluster.<\/li>\n
- Confirmation bias<\/em>: more general than clustering — looking for data that confirm a pre-conceived thesis. “Rulon is obviously kapha. I wonder if he’s a faithful friend?”<\/li>\n
- Essentialism<\/em>: the habit of categorizing people according to an imagined permanent nature. “The kapha woman has good fertility and a special connection with the Divine Mother.” This is a philosophical fallacy as well, and tends to obscure\u00a0Ayurveda’s naturalism with a religious air.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
In the interpersonal work of an Ayurvedic appointment, typology is also liable to the unexamined play of transference and countertransference. Transference initiates with the credulity of the client, along with their\u00a0desire to be assigned a constitution in order for life to make more sense. Practitioners who wield strong community power will draw strong transference. The deference of the client can make\u00a0her vulnerable to the Barnum Effect, in which the practitioner\u2019s generalized statements of constitutional analysis or imbalance seem to be intimately personalized and resonant, as in a horoscope. The client\u2019s deference also allows her to be baptized into the new identity of the constitution, joining others in a community of practitioners who share the revelation of a discourse with which\u00a0alienates them less than biomedicine.<\/p>\n
Countertransference emerges on the part of the practitioner in several ways. First, as a snap-projection of what a client needs based upon a few presenting and highly subjective details. Second, in the unchecked assumptions a practitioner can make about what a client should want for themselves. And lastly, through the \u201cfundamental attribution error\u201d, in which the practitioner will over-emphasize explanations for presentations and conditions based on a client\u2019s constitution, rather than their circumstances. The worst instance of this third error would be the practitioner who made a client feel that their constitution was somehow the cause<\/em> of their circumstance, or that biology equals behaviour, and even destiny. \u201cNaturally you gravitated towards childcare: you are kapha!\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s very common for the vata person to struggle to find grounded relationships.\u201d \u201cOf course you\u2019re angry \u2013 look at all the pitta you have!\u201d And so on. (The alternative would be to resist assertions altogether. A purely Socratic method is probably most effective, i.e.: “You say you feel ‘disoriented’ in the late afternoon. Are there distinct physical sensations\u00a0or emotions that often come along with that?” Ask the questions, let the patterns reveal themselves.)<\/p>\n
3. Orientalism.<\/strong>\u00a0Loads to say here, but I’ll keep it brief. Orientalism is the reductive and dehumanizing\u00a0assumption that all things eastern or Indian express a statically<\/em>\u00a0exotic\u00a0knowledge or value. (Said 1979) In the colonial\u00a0context, orientalism\u00a0helped to objectify Asian resources and knowledge\u00a0as the desirable spoils of expansion. In contemporary Ayurveda its mechanism shifts from the colonial-hegemonic to the Romantic-reductionist. Whether global capitalism is trying to control India’s material resources or to define its intellectual heritage, the same extractive methods\u00a0are in place. As my colleague Sean Feit described via email: “Where it once was cotton and tea, now it’s call centers, yoga, and Ayurveda.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
A mystical glow commodifies Indian knowledge<\/span>\u00a0and essentializes the otherness of Ayurvedic healing practices.\u00a0Analyses seem\u00a0truer\u00a0if delivered in Sanskrit, herbs more potent if grown in Indian soil. Then, when it comes to constitution, all<\/em> humans can become \u201cotherable\u201d by the new-but-old, \u201csacred\u201d categorizations of typology. Romantic orientalism in global Ayurveda is consistent with other yoga-related discourses in which the fantasy of an eternally perfect cultural wisdom (posed as the bright shadow of the assumption of western inferiority) overrides basic standards of critical thinking. Two examples might help. In asana practice, we see it in the unquestioning acceptance of prominent teachers who have never formally studied biomedical anatomy as being experts in biomechanics. In yoga philosophy we see it in the persistent effort to sanitize the reality of the Bhagavad Gita<\/em>\u2019s political narrative \u2013 that Arjuna is being encouraged to slaughter his kin to serve the state and glorify its\u00a0deity. All such simplifications rob Indian culture of its complexity. Spa-type Ayurveda and status-update philosophy are the\u00a0natural outcomes: ancient wisdom that is reduced, homogenized, bottled and labelled.<\/p>\n
4. Constitution as commodity.<\/strong> Dividing humanity into three, seven, or ten constitutions grants an equal number of demographics to which standard remedies can be marketed and sold. But when constitution is presented along an infinite spectrum of variability<\/em>, there is little use for standardized blends and protocols. Constitutional theory has the potential to aid or resist commodification in healing practices. In my view, Ayurveda cannot be about products. It\u2019s about empowering people to make sense of how they are feeling, and the contexts for those feelings, using non-specialized, sensual language.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Why is constitutional typing so problematic?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Because of a thousand reasons. Let’s continue the discussion\u00a0by talking\u00a0about Kim, Tara, Cheryl, Olga, and Aliane. I mean — by talking about some pictures<\/em> of them.<\/p>\n
![\"different-body-types-olympic-athletes-howard-schatz-2\"](\"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/different-body-types-olympic-athletes-howard-schatz-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
At this point in my presentation, the room usually gets\u00a0quiet. There are many reasons for this, all amplified, I think, by the fact that over 80% of any group I present to is female, and an image like this sends many attendees into uncomfortable self-reference. We live in a culture in which female bodies are not only commodified, but comparisons between them are as well. So here I am, presenting a spectrum of female bodies for an analysis I will claim has an empathetic objective \u2013 trying to understand the potential meanings of difference. But I\u2019m using an image that cannot help but to carry a residue of this pervasive cultural violence. Naming and labeling and judging bodies visually is what we do with\u00a0every minute of every day. We do it to female bodies more than male bodies. How do I avoid perpetuating this violence? How does Ayurveda avoid becoming just another way by which women are judged and judge themselves\u00a0and each other\u00a0according to the whims of\u00a0capitalist patriarchy? (One participant told me:\u00a0maybe\u00a0this exercise needs a trigger warning. I think she’s totally right.)<\/p>\n
The first comment on this photo online comes from one \u201cNacho Garcia III\u201d. Nacho says:<\/p>\n
\u201cI like allane Baquerot more feminine\u201d(sic).<\/p>\n
Why, Nacho, Why? What part of her is \u201cmore\u201d feminine? Her hip-to-waist ratio? Her bust size? Her muscular tone? Or could it be her strappy toeshoes? Or her tippy-toe pose, suggestive of how heels can make a person\u00a0appear tottery and easy to sweep away? Or is it her slightly demure, indirect head-angle and gaze?<\/p>\n
Whatever else we might learn from this picture, it should be clear that we are filtering all of our imagery through an intense tangle of social conditioning, in-group bias, not to mention\u00a0class, racial, ableist, ageist, weightest and sexist\u00a0stereotypes. To make things more complicated, our objectifications of the image of Aliane may\u00a0often be met by Aliane\u2019s performance to satisfy those very\u00a0expectations, whether it ultimately serves her or not.<\/p>\n
Our stereotyping has only accelerated as the visual advertising, surveillance, and responsibilist white noise\u00a0of global capitalism has increased. Visual advertising works precisely by highjacking the lower-brain reflexes that Ayurveda relies upon for impression-formation, and then crafting them into the service of whatever normativity will sell best. The aesthetic values and intentions of advertising are clear. How are the aesthetics of Ayurvedic typology any different? Because they\u2019re supposed to be value-neutral? Life-supporting? But are they really neutral in practice? What kind of life do they support? A more \u201cnatural\u201d life? What is \u201cnatural\u201d? Does Deepak’s family have a more “natural” life in sunny San Diego? Is a “natural” life\u00a0pre-technological? Is it pre-feminist?<\/p>\n
The overarching challenge is clear. Can we look at these images and separate our\u00a0cultural judgements from our ideas of Ayurvedic health?<\/em>\u00a0The detailed questions are many:<\/p>\n
Let’s consider Kim and Tara first. Do we talk about Kim’s performative fire or Tara’s rep-reduced BMI without invoking the suggestion of “machismo”, and all of the conflicting values that would come with it? If they are so pitta that they are amenorrheic, is this a problem? Most Ayurvedic practitioners would say it is. Why? Is a lack of fertility more of a health issue for female bodies than male bodies? With regard to bone density in middle age, it actually is. For centuries, Ayurveda has recognized the relationship between body fat ratios and fertility in women, and also the relationship between body fat and the strength of bone tissue. Old Caraka could have easily predicted the Female Athlete Triad syndrome, in which intense exercise is linked with disordered eating, lost fertility, and brittle bones over time. But the problem is that he — along with the vast majority of his inheritors down to the present day — would have worried about this primarily from a gender-essentialist perspective. The tradition would argue that female bodies should menstruate regularly and in a particular way, not simply for their own health, but primarily\u00a0to harmonize with the larger (dominant) natural\/social order.<\/p>\n
Even more uncomfortably — how do we speak of the structural differences between Cheryl and Aliane\u00a0in a way that doesn’t make one seem more “attractive”? Or in a way that equally<\/em> appreciates how they have each mobilized their genetics and training opportunities to express high levels of proficiency at what they do? In short — how do we avoid sounding like Nacho Garcia III? I’m not joking: implicit in Nacho’s remark is that Aliane is the acceptable woman who faithfully and attractively performs what is most expected of the female body. Unfortunately, his remark is in line with both Ayurvedic gender essentialism and its Orientalist apologetics. A woman’s form is privileged over function, unless the function we\u2019re talking about is reproduction.<\/p>\n
Of course in Ayurveda our values are supposed to be therapeutic rather than aesthetic. So at this point I turn to the class and say: “Imagine that these five people come to your asana class.” (Many of my students are yoga teachers or teachers-in-training.) “What would you instinctively<\/em> want to give each of them?”<\/p>\n
The answers flow freely, because now I’ve given permission for people to mobilize their initial responses — which might otherwise provoke a kind of social guilt — into imagined gifts. The answers are also pretty unanimous.<\/p>\n
- \n
- People would offer Kim techniques to help relax her drive and soften\u00a0her rigid muscle tone.<\/li>\n
- They would give Tara shoulder alignment and upper-chest-opening exercises to counteract her humeral inward roll and over-tightened pectoral muscles.<\/li>\n
- They would give Cheryl spinal extension exercises and breathing techniques for mobility and suppleness. (Some people shyly pipe up to say they think she would benefit from a hot room and rigorous cardio.)<\/li>\n
- They want to give Olga centering, grounding, strengthening sequences to do, and encourage her to build more muscle to protect her joints over time. Most people will predict that Olga is hypermobile.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
People always have more\u00a0suggestions for Olga. Perhaps because she seems delicate or child-like in the line-up. How old do we think she is, anyway? There\u2019s something about her that students just\u00a0want to hold and cradle. Caraka says: treat the vata person as if you were holding a little bird.<\/em>\u00a0What do these impressions and judgements do to Olga\u2019s strength, her autonomy? How can speaking about Olga avoid othering her with infantilization? At what point does what feels like an instinctive protective reflex really just patronize her?<\/p>\n
When it comes to Aliane — students take a little longer to come up with suggestions, if they do at all. There’s a palpable sense of “she’s just fine” — which is really just the value-neutral expression of Nacho Garcia III\u2019s confession of attraction. It seems that the more you like something, or the more it conforms to a preconceived model of fitness or normalcy, the less therapy comes to mind. Aliane becomes normative: to Nacho in terms of her “femininity”, and to budding Ayurvedists in terms of her perceived general balance, even proportions, and strength.<\/p>\n
Where do all of these senses, intuitions, and snap-judgments lead?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
What can<\/em> bodies tell us? Ask them. (Putting\u00a0dar\u015bana<\/em>\u00a0on the back burner until spar\u015bana<\/em> and pra\u015bna<\/em>\u00a0weigh\u00a0in.)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
If the class feels comfortable enough (that we\u2019ve all, and especially me as the \u201cauthority\u201d in the room, been transparent about the social construction issues) I keep the slide up and zero in on something very particular, hopefully less-gendered, and seemingly\u00a0functional in scope. I ask the group to consider the difference between Cheryl\u2019s shoulder joints and Olga\u2019s shoulder joints. I ask them what they imagine scapular stabilization is like for each.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho needs to take more care of their shoulders over time?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n
Students are happy to point to Olga.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause she looks hyperflexible\u201d comes the typical answer, \u201cand her profession is going to stress and stretch her tendons and ligaments. She\u2019ll need to work hard to build muscle to protect her joints, or she might wind up in a lot of constriction and pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good answer, as long as we register\u00a0all of the caveats: Cheryl\u2019s shoulders may look more stable, but we don\u2019t know her injury history. If we imagine Cheryl flowing through a sun salutation, we can\u2019t know how much more stress she will put on her shoulders than Olga will, given their different weight distributions, centers of gravity, and the angles at which their arms hang from the joints. On the other side, we don\u2019t know how skillful Olga has become at managing her shoulder stability. It must be considerable, given her profession.<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re generally on-track and unpresumptuous with the shoulder discussion (having proposed that \u201cOlga\u2019s shoulders are more vulnerable\u201d) where would we go from there? I say to\u00a0the group:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s true that Olga wants to have stable shoulders over time \u2013 and we\u2019d have to get clear on our countertransference issues first \u2013 we might want to recommend that she add resistance training and especially rowing into her conditioning routine. But we\u2019d also have a to consider her nutritional needs and digestive function. Between her and Cheryl, who do you think will have an easier time at building and retaining muscle?\u201d<\/p>\n
Everybody points at Cheryl.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell it looks like Cheryl has a \u2018thrifty\u2019 type of metabolism that uses every calorie towards building strength.\u201d This sounds okay.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything else?\u201d I ask. There\u2019s a pause.<\/p>\n
Someone offers: \u201cI wonder whether Olga eats enough. I wonder if she\u2019s anorexic.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fair comment, but it raises even more projection problems. Olga could indeed be anorexic, or she could have a long-standing digestive disorder such as Celiac or Crones that inhibits absorption and stunts growth. She could have high thyroid function that burns through calories way too fast. We might be fooled\u00a0by her Eastern European\u00a0name beside the label\u00a0“gymnast” into conjuring images of a gulag-type training in which she\u2019s been weighed every day since preschool and constantly harassed about the smallest gains of fat on her chest and hips. She could carry all of these influences and have also decided to commit to\u00a0a raw food lifestyle. Or she\u00a0could be burning 4K calories a day in training.\u00a0But we don\u2019t know any of this story. We\u2019ll have to put all of these ideas on hold until we talk to her. Obviously.<\/p>\n
An experienced Ayurvedic practitioner might bypass all of these problems to pick out something that seems to be as phenomenological (and not-socially-constructed) as the difference between Cheryl\u2019s and Olga\u2019s shoulders: the basal temperature differences as evident in their complexion. Cheryl\u2019s rosier cheeks might indicate a stronger digestive fire and therefore stronger tissue-building metabolism. By comparison, Olga seems\u00a0slightly wan in this picture \u2013 a possible indication that her digestion and even appetite are typically\u00a0low. To the practitioner it would be all fine and well to recommend that Olga builds muscle over time, but the first order of business that would even make this possible would be to help her invigorate digestion. But is this any less speculative than supposing Olga\u2019s eating is disordered because of her training culture and heritage? No. But it is at least beginning<\/em> with an embodied sensation: there is something meaningful to be discovered in the difference between the different temperatures that Cheryl and Olga appear to generate. We won\u2019t know more until we meet them, and learn more.<\/p>\n
So with all our efforts so far with these pictures, what do we have left? Little more than this: Cheryl\u2019s and Olga\u2019s physiques, which are so highly conditioned by their sports — but also by our own constructions of meaning, function, and beauty —\u00a0seem<\/em> nonetheless to suggest key structural patterns and possibilities from which we can generate exercise advice. But only if we factor out injuries etc. Further, we have the suspicion<\/em> that weight gain and retention might be a challenge for Olga, but we don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n
Is any of this any better than common sense? What is particularly Ayurvedic about how we\u2019ve encountered these images, resisted their social significations to the extent we were able, and made two very modest observations related to structure and digestive vigour?<\/p>\n
Not much, I’d say. The real Ayurveda \u2013 in all its glory and trouble and marketability \u2013 comes in what follows: the correlation of character and behavioral qualities to physical attributes. Wondering, based on stature and body heat alone, whether Cheryl is more prone to melancholy and is inclined to reach\u00a0out to family for comfort, while Olga is more prone to anxiety, and seeks to soothe her nerves in solitude. Where will this wondering lead the conversation with these two if they were clients?<\/p>\n
Beyond very common-sense appraisals of form and structure, Ayurvedic typology uses the horizontal thinking and intuitive leaping that are natural to every artistic effort but forbidden in science, which must keep its categories of study strictly separated while formulating claims that can be tested. In this way, popular Ayurveda can look very much like the discredited quackery of old physiognomy, which translates roughly as \u201cI know who you are and what you are like by looking at you.\u201d In order for typology to not descend (or return) into physiognomy, which has been used globally for everything from assigning work duties to reading\u00a0the birthmarks\u00a0of reincarnated gurus\u00a0to fascist eugenics, I argue that Ayurvedists have to remain committed to a path of not-knowing, which means limiting the practice of typology to the purpose of simply beginning a conversation about how a person uniquely feels themselves to be in the world<\/em>. And nothing more. The Ayurvedic practitioner knows only enough to help the client ask the questions that will expose (or even create) the patterns that connect their embodied and psychic lives.<\/p>\n
What is typically done is that dar\u015bana<\/em>, the \u201cseeing\u201d of the client in person yields to spar\u015bana<\/em>, touching the client. The visual bias of dar\u015bana \u2013 amplified in our exercise through the photos here \u2013 must now be fully sensualized with touch and hearing. In my practice this begins with holding the client\u2019s hand in the sunlight to examine the flow and texture of lines. I feel the weight of the hand, the stiffness or flexibility of the fingers, the fleshiness of the thumb-mound, and the roundness of the ulnar curve. Each one of these observations gets silently cross-checked for meaning against the library\u00a0of lore that long-term study builds up. Then, I feel into the person\u2019s pulse, and an inner sensation\u00a0emerges that seems to begin a dialogue with what I had previously only seen. I feel for pace, texture, weight, regularity, and what I can only describe as music.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the dialogue follows a coherent line: the kapha structure yields a slower, rounder, more relaxed and fluid pulse.\u00a0But often it does not. A person with the kapha structure can present a thin, wispy, fast, inconstant pulse. Is there something wrong here, or is this “innate” to them? (More on prak\u1e5bti<\/em> and vik\u1e5bti<\/em> below.) I want\u00a0to hold the dissonance as long as I can, because I’ve learned that more dissonance equals less projection. If I want to encounter the other with depth, I have to welcome dissonance. And as the third part of traditional assessment begins \u2013 pra\u015bna<\/em>\u00a0(the interview) \u2013 I have to avoid falling into that world of cognitive fallacy, transference and countertransference. I have to hold the physical data lightly enough to not let it distort the emotional and narrative data that will now start flowing, but not so lightly that I reinforce the body-mind split that Ayurveda is uniquely positioned to heal. I have to hold the fact that biology <\/em>is psychology, but not destiny, and that neither are fixed, or ever entirely knowable.<\/em><\/p>\n
On a beginner\u2019s level, with students working with photographs or with each other, I encourage an imaginative transition from dar\u015bana to spar\u015bana by telling students to imagine hugging\u00a0the client, chest to chest. How would putting your arms around Rulon\u00a0feel? How would this add depth and texture and empathy to what may be distorted or minimized through visually-based stereotyping? What might it tell you about the types of encouragement he might benefit from in physical activity? I tell students that when I feel a pulse, a certain quiet develops in my office. Perhaps the client feels \u201cheard\u201d in a new way. Throughout the consultation, I tell my students, I\u2019m careful to be transparent and verbal about what I\u2019m doing and feeling, because this makes it less likely that the client will feel invaded or objectified by my presumed expertise, or as though they\u2019ve had their identity secretly defined, as with blood in little vials that go to a lab no one ever sees.<\/p>\n
Spar\u015bana can confirm, enrich, or problematize dar\u015bana, but the whole encounter remains in the present phenomenological moment, until you start asking questions. Then cognition seems to stretch time and identity out into past and future.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pra\u015bna that fills in the\u00a0context and background. If the Ayurvedic practitioner is aware of of the fallacies, transferences and countertransferences the meeting will provoke, patient and mindful pra\u015bna might be able to sift visceral intuition from social conditioning. Dar\u015bana may not tell us any more than\u00a0advertising does. Yet it makes a loud impression that\u2019s not entirely discountable, being partially rooted in our preverbal selves. It must be held patiently as the intersubjective encounter develops what advertising can\u2019t: intimacy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Undoing constitution as identity<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Above, I wrote:\u00a0I have to hold the fact that biology is psychology, but not destiny, and that neither are fixed, or ever entirely knowable.<\/em>\u00a0Further above, I wrote:\u00a0Typically presented, Ayurveda is said to be able to identify the essential psychosomatic qualities of a person. This is impossible, because there are none.<\/em>\u00a0If good typological practice is possible, it will resist the overdetermining tendencies of not only the complex of fallacies\u00a0I\u2019ve outlined, it will resist something much more deeply ingrained: our yearning for a stable identity.<\/p>\n
There is an\u00a0excellent and beloved Indian-born vaidya<\/em>\u00a0working in the U.S. who has arguably done more to help globalize Ayurvedic knowledge than any other living practitioner today. My clients include several people whose first encounter with Ayurvedic medicine were with this doctor anywhere from five to twenty years ago. Without exception, each person is able to report in decimal-point form the doctor\u2019s assessment of their constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m Vata 3.1, Pitta 2.8, and Kapha 2.2, but I have a pitta vik\u1e5bti<\/em>\u201d is a typical self-description.<\/p>\n
I ask them what this means to them. They often paraphrase the assessment: \u201cVata is highest, followed by pitta and then kapha, but vata and pitta are closest. But he said I have to be careful of my fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
I ask them what they do with this sometimes decade-old information. If the doctor had prescribed supportive herbs for them, many will be still taking them faithfully, all these years later, often going to great trouble to secure their supply when they move or as various herbal companies go in and out of existence. I ask if they know what the herbs are for. \u201cSort of.\u201d Did the doctor suggest a deadline for taking them and checking back in? \u201cI can\u2019t remember,\u201d or \u201cI never made it back to see him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I ask: \u201cSo what have you learned about taking care of yourself constitutionally since then?\u201d Sometimes there\u2019s a well-informed answer, but this is rare. I\u2019m sure that\u00a0in part\u00a0this speaks to the na\u00efvet\u00e9\u00a0of popular Ayurvedic practice outside of India today, in which\u00a0subjects often travel several time zones to meet with well-regarded practitioners for\u00a0ephemerally brief consultation, but\u00a0then are largely left without cultural support for what they are trying to learn. I do not know how much of the good doctor’s nuance was\u00a0missed by his clients, but I’m sure he\u00a0is painfully\u00a0aware of how difficult his pioneering efforts are.<\/p>\n
And yet something about these brief interactions was\u00a0very meaningful to these clients. The process\u00a0gave them something to hold onto, something that sounded precise and scientific and yet was imbued with mystical power. They spoke of the encounter with reverence, even awe. For many it was a highlight in a period of more youthful self-discovery. It often involved a yearning\u00a0for new-but-ancient identity that medical anthropologist Jean Langford (2002) describes as a particularly western desire when encountering Ayurveda. One wonders if the popular modern fascination with constitution has been aided by Indian vaidyas\u00a0acquiescing to the Western request for new Ayurvedic self-perceptions.<\/p>\n
When these former clients of the famous doctor come to me, they are often looking to reconnect with that experience of being named with a\u00a0label that recalls the Vedic gods of earth, fire, and wind. In a way, they come to be blessed. They often assume that I will\u00a0feel the same uniqueness in their pulse as the doctor did, because as Ayurvedic practitioners, we must be tuned into the same unified wisdom that Knows Such Things, instead of two artisans of vastly different skill and orientation who each have their own ways of asking questions to expose patterns. I have the feeling they want me to look into their souls. I disappoint them when all I can feel is pulse textures, vocal tones, breath rhythms, and the twisting and unfinished story that weaves them all together. I can\u00a0never know who they are, much less say. But I can reflect back to them the patterns they seem to be presenting, and then ask the questions that may weave them together. It’s a start.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0yearning for a more stable identity isn\u2019t just romantic or orientalist. It\u00a0shows up in\u00a0the recent\u00a0biomedical race to unlock the human genome. Not\u00a0so long ago the gospel was that if we can crack our DNA, we\u2019ll understand who we are and what our destiny is. But this was before epigenetics \u2013 the study of changes in gene expression that are not caused by changes in DNA \u2013 began to make it all relative again. The preliminary findings of the field suggest that the very gene sequences (where \u201cgenes\u201d = \u201cprak\u1e5bti\u201d) that we once\u00a0described as though they determined our disease vulnerabilities are not only prone to expression or suppression, they can literally be rewritten<\/em> by both environmental factors and behavioral choices. In simple terms: epigenetics is the study of how software rebuilds the hardware that runs it. It is a non-dual science if I ever saw one.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Ayurveda has always made a distinction that might predict the difference between genetics (hardware) and epigenetics (software). \u201cNatal constitution\u201d (prak\u1e5bti) is said to be in constant dialogue with the \u201cforce of change\u201d (vik\u1e5bti). Vik\u1e5bti is used to describe an enormous range of variability: seasonal illnesses, pregnancy, times of life\u2026 but also the results of injury or trauma, chronic digestive distress, and long-term diseases that Ayurveda depicts as distorting natal constitution beyond recognition, perhaps to the point of erasure. In the three last stages out of a possible six in Ayurveda\u2019s etiological scheme, the tissues are said to become gradually indistinguishable from the qualities of the disease itself. The software of circumstance rebuilds the hardware we thought equaled\u00a0destiny.<\/p>\n
Separating out prak\u1e5bti from vik\u1e5bti is therefore a highly dubious proposition. Trying to access \u201cpure\u201d prak\u1e5bti is so complex, buried as it is under a thousand changing conditions, that some traditional practitioners insist that reading it from a pulse requires the pulse to be taken under the appearance of highly controlled circumstances: let’s say, at\u00a0four in the morning, facing east, at the end of a three-day fast, etc. Or there are systems of divination: entire books have been written about \u201cAyurvedic Astrology\u201d, proposing that our genetic inheritance is written in our birth horoscopes. Such esoteric drives communicate the paradoxical notion that prak\u1e5bti is so difficult to discern by those with mystical powers that it must<\/em> be real. This dribbles down into the clear bias in contemporary Ayurveda towards valuing prak\u1e5bti as the heart of a person\u2019s identity \u2013 a kind of \u201ctrue self\u201d that can be called upon, marketed to, surrendered to. A self blessed by a call-center worker for the Chopra Center, or a bona-fide\u00a0vaidya from India who you mistook for a pre-modern person but who actually uses the same smart phone\u00a0as you do. A doctor you imagined was able to see into your eternal soul and give you something to hang onto in a fracturing world.<\/p>\n
Epigenetics is only one of the many contemporary disciplines that blows Ayurvedic (and every other) essentialism out of the water. DNA is no longer the stable coding structure we once knew. And then there\u2019s the neurology of brain plasticity (Doidge, 2007) and the social self (Hood, 2013), both of which show that the very root of the central nervous system \u2013 the heart of our agency and pretensions to free will \u2013 is framed and programmed intersubjectively through countless relationships, interactions, and mirrorings. The feeling that we make ourselves is an illusion. The feeling of an \u201coriginal me\u201d prior to experience is an illusion. Experience makes us. The changing world makes us.<\/em> Yes, we are running hard genetic programmes, but those programmes are downloading apps from the biosphere day by day. It\u2019s all looking like vik\u1e5bti now.<\/p>\n
![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Screen-shot-2014-05-09-at-12.50.57-PM-242x300.png\")
<\/a>Olga Karmansky in 2012, aged 25.<\/p><\/div>\n
What would popular Ayurveda lose if it had to give up prak\u1e5bti, or rather redefined it as a range of possible change<\/em>? What would happen if practitioners related to clients as if everything was fluid with\u00a0vik\u1e5bti? Would this encourage them to pay exclusive attention to the minutest sensations of change? Would they let go finally of their instinct to determine\u00a0who the subject is and who they should become?<\/p>\n
Let’s come back to our athletes for a moment, and flesh them some more complexity.<\/p>\n
Schatz’s book was published in 2002. Olga Karmansky was 15 at the time. She’s actually American. She’s gone on to a successful performing arts career on Broadway and beyond. Her BMI and complexion have have clearly changed, and she seems utterly relaxed and affable<\/a>. Even grounded. If you click through to the video she shows the same ridonkulous mobility she’s probably always had, but her movements are powerfully contained and controlled. Her facial structure presents a number of broad and rounded kapha-like features that I hadn’t seen in the previous image. Were her teenage years one long vata\u00a0vik\u1e5bti?<\/p>\n
- The clustering illusion<\/em>: to actively look for apparent\u00a0streaks of data (phantom patterns) in large random samples. I.e.: clustering \u201csquare frame\u201d, \u201cbroad teeth\u201d, and \u201cthick hair\u201d into a \u201ckapha\u201d designation, while downplaying\u00a0data beyond the cluster.<\/li>\n
- The anchoring effect<\/em>: the tendency to rely too heavily on a single datum when assessing a system. I.e., a person\u2019s square frame becomes the determining factor in assigning \u201ckapha\u201d as the primary constitution.<\/li>\n
- The popular and now global practice of Ayurvedic constitutional typology (prak\u1e5bti) is particularly<\/em> vulnerable to pseudoscientific claims, cognitive fallacies, essentialism, unchecked transference and countertransference, and blindness to how bodies are assigned meanings through social construction. These flaws are often amplified or excused by romantic Orientalism.<\/li>\n
![\"different-body-types-olympic-athletes-howard-schatz-14\"](\"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/different-body-types-olympic-athletes-howard-schatz-14.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n