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Ayurveda and Essential Oils to Balance Doshas

Essential oils in ayurveda complement diet and lifestyle choices to balance your body based on your dosha and sub-doshas. Let's look at ayurveda and essential oils.

The Humors (Doshas) of Ayurveda

Ayurveda has five concepts, called elements:

Earth represents solid matter (bones, teeth, and tissue).
Water represents the fluids in the body.
Fire represents bodily processes such as digestion.
Wind represents gaseous processes in the body, including breathing.
Ether represents space in the body.

These elements express processes, not absolutes, and combine to form three energies (humors or doshas) that govern the body:

Vata (ether and air) is cold and dry.
Pitta (fire and water) is hot and wet.
Kapha (water and earth) is cold and wet.

You have a predominant dosha, plus each dosha has five sub-doshas, giving you a unique constitution (or prikriti). Ayurveda treats you based not only on your symptoms but also on your constitution. Thus, two people with the same symptoms may receive different treatments.

How do ayurveda and essential oils work together?

Marma Points of Ayurveda (Lad and Durve, 2015, chapter 15) explains that essential oils have an affinity to various structures of the body. Applying essential oils to specific marma points engages the sensory perceptions of smell and touch. Essential oils act through the olfactory bulb in the nose and chemoreceptors under the skin to change the body's neurochemistry and trigger the release of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides. The influence of oils comes from three fields of action:

Rasa (taste: sweet, sour, pungent, astringent, bitter, or salty)
Virya (energy: heating or cooling)
Vipaka (post-digestive taste: sweet, sour, or pungent)

Ayurveda and Essential Oils

A dedicated resource about ayurveda and essential oils is Ayurveda & Aromatherapy: The Earth Essential Guide to Ancient Wisdom and Modern Healing. This book explains how to use essential oils in a way consistent with ayurvedic principles.

For example, essential oils either add heat or have a cooling effect on the body. Blue (german) chamomile is cooling, lavender is neutral, and thyme is hot. So, thyme would increase pitta, which is hot. Neutral oils balance the body and can either cool you down or warm you up.

Ayurveda also classifies essential oils as either wet or dry. Wet oils (for example, geranium and rose) mix well with water, while dry oils (for example, citrus oils and pine) float more on the surface of water. Because vata is dry, dry oils increase vata and wet oils decrease it, while wet oils increase pitta and kapha. Again, some oils, such as lavender, are neutral.

The book goes on to list essential oils appropriate for specific imbalances and also gives you ways to use the oils, including ayurveda massage.

Ayurveda and Aromatherapy for Dosha Imbalance

Vata is supported by sweet, salty, and sour, and aggravated by drying, bitter, and pungent.

Pitta is supported by bitter and sweet, and aggravated by pungent, salty, and sour.

Kapha is supported by warming, stimulating, pungent, bitter, drying, and aggravated by sweet, sour, and salty.

Balancing Essential Oils for Each Dosha

Vata benefits from essential oils that are warming, stimulating, grounding, and moistening. Warming and stimulating oils include clove, cinnamon, cypress, eucalyptus, galangal, ginger, melissa, nirgundi, and wintergreen. Fragrances that are too strong or perfumy may irritate vata. Grounding oils for vata include sandalwood, rose, jasmine, and spikenard. Also consider oils beneficial to the nerves, lungs, colon, skin, and bones.

Pitta benefits from essential oils that are sweet and cooling, including cooling and calming floral scents, such as champa, jasmine, rose, violet, and mimosa. Applied to the third eye, sandalwood is one of the best oils for pitta. Other beneficial cooling oils when applied to the head are lavender, peppermint, and vetiver (khus). Also consider oils beneficial to the cardiovascular system and digestive system, including the liver.

Kapha benefits from essential oils that are pungent, drying, warm, mildly simulating, and expectorant (facilitate expulsion of phlegm or mucus from the respiratory tract), such as vacha (calamus), rosemary, sage, spruce, pine, nutmeg, myrrh, patchouli, ginger, eucalyptus, clove, cinnamon, camphor, black pepper, and basil.

Sources: The Aromatherapy Companion by aromatherapist Victoria Edwards, Marma Points of Ayurveda, and Essential Oils: A Handbook for Aromatherapy Practice.

How to Balance Vata Dosha

Vata-Reducing Bath Salts

5 drops tangerine essential oil
5 drops ginger essential oil
5 drops neroli essential oil
5 drops lemongrass essential oil
2 tablespoons carrier oil
5 drops vitamin E oil
3 cups salts (sea, Epsom, pink Himalayan, etc.)

Blend all the oils in a small glass container.
Place the salts in a dark-color glass container (minimum 3-cup size) that has a tight-fitting lid.
Stir the oil blend into the salts.
Place lid on container and let sit in a cool, dark place for 24 hours.
Stir mixture again.
Use 1/2 cup in a bath. Store salts in a cool, dark place for up to 3 months.

Source: Essential Oils for Emotional Wellbeing

Vata Anointing Blend

10 drops sandalwood essential oil
2 drops cinnamon essential oil
4 drops rose essential oil
2 tablespoons hazelnut oil
2 tablespoons sesame oil

Source: The Aromatherapy Companion

How to Balance Pitta Dosha

Pitta Balancing Massage Oil

2 ounces (4 tablespoons) organic coconut oil
6 drops vetiver essential oil
5 drops lavender essential oil
4 drops rose essential oil
3 drops champa (Michelia champaca) oil
2 drops clary sage essential oil
1 drop rose geranium essential oil
1 drop lime essential oil

Source: Radha Crawley, "Exploring Ayurveda: The Language of Nature in Summer," NAHA Aromatherapy Journal, Summer 2013.2, p. 26.

Pitta-Reducing Bath Salts

5 drops coriander essential oil
5 drops petitgrain essential oil
5 drops myrtle essential oil
5 drops tangerine essential oil
2 tablespoons carrier oil
5 drops vitamin E oil
3 cups salts (sea, Epsom, or pink Himalayan)

Blend all the oils in a small glass container.
Place the salts in a dark-color glass container (minimum 3-cup size) that has a tight-fitting lid.
Stir the oil blend into the salts.
Place lid on container and let sit in a cool, dark place for 24 hours.
Stir mixture again.
Use 1/2 cup in a bath. Store salts in a cool, dark place for up to 3 months.

Source: Essential Oils for Emotional Wellbeing

Pitta Anointing Blend

10 drops sandalwood essential oil
8 drops lavender essential oil
2 drops rose essential oil
2 drops violet leaf absolute
2 tablespoons olive oil

Source: The Aromatherapy Companion

How to Balance Kapha Dosha

Kapha Balancing Massage Oil

2 ounces (4 tablespoons) organic sesame oil
5 drops rosemary ct. verbenone essential oil
3 drops Eucalyptus smithii essential oil
3 drops Eucalyptus dives essential oil
5 drops tulsi (holy basil ) essential oil
6 drops Himalayan cinnamon (Cinnamomum cecidodaphne) essential oil
5 drops lemon essential oil

Source: Radha Crawley, "Exploring Ayurveda: The Language of Nature in Spring," NAHA Aromatherapy Journal, Spring 2013.1, p. 15.

Kapha-Reducing Bath Salts

Makes 3 cups.

3 drops marjoram essential oil
5 drops cardamom essential oil
5 drops clary sage essential oil
7 drops sweet orange essential oil
2 tablespoons carrier oil
5 drops vitamin E oil
3 cups salts (such as sea, Epsom, or pink Himalayan)

Blend all the oils in a small glass container.
Place the salts in a dark-color glass container (minimum 3-cup size) that has a tight-fitting lid.
Stir the oil blend into the salts.
Place lid on container and let sit in a cool, dark place for 24 hours.
Stir mixture again.
Use 1/2 cup in a bath. Store salts in a cool, dark place for up to 3 months.

Source: Essential Oils for Emotional Wellbeing

Kapha Anointing Blend