Flowing With the Dosha Clock (Dinacharya Basics)

So this is really when we think, “Okay, well, what do we do about this? What do we do about this idea of hormone imbalance?” And when we think about living in a way that is more rhythmic, in alignment with the hormonally female body in particular… but everyone has a circadian rhythm. And how we move through our day, this is what we’re doing most often, right? So how we move through our day can determine whether our system is moving with the natural flow of prana, or the life force of nature, or whether we’re moving against it. So if you imagine swimming with the current if you’re in a river—or swimming upstream—I used to use the metaphor of the fish swimming upstream. Like, this little fish is swimming upstream and they’re struggling really hard, and this woman came up to me afterwards, she said, “I’m a fisher— I’m actually a fisherwoman. The fish swim upstream to get food, so I think you need to change your analogy.” So, I’m going to talk about us swimming upstream. So if you imagine you’re swimming upstream, you’re struggling, you’re hyper-focused on just trying to get up the stream, you’re probably not enjoying it very much. You’re getting much more tired and exhausted. But if you’re swimming with the current, you are going to have that flow of nature at your back. You’re going to be carried by that. You’re going to be much less stressed, you’re going to be much less tired, and you may actually be able to look around and enjoy the experience along the way. So that is very similar to what Dinacharya is—this ability to live our day-to-day lives in a way that our body is supported by nature rather than being stressed by kind of flowing, like when swimming upstream, flowing against the natural rhythm of nature. So those doshas we talk about—if we look at the clock, what we call the “dosha clock”—every four hours the doshic energetics are shifting. So we have, from 6:00 to 10:00 AM, Kapha dosha—water, earth elements. We wake up, we have this kind of… maybe we have a little bit of heaviness and there’s a little bit of that heavy Kapha energy, but as we get going, we actually have more stamina during that time of day. So our energy may be slow but steady. This is a good time for movements and hydration. If we start working around this time, we have a fair amount of mental stability. When we get to Pitta time, this is 10:00 to 2:00 PM. Our body is a reflection of nature. When the sun is at the highest point in the sky—the external embodiment of the fire element—the internal fire element, our digestive fire, is going to be the strongest. So this is when we want to be eating our largest meal of the day, with the most fats and proteins. What that’s going to do is give our body stability to continue through the day. We’re going to digest more deeply at this time than if we were eating fats and proteins when we don’t have digestive strength. We move into the Vata hours of the day, 2:00 to 6:00 PM. This is lightness and mobility. We don’t typically have a lot of mental stamina to do intense mental work—you want that in Kapha and Pitta hours. Once we get to Vata, you may find you get a little more tired. I feel a little more spacey and maybe don’t have the stamina to do long-term work. But I can—what I’ll do is respond to emails at that time, or check things off that are easy to work with rather than require a lot of mental stamina. We move into around sunset, 6:00 PM—which varies obviously—but those Kapha hours, where energy starts to move downward. Our body’s getting ready for sleep. We don’t have a lot of digestive strength during this time. Kapha is water and earth element. It’s cool. Water puts out fire. So as the moon rises and the sun goes down, we don't have a lot of digestive strength, so we don’t want to eat heavy foods. We don’t want a lot of food. Ideally we eat by 7:00 PM so food can fully digest. What’s going to happen is our food digests and then we’re able to actually feel our tiredness and get into bed ideally by 10:00 PM because you then get into Pitta hours of 10:00 to 2:00. Now Pitta purifies. Fire element purifies. This is when the body is cleansing and purifying physically and psychologically and emotionally. So it moves through this period of purification. We sleep better when we get to bed earlier, especially if we have a history of high cortisol. When women are waking between 2:00 to 6:00 AM—like 2:00 to 4:00 AM—that’s common when we’re stressed, have hormone imbalance, or are moving through menopause, because Vata phase—the air/space element—has more lightness in the system. Cortisol is also low as we move into sleep and the early part of night. Then it starts to naturally rise around 2:00 AM. If we don’t have sex hormones to buffer cortisol, we’ll be awake between 2 and 4. Our minds might be racing or we feel anxious. It may be hard to get back to sleep. During this time our body is preparing for elimination in the morning. Our body is purified; we’re moving into Vata hours; we’re getting ready to wake up and cleanse the system.