What's Your Dosha? Why Western Medicine Gets It Wrong

Ayurveda for Caregivers: Understanding the 5 Elements & the Doshas Behind Stress 🌿

Ayurveda doesn’t ask what’s wrong with you. It asks a much kinder question: what are you made of?

In this video, I explain how Ayurveda understands caregiver stress through the five elements of nature and how these elements combine into the three doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.

If caregiving has left you feeling anxious, irritable, exhausted, or numb, this isn’t a personal failure. It’s your system responding to very real conditions.

In this video, you’ll learn:

✔️ The five elements in Ayurveda (space, air, fire, water, earth)

✔️ How these elements shape your body, mind, and nervous system

✔️ How the doshas (Vata, Pitta, Kapha) form from the elements

✔️ How each dosha shows up as a different caregiving stress pattern

✔️ Why caregiving doesn’t create imbalance — it reveals it

✔️ Why Ayurveda works so well for caregivers when generic self-care fails

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Ayurveda do not ask what's wrong with you. Ayurveda is going to ask what are you made of? What does that mean? Well, as a caregiver, I'm sure that you have used to be assessed, you've been evaluated, and you have been even told what to do and when to do it. Well, in Ayurveda, we see things a little bit differently. If you come for an Ayurvedic assessment, for example, I will ask you some questions to determine what is your nature. So that's what I want to talk about today, about nature.

And what is the best place to talk about nature? Well, by being in nature.

So in today's video, we're going to talk about nature. First, we're going to talk about the five elements. And then we'll see how Ayurveda combined these five elements to create what we call doshas. And then we'll see how these doshas inform your style of caregiving

Hi, if you are new to my channel, my name is Jean-Francois. I'm a nurse, an Ayurvedic health counselor, a yoga teacher, a Vedic astrologer, and I help caregivers of aging parents getting closer to their true nature so they can get grounded and can take care of their loved one.

So before we talk about all the doshas, vata, pitta, kapha

I really want to talk about these five caregiving do not happen outside of nature. It's really follow the rhythm of nature.

Your fatigue, your emotions, your patience, your nervous system everything follows the law of nature.

In Ayurveda, everything in the universe is made of the five elements, including your body and your mind. The five elements are space, air, fire, water,

They are not symbolic elements. They really describe qualities that we can observe. So let's make it simple.

The first element is the element of space. Space is room, it's silence, it's emptiness. So in your body, if you think about that, space is present in your stomach or in the space in between your organs, or just in your joint as well. In order for your joint to move, you need space. And in your mind,

The mind is huge. The mind is vast. And it's also maybe the space in between your thoughts.

The second element is the element of air. Air is responsible for breathing, it's responsible for movement, and it's responsible for speed as well. So in your body, it's simply the action of breathing the air through your nose that's going through your lungs. But in your mind, it could be actually the speed at the mind goes. So sometimes you have one idea, and just in a few seconds later, you are far from that idea.

So the third element is the element of fire, like the sun on my skin right now. Fire is the element of transformation, metabolism, but also focus. So in your body, obviously, it's everything you're going to eat and it's going to be transformed into energy. It's your digestive fire.

in your mind is the fire that transform all the experience into insight.

Water is the element of cohesion. It's fluidity, it's connection, it's emotion. Basically water holds things together. So in your body, obviously we are made of water, so there's lots of water that holds everything in our body.

And in your mind, it's simply the ability to be flexible and change your mind when it's necessary.

Earth is structure. It's actually stability and endurance and support. Earth is what gives you the strength to keep going. In your body, it's obviously your bone, your muscle. And in your mind, it could be either the wall that you built in your mind and you get trapped in, but it also could be the boundaries that you can fix for yourself in order to get better.

So now let's talk about doshas. Doshas are simply combinations of these elements. They are not personality type, are not boxes, they are not diagnosis, they are simply combinations. So the first combination is Vata and it's a combination of air and space. The second one is Pitta and it's a combination of fire and water.

And the last one, Kapha, or Kapha, is a combination of earth and water.

So doshas are a combination of the elements and caregiving doesn't remove you from the element. Actually, it amplifies them. If you think about that, long day, interrupted sleep, emotional responsibility, decision fatigue, all of that shifts actually the balance of those elements and the force inside you.

Certain of these elements become excessive or depleted, So it creates imbalance. So that's where the Dosha comes in.

Alright, so let's look at how it showed up in real life for caregivers.

So let's talk about space and air. Remember air and space are the combination for Vata. So when air and space is increased in your body and in your mind, we see a Vata dominant stress response. So caregiver often says, won't shut off.

I'm exhausted but I can't sleep, I feel scattered and overwhelmed. And this is not weakness. there's too much movement, too much space and not enough grounding.

So when fire becomes a little bit excessive in the system, we see a dominant of pitta dosha. So how does that show up? caregiver who's going to be like, If I don't do the stuff myself, it's not going to be done properly. I'm very frustrated. I don't know why they don't understand.

I'm doing everything and no one's help. You can see it's really not an anger issue. It might be too much heat, too much intensity in the system too much responsibility without release.

And finally, the last dosha, the Kapha dosha, when water and earth become too predominant in the system, we're going to have some caregiver, we're going to feel very stagnant and heavy. someone saying like, I feel totally drained or I don't feel myself anymore or I'm getting stuck. I'm numb. I'm just getting through the day.

be seen as laziness, but actually it's not laziness. It's actually an accumulation in the system. You are carrying too much and there's not enough movement.

Right, so here's the thing that I want you to hear. Care giving doesn't create imbalance. It just reveals what are your already dominant elements in nature. And obviously it can get imbalanced.

Ayurveda doesn't ask you to push harder. Ayurveda didn't even ask you to fix it for yourself.

It asks a way nicer question. It asks what element needs to be nurtured, what element needs to be supported in your body. And once you know that, then you will be able to work on it.

So this is why Ayurveda works so well for caregivers, because we are not trying to fight any symptoms, we are trying to determine what is the element that you need to support and you need to nurture. And once you know that, then caregiving becomes more sustainable, less depleting and way more human. So if you want to book an Ayurvedic consultation with me, well, you'll find the information in the notes. And I'm looking forward to see you in the next video. Ciao.