The Key to Pulling out of an Emotional Nosedive

An Ayurvedic Approach

According to Ayurvedic cosmology, everything seen and unseen in the Universe is comprised of some combination of the five great elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether.

The elements themselves can be broken down into “gunas”, or qualities, all of which are in listed pairs. Some of them are:

• Cool/hot

• Heavy/light

• Dry/wet

• Mobile/Static

• Dull/Sharp

• Hard/Soft

Using Ayurvedic philosophy, we can describe everything in our world as a combination of these qualities. In fact, we already do—a “cool” relationship, a “dull” job, a “hot” topic. These descriptions can point us right back to the primary elements involved:

• Earth is primarily cold, dry, and heavy.

• Water is cold, heavy, and wet.

• Fire is hot, light, and dry.

• Air is cold, light, dry, and hard.

• Ether is cold, light, dry, and soft.

This philosophy of how we are made up (a creation philosophy, essentially) includes the planets, stars, trees, animals, dirt, rivers, and plants. It includes our physical bodies, our lifestyles, our food, and our relationships.

It also includes our emotions.

Applied to the emotions, we can see that sadness, which might be described as wet and heavy, points to an imbalance of earth and water. Anger is hot and bright, which aligns it with the element of fire. Fear and anxiety are often light, ungrounded, and cold, which connect them to the elements of air and ether.

These emotional imbalances are often temporary. Like bruises, they tend to heal themselves over time, with little to no help from us.

Other times, the emotions might need a little guidance to move along their way, so we can return to our natural state of peace and equanimity. This is the primary goal of Ayurveda, which uses the theory “healing through opposites” as its primary treatment method to brings us back into, and maintain, health (“Svastha”, in Sanskrit).

In practice, this looks like this:

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