Are you Sattvic, Rajasic or Tamasic?

"Sattvic healing uses Nature, the life force, and the power of the cosmic mind through such treatment methods as herbs, vegetarian diet, mantra and meditation.  Health is maintained by sattvic living, which is living in harmony with Nature and our inner Self, cultivating purity, clarity, and peace.

The gunas show our mental and spiritual state: sattva, rajas and tamas.

Sattva is the quality of intelligence, virtue and goodness and creates harmony, balance and stability. Sattva provides happiness and contentment of a lasting nature.  It is the principle of clarity, wideness, and peace,  the force of love that unites all things together.

Rajas is the quality of change, activity and turbulence.  It introduces a disequilibrium that upsets an existing balance. Rajas is motivated in its action, ever seeking a goal or an end that gives it power  It possesses outward motion and causes self-seeking action that leads to fragmentation and disintegration. While in the short term rajas is stimulating and provides pleasure,  it quickly results in pain and suffering.  It is the force of passion that causes distress and conflict.

Tamas is the quality of dullness, darkness and inertia and is heavy, veiling, or obstructing in its action.  Tamas brings about ignorance and delusion in the mind and promotes insensitivity, too much sleep and loss of awareness. It is the principle of materiality or unconsciousness that causes consciousness to be veiled.

[Source: "How to Balance your Consciousness: Understanding How the Three Gunas Affect Healing of Body, Mind and Soul"  by Dr David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) from his book Ayurveda and the Mind.  He is Director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and the author of many books.  For more information see the Institute's website: www.Vedanet.com]