The majority of our lives revolve a lot around how we feel; we want to feel good; we hate feeling bad, low, down and trying to get out of it, but we don't know how.

Is our pursuit of happiness an illusion? Why can't we just feel amazing and finish? Who is responsible for how we feel?

What are the Gunas?

Guna is a Sanskrit word which translates as quality, property, and peculiarity.

The gunas feature in the Yoga philosophy and Ayurveda alike as the universal qualities of

balance – called sattva
activity/excitement – called rajas
inertia – called tamas.

According to Yoga and Ayurveda, these universal qualities are within us and everywhere around us. They govern day and night; they are in our food.

We experience the gunas through how we feel; we feel the play of the gunas.

For sure, we are multidimensional beings. The way we feel right now results from every experience from the moment we were born to the present day.

This is a simplified version, offering you some food for thought.

Let's have a Look at the Individual Gunas.

Sattva – Balance, clarity, lightness.

When we feel all of the above, we are in a state where we can deal with whatever comes. In a state without drama, we look at a situation and try to solve it to the best ability. Whatever the outcome, we can accept it. Sattva has no expectations.

Rajas – Activity, excitement, expectations.

Imagine a busy day at work, organising, analysing, planning, setting deadlines, and having expectations on how things should run. All goes well and to plan; we are happy and excited, and life is excellent. If something doesn't go to plan, or someone we rely on does not play their part to our expectations, frustration, irritability, anger, and stress will follow. One minute life was perfect. The next minute, all hell broke loose.

Tamas – inertia, heaviness, darkness, steadiness.

We feel grounded and stuck; nothing seems to work. We expect others to change our situation, see ourselves as victims, and are depressed.

I am confident that you have experienced all of the above. Upon reflection, you might notice that there is one quality that you experience more frequently than others, like a default quality, right? According to Jyoti, the Vedic astrology, the day, time and location of our birth determine a guna with which we have the most affinity, our birth guna, our default guna.

How does all that relate to our Well-being?

The Yoga philosophy is based on the thought that these qualities are naturally present; everything can be broken down into one of the gunas.

The gunas are in a play. They fluctuate. Have you ever experienced that you felt totally down, with no motivation whatsoever? Life was all doom and gloom? Then the phone rings, you pick up, it's your bestie, and you start talking, and suddenly, everything is shifting; you begin laughing, joking. When you hang up, you feel motivated, get up and start doing, as if nothing happened. Yes? Sounds familiar?

The first realisation needs to be: Everything is in flux; nothing stays as it is.

This is a given and beyond our capabilities to influence. And it is because of this flux we are not constantly feeling amazing!

The Gunas throughout the Day.

The days change to night, the night to day …

The early morning hours have sattvic qualities. They are light and clear; there are no impressions yet of the day. The day is still pure.

The day itself has rajasic qualities. We go out to work, are busy, meet people, and go through the motions.

The night is tamasic. The heaviness encourages us to slow down, induces rest and sleep, and brings steadiness.

So, we naturally experience this three daily. If we were only in one quality all the time, our life as we know it wouldn't exist.

Patanjali mentions in the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras, Sutra 15, "… and the constant conflict amongst the three gunas, which control the mind."

All three qualities play their innate part. They are all essential for us.

Next time you go shopping, add some of these sattvic food items to your basket.

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Can we utilise Gunas as Tools?

Can we influence the way we feel?

As the three gunas have their natural time and part during the day, why do we sometimes feel heavy and down during the day?

How we live our lives and what we eat impacts the gunas too.

For example, if we mainly eat the food of tamasic quality, such as meat (beef, pork, lamb), old, stale, highly processed, canned and fermented food, overripe food, mushrooms, eggs, and drink alcohol. We strengthen and support the tamasic quality in us. Let's combine this with sleeping late into the morning or until lunch, watching a lot of TV, and lying on the sofa. In that case, we increase the tamasic qualities even more.

So, a balanced tamas brings steadiness, grounding, and endurance.

An imbalanced tamas brings depression, lethargy, ignorance, procrastination, and confusion.

The quality of tamas veils the mind in ignorance. This, in turn, deludes and binds all embodied beings through carelessness, laziness and oversleeping. BG 14, 8

Please note that neither of the gunas is good nor bad. Sometimes we need to invite heaviness into our lives to balance, for example, feeling spacy or too light. Then any of the tamasic food items or activities are great.

However, when this becomes our default lifestyle, we will feel increasingly heavy, unmotivated and expect others to do things for us.

Likewise with rajas, if we eat predominantly rajasic food, like sour fruits, nightshade vegetables, cauliflower, spinach, pungent spices, processed sugar, coffee, chicken, and fish, combined with competitiveness either at work or in sports, multitasking, we support the rajasic quality. We need excitement, adrenaline rushes, and intensity; we get bored quickly and feel irritable even without a particular reason.

The balanced rajas are us being active, organised, and motivated. When it is imbalanced, which means we focus on the above foods and activities, we get irritable, frustrated, aggressive, pushy, and overthink everything.

The seed of passion is rajas (restless activity), Arjuna, which gives rise to thirst and, thereafter, the bondage of (selfish) attachment. This, in turn, leads to compulsive behaviour. BG 14, 7

Sattvic is the same. Although this is the quality, Yoga favours because when we feel sattvic, we are content, we make sound decisions, our mind is clear our tolerance levels are high, which means that our stress levels are low. So, one would think this is what it is all about and the end of the Yogic quest, right? The Yoga philosophy, Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita stress that we can get attached to sattva, which will create problems in its own rites.

Although the sattvic guna is pure, luminous and without obstructions, it still bends you by giving rise to happiness and knowledge to which the mind readily becomes attached. BG 14, 6

The aim of Yoga is that, as we can't avoid the play of the Gunas, we let them play without getting involved with them; we know they are there; we need them all, and we allow them to flow without ourselves getting involved or disturbed.

Sattva binds you to happiness, rajas bind you to compulsive behaviour, and tamas, by veiling your mind, bind you to confused thinking and bad judgment. BG 14, 9

How can we make Use of the Gunas?

Usually, we are in the flow of things. But we can get stuck in the rajasic or tamasic guna due to lifestyle and food choices that we make. To shift out of those, we need to start changing those, we start with lifestyle and food.

If we are predominantly in the rajasic quality and want to calm our mind, we need to

invite activities and
food of sattvic nature. Check the sattvic food list,
walks in nature, Yoga, tai chi, meditation, pranayama etc.

The more sattvic quality we invite, the faster we shift.

To shift tamas, we need to focus first on the rajasic quality,

eat rajasic food because the system needs stimulation, needs jumpstarting, and rajas can surely do that.
Exercise and practise vigorous Yoga; Surya Namaskar is excellent.
From rajas, we shift into sattva.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Shifting tamas is challenging because of their heavy and inert qualities; they like to keep us down there. Making the effort of practising this Surya Namaskar in the morning will be a great start towards change; begin with 3, then increase.

Conclusion

The gunas are universal. As we are so used to them, we need to start observing them, noticing how we feel, the changes throughout the day, and what triggers them. Observe how our food makes us feel.

Raising awareness is the first step. When needed, we can actively change the qualities.

Yoga aims to establish the sattvic quality, as it keeps the mind calm; when our mind is clear, our relationships are healthier, and we make sounder decisions. Other people like this quiet quality and like to hang out with us; they are inspired to become that calm themselves.

Because they (who don't become attached to the gunas) perceive that the gunas are the sole doer, they stay centred and remain unmoved by the winds of nature. BG 14, 23.

This gives us a tremendous tool. A tool that empowers and gives us choices. We can proactively initiate change if we choose to do so.

Or, we carry on as usual.

Let me know if you find these tips helpful. You can leave a message on Instagram, Facebook or even good old email.

I love hearing from you!

Katja x

P.S. Be sure you download the Sattvic Shopping List to get started on getting your tools ready!

The Gunas – in Pursuit of Happiness