It feels strange to say that I create characters. They show up, complete with names and complex personal histories, and it’s my job to get to know them and understand how they tick. One of the tools I use for this is the concept of the three doshas—patterns of body type, personality and preferences—from Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India. I had some introductory education in Ayurveda in both of my yoga teacher trainings, with the Temple of Kriya Yoga and with Integrative Yoga Therapy.
The three doshas—vata, pitta and kapha—are associated with combinations of the five elements. Vata is space and air. Pitta is fire and water. Kapha is earth and water. In each person, these manifest in both healthy and unhealthy ways. An individual might be a pure type or a blend of types. Sometimes intuitively and sometimes intentionally, I use the doshas in analyzing my characters and how they interact with each other and the world around them.
An idea that intrigued me in one of my classes on Ayurveda was that not only people but places and seasons have doshas. There is nothing more vata than spring in New Mexico, with the desert wind blowing, and it reaches its hottest and driest in June. I used that season in Soul Loss, which takes place from March through June, primarily in Santa Fe, a vata setting. Even its river is inclined to be dry and is irregular in its flow. Vata is changeable, creative, humorous, erratic, and sometimes spacey. No wonder Santa Fe is home to so many creative people, and also spiritual healers and psychics. That’s who the primary characters in Soul Loss are, and even the crime takes place at the spirit-world level.
I think people feel most at home in a place that complements their dosha. Athletic, competitive, and focused, my protagonist Mae Martin is a pitta type, mind and body. Even her red hair is a classic pitta trait. She loves Truth or Consequences and its hot springs, and thrives on the energy of New Mexico’s July-August “monsoon” season. In the first book in the series, The Calling, she’s living in Tylerton North Carolina, which has a wet and heavy climate, and it doesn’t suit her. It’s too kapha in every way, culture and land and weather. When she first gets to Santa Fe in Shaman’s Blues, the altitude makes her feel spacey, and this bothers her, while vata-kapha Jamie Ellerbee is truly at home there.
The oppressive East Coast weather in Snake Face is vata-kapha, windy yet wet and heavy, and it takes place in winter, a kapha season disrupted by an abnormal vata event, a December hurricane. The windstorm is something out of balance. Jamie gets caught up in both the hurricane and a storm in his inner life. His creativity and humor are healthy vata, and his music—voice and woodwinds—is based on air, vata at its most beautiful. His mood swings, short attention span and anxiety are the other side of vata. His unshakeable loyalty in love and friendship is kapha, but his tendency to depression and weight problems are the kapha shadow. I used the hurricane as background music that builds up along with the troubles that are chasing him.
Even when I haven’t consciously chosen to use the doshas of character and place and season, when I look back on their interactions, I can see that I did it intuitively. When two characters are in a lot of conflict, it’s often in the way they manifest their dosha. Mae and her mother are both strong pitta types, destined to butt heads, and one of the antagonist characters in the upcoming Ghost Sickness is also a pure pitta type who turns everything into a competition. Mae is attracted to men who manifest healthy kapha , a solidity and stability that she finds appealing, but their earth-water qualities can also make her feel that they are stuck in the mud.
Here’s my simplified short list of the dosha traits and seasons.
Vata: space and air. Thin, asymmetrical, distractible, creative, changeable. Default stress reaction: anxiety. Spring and fall.
Pitta: fire and water. Medium build, strong, competitive and driven, capable of prolonged intellectual focus. Default stress reaction: irritability or anger. Summer.
Kapha: earth and water. Can be big and muscular, womanly and curvy, or overweight. Steady, enduring. Can have calm, peaceful energy or a tendency to lethargy. Default stress reaction: procrastination or depression. Winter.
Do you see the doshas at work in your stories?
Ladies of Mystery 
Interesting and very helpful. The main characters from book two are lining right up with your schema. Thank you for sharing this! –kate
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