Understanding the Tamasic Personality in Ayurveda

They suffer from a fear of failure, are subject to stress, and are quickly drained of mental energy. They require eight hours of sleep. Tamas is darkness, inertia, heaviness, and a tendency toward materialism. Individuals dominated by tamas are often less intelligent.

They tend toward depression, laziness, and excess sleep, even during the day. A little mental work tires them easily. They like jobs with less responsibility, and they love to eat, drink, sleep, and have sex. They tend to be greedy, possessive, attached, irritable, and uncaring toward others.

They are willing to harm others for their own self-interest. There is a constant interplay of these three gunas in everyone’s consciousness, but the relative predominance of either sattva, rajas, or tamas is responsible for an individual’s psychological constitution. In the Ayurvedic literature, food is classified as sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic according to the mental qualities it promotes. In brief, sattvic food is light, healthy food that increases clarity of mind, rajasic food is tempting food that increases activity and agitation, and tamasic food is heavy, dulling food that creates depression and heaviness and leads to many disorders.

Sattvic food is light and easy to digest. It brings clarity of perception, unfolds love and compassion, and promotes the qualities of forgiveness and austerity. Sattvic foods include fruit, steamed vegetables, and fresh vegetable juice. Milk and ghee are sattvic foods that build up ojas and give vitality to prana.

Rajasic foods are hot, spicy, and salty. They are irritants and stimulants, and they are tempting foods (once your hand goes into the bag, you cannot stop eating them), such as salty crackers and potato chips. Rajasic foods also include certain heavily spiced foods, such as hot pickles and chutneys, which stimulate the senses. These foods make the mind more agitated and susceptible to temptation.