---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: vata
title: Vāta
iast: Vāta
devanagari: वात
description: 'The kinetic doṣa, the principle of movement, transmission, and initiation, governing respiration, circulation, impulse conduction, and elimination; NOT wind, NOT the air element inside the body, NOT a nervous personality type.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Sūtrasthāna 18.49
tags:
- vata
- dosha
- movement
- ayurveda
not:
- term: 'wind'
  why: 'Vāta is named from the root vā, to move, and the wind reading literalizes an etymology into a substance. As a doṣa it is the principle of motion and communication in a living system: whatever moves, signals, or initiates is vāta at work. Translating it as wind makes the claim sound like weather trapped in the abdomen.'
  instead: 'Render vāta as the kinetic principle, the mover among the three doṣas, and keep the Sanskrit term.'
- term: 'the air element in the body'
  why: 'Vāta is associated with vāyu and ākāśa in elemental analysis, but the doṣa is not the element. The element association is an analogy of qualities (light, dry, mobile), not an identity claim.'
- term: 'a nervous personality type'
  why: 'Pop-Āyurveda sells vāta as an anxious creative type. The classical referent is physiological: five functional subdivisions (prāṇa, udāna, vyāna, samāna, apāna vāyu) governing breath, speech, circulation, digestion-propulsion, and elimination.'
related:
- /concepts/dosha.md
- /concepts/prana-tejas-ojas.md
- /concepts/srotas.md
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Vāta -- वात

**Not:** wind, the air element in the body, a nervous personality type

## What It Actually Means

Vāta is the doṣa of motion: it moves breath, food, blood, waste, nerve impulse, and attention. Charaka calls it the impeller, the one that leads the other two doṣas, because transformation (pitta) and cohesion (kapha) both depend on things being moved into place. It operates through five named currents (vāyus): prāṇa governing intake and vital function, udāna governing speech and upward action, vyāna governing circulation, samāna governing the digestive middle, apāna governing downward elimination. Because it initiates, vāta is also first to derange, and classical pathology attributes to it the largest share of disorders. None of this is meteorology; it is a functional physiology of movement stated in a pre-mechanistic idiom.

## Audience Metaphor

In an orchestra, the conductor produces no sound, yet every entrance, tempo, and cutoff is the conductor moving. Vāta is the conductor of the body: silent itself, visible only in everything that starts, moves, and stops on time, and the first thing you notice when it falters.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 18.49 on the functions of vāta -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 12 (Vātakalākalīya) on the powers of vāta -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
