---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: vikriti
title: Vikṛti
iast: Vikṛti
devanagari: विकृति
description: 'The current deviation from ones constitutional baseline, the actual object of diagnosis and treatment; NOT a second body type, NOT interchangeable with prakṛti, NOT a permanent condition.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Vimānasthāna 8
tags:
- vikriti
- imbalance
- diagnosis
- ayurveda
not:
- term: 'a second body type'
  why: 'Quiz culture sometimes reports a prakṛti type and a vikṛti type as two labels. Vikṛti is not a type at all; it is the present displacement from the baseline, a vector with direction and degree, read fresh at every examination.'
  instead: 'Render vikṛti as the current deviation from constitution and keep the paired Sanskrit terms prakṛti and vikṛti together.'
- term: 'interchangeable with prakṛti'
  why: 'The pair is the whole point: prakṛti is the fixed norm, vikṛti the present state measured against it. Collapse the pair and individualized diagnosis collapses with it, because a reading only means something relative to that persons zero-point.'
- term: 'a permanent condition'
  why: 'Vikṛti is by definition what treatment changes. Freezing it into an identity (I am a vāta imbalance person) converts a correctable displacement into a life sentence the theory never issued.'
related:
- /concepts/prakriti.md
- /concepts/dosha.md
- /concepts/svastha.md
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Vikṛti -- विकृति

**Not:** a second body type, interchangeable with prakṛti, a permanent condition

## What It Actually Means

Vikṛti is the state you are actually in, named against the state you were built as. The examination protocols of Charaka read the patient twice: once for the constitutional signature (prakṛti) and once for the present configuration of doṣa, agni, tissue, and mind, and the clinically meaningful object is the difference between the two readings. The same pulse, appetite, or temperament can be baseline for one person and derangement for another, so no symptom means anything until it is indexed to the constitution. All of therapeutics aims here: you treat the vikṛti, you never treat the prakṛti, in the same way a navigator corrects the deviation from course rather than redesigning the ship. The prakṛti-vikṛti pair is the conceptual machinery of individualized medicine, and it is precisely the machinery the one-quiz-one-label industry throws away.

## Audience Metaphor

A ship has a designed trim, and the pilot reads the list of the deck against that trim, not against some fleet-wide average. Three degrees of list is nothing for one hull design and an emergency for another. Vikṛti is the list; prakṛti is the designed trim the reading only makes sense against.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Vimānasthāna 8 on examining constitution and current state -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya Sūtrasthāna 1 on doṣa equilibrium and its disturbance -- see [references/ashtanga-hridaya.md](../references/ashtanga-hridaya.md)
