In both Yoga philosophy and Ayurvedic psychology, the Three Gunas of sattva, rajas, and tamas are considered the fundamental energies or qualities that govern all of nature, including our minds and behaviour. These qualities (gunas) are constantly in motion, shaping not just our physical tendencies, but also our thoughts, emotions, and overall state of mind.
Supporting Positive Progress through Awareness
Much like the food we eat nourishes our bodies, the flavour of our habitual thoughts nourishes (or depletes)
our mind. What we choose to dwell on, the emotional tone we cultivate, and the mental content we regularly engage with all play a role in strengthening one guna over the others in our daily experience.
Let’s take a closer look at each guna and the qualities of thought and feeling associated with them.
Sattva: The Quality of Clarity and Harmony
Sattva is the guna of lightness, balance, wisdom, and clarity. It is associated with inner peace, joy, purity, and truth. Sattvic thoughts are uplifting, compassionate, and rooted in a deep sense of interconnection and presence.
Sattvic Thoughts and Feelings: gratitude, contentment, clarity, calmness, curiosity, love, self-awareness, and acceptance, positive evolution.
Mental Nourishment: These thoughts nourish the mind with peace, stability, and positive expansiveness. They help us feel connected, purposeful, and mentally light giving us a focus of healing, compassion and awareness.
When sattva predominates, a person tends to be serene, wise, patient, and spiritually inclined. Their mind is clear and steady, making them more receptive to subtle truths and inner wisdom.
Cultivating sattva can involve meditation, prayer and positivity, ethical living (yamas and niyamas in yoga), enjoying inspiring texts and stories, spending time in nature, and maintaining a clean environment and nourishing diet.
Rajas: The Quality of Activity and Desire
Rajas is the guna of movement, passion, ambition, and restlessness. It is responsible for action and change, but in excess, it leads to over-stimulation, disturbance, conflict and anger.
Rajasic Thoughts and Feelings: Frustration, desire, ambition, irritation, craving, intensity, comparison, fear of missing out, and overthinking.
Mental Nourishment: These thoughts stimulate the mind but can often agitate and disturb it, leading to more reaction and impulse than calm and mindful responses.
When rajas dominates, one may be energetic and driven but also easily disturbed and emotionally volatile.
Tamas: The Quality of Inertia and Ignorance
Tamas is the guna of heaviness, darkness, and inertia. It is associated with stability, lethargy, confusion, ignorance, and resistance to change.
Tamasic Thoughts and Feelings: apathy, hopelessness, dullness, resentment, depression, laziness, denial, and self-pity.
Mental Nourishment: These thoughts weigh the mind down, creating confusion, doubt and inertia.
When tamas dominates, one may feel sluggish, disinterested, or avoidant. Habitual tendencies will dominate over creativity and appropriate action.
Habitual Thought as Your Mental Nourishment
In Ayurveda, the concept of “Ahara” (food) extends beyond the physical. Just as junk food creates toxins in the body, negative or unwholesome thoughts create ama (mental toxins) in the mind.
Over time, our habitual thoughts carve neural pathways and emotional patterns, reinforcing clarity and peace (sattva), disturbance (rajas), or inertia (tamas).
Sattva in Action: Finding Clarity Amidst Digital Overload
Scenario: You’re feeling overwhelmed by constant bad news and social media negativity.
Sattvic response: You recognize the mental drain and intentionally unplug for a day. You take a mindful walk in nature, meditate without attachment, read a book that uplifts your spirit, or journal about what truly matters to you. Instead of reacting with fear or outrage, you reflect on what you can control and how you can be of service in small, meaningful ways—prioritizing that which strengthens your inner peace, and positive states of consciousness.
This response nurtures peace, awareness, and compassion—a conscious turning inward to stay enthusiastic and connected with truth and purpose.
Rajas in Action: Hustle Culture and the Need to “Keep Up”
Scenario: You constantly compare your success to others on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, feeling like you’re falling behind or not meeting some ideal of perfection.
Rajasic response: You double down, working late into the night, chasing validation through more productivity and success. You keep refreshing your feeds, hoping to feel “validated” but instead feel more anxious, impatient, and scattered.
This response feeds the fire of desire, competition and restlessness, leading to mental burnout and disconnection from inner contentment.
Tamas in Action: Health Neglect Through Numbing Habits
Scenario: You’ve been feeling low-energy and disconnected from your body. You know you should exercise, eat better, or get better quality sleep—but instead, you find yourself staying up late, doom-scrolling, sleeping late and eating whatever’s easy, even when it leaves you feeling worse.
Tamasic response: Rather than facing the discomfort or seeking small ways to improve, you fall into a cycle of avoidance—skipping meals, binge snacking, hitting snooze repeatedly, or isolating from friends. You might rationalize it as “rest,” but it’s more about shutting down than actually restoring.
This response deepens the sense of disconnection from your body, positive associations and healing life force, reinforcing patterns of inertia, fatigue, and emotional numbness.
Simple Practices to Cultivate Sattva: A Yogic Approach
- Mindful Awareness: Watch your thoughts without judgment.
- Meditation and Breathwork: Gentle yoga, mantra, prayer and similar self-reflective practices purify the mind.
- Sattvic Lifestyle: Wholesome foods, positive relationships, spiritual study, and service.
- Journaling: Reflect to bring clarity, intention and increase gratitude.
Mental Nourishment and the Wisdom of the Gunas
In Yoga and Ayurveda, the mind is nourished just like the body—through what we take in each day. The three gunas offer a gentle, practical way to understand our inner landscape and guide our thoughts with greater awareness.
Rather than fighting rajas or tamas, the goal is to understand with all three energies wisely, with sattva as the guiding light.
Sattvic thoughts: will nourish the mind with clarity, peace, and presence.
Rajasic thoughts: can stimulate and motivate us, but can create agitation.
Tamasic thoughts: can be grounding, but may also lead to heaviness, melancholy or inertia.
Remember, You Are What You Eat!
When we recognize that each and every impression and thought is a source of mental nourishment, we begin to choose more consciously—what we read, watch, dwell on, imagine and believe. This also extends to the quality of our associations and relationships. Over time, the guna of our mental nourishment shapes not only our emotions, but our entire state of being.
With small, mindful shifts, we invite more sattva—and a steadier, brighter experience of life.
