A SURVEY ON THE NEED FOR DEVELOPING AN AYURVEDA BASED PERSONALITY (TRIDOSHAPRAKRTI) INVENTORY Ramakrishna B

Abstract

Prakrti is a Sanskrit word that means “nature” or natural form of constitution of an individual. It is one of the bases of
classifying human population in general and in the diagnosis and prognosis of diseases,selection of drugs, dosage
fixation and therapeutic management according to Ayurveda. Prakrti gets ingrained in an organism at the time of
conception and gets modified according to one’s habitat, habit,age, environmental influences, lifestyle and etc.
Ayurvedic physicians invariably use Prakrti concept to understand specific Prakrti of a patient in their practice out of
their experience. Till date Prakrti assessment has remained subjective. Although there are Prakrti assessment tools in
the form of Questionnaires, Checklists and Inventories they are either arbitrary or falling short of key standardization
parameters. In this study it was planned to establish whether there is a necessity to develop a standardized tool in the
evaluation of Prakrti. A standardized self-rating questionnaire was developed and administered to 34 qualified
Ayurvedic physicians (M: F=12:22) with mean age 30.29 ± 6.15 yrs (mean ± SD) and clinical experience [5.53 ± 4.57
(mean years ±SD)], belonging to different areas of Bangalore to assure proper representation of the cohort.
The study revealed that Ayurvedic physicians invariably use Prakrti in their clinical practice. They also agreed that their
assessment of Prakrti differed from another physician and accepted that they were not convinced about the reliability
of available tools and unanimously agreed on the need to develop a research based standardized tool for Prakrti
assessment.