Yoga Quiz: What is your Primary Guna?

Yoga Quiz: What is your Primary Guna?

Through the yogic lens, all of life is made up of three essential qualities. These qualities are called the gunas, and according to Sankhya philosophy, they are the three characteristics in which prakriti, or cosmic matter, can manifest.

In Light on Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar offers some simple explanations to describe the three gunas: rajas, tamas, and sattva. Rajas is the quality of activity and mobility that is responsible for movement, and having an excess of rajas can lead to willful stubbornness. Tamas is the quality of inertia and form and is associated with delusion, obscurity, and ignorance. Sattva is often considered a goal of one’s yoga practice and is the quality of clarity, tranquility, and truth-illumination.

While one guna may be more dominant within you than another guna, it’s important that we embrace all three gunas because they each have an essential role in our lives. In doing so, we can view the gunas as a complete and functional system, which, when utilized wisely, brings us into balance. Learn more about your primary guna by taking this quiz.

What colors are you most drawn towards?
When do you feel the most creative?
When something seems to go wrong, you…
What’s your diet?
You're happiest about life when...
When you wake up you generally feel...
If someone else takes credit for your idea you...
What's your yoga practice like?
How much sleep do you need to feel present and alert?
What's a typical day look like for you?
If you feel under the weather, what steps do you take to get better?

About April Stolarz

A lover of life, storytelling, and sharing, April is always seeking ways to spread joy and positivity wherever she goes. After earning her degrees in Journalism and Creative Writing, April traveled throughout Central America to study at different yoga centers and ashrams, get her hands in the soil, learn about other cultures, and spend quality time with nothing but her yoga mat and the ocean. When April’s not working as the Managing Editor for YogaBasics you can find her experimenting in the kitchen by creating plant-based meals, wild-crafting and foraging medicinal herbs and food, practicing yoga on and off the mat or dancing through the forest.

Related Yoga Articles

Forearm Yoga Pose

The Best 7 Yoga Poses To Strengthen Your Forearm
summer yoga festival

Summer Yoga Festivals for 2018
The Best Free Yoga Youtube Videos for July 2018

The Best Free Yoga Videos for July 2018
wrist pain in yoga

Wrist Pain in Yoga? 12 Tips to Prevent Sore Wrists
Meditation Videos for Creativity

9 Great Meditation Videos to Boost Your Creativity
The Yoga of Food: 
Eating for Winter

The Yoga of Food: Eating for Winter

Comments 56

  1. Reply
  2. Reply
  3. Reply
  4. Reply

    Good quiz, however the suggestion to add more carbs & root veg is not going to happen. Too much sugar in carbs & root veg. My body reacts better to high fats (Good fats) & protein.

  5. Reply
  6. Reply
  7. Reply
  8. Reply
  9. Reply
  10. Reply
  11. Reply
  12. Reply
  13. Reply
  14. Reply
  15. Reply
  16. Reply
  17. Reply
  18. Reply
  19. Reply
  20. Reply
  21. Reply
  22. Reply
  23. Reply
  24. Reply
    1. Reply
  25. Reply
  26. Reply
  27. Reply
  28. Reply
  29. Reply
  30. Reply
  31. Reply
  32. Reply
  33. Reply
  34. Reply
  35. Reply
  36. Reply

    This test is interesting and has the perfect amount of questions to get a quick anser to what my main guna is.

  37. Reply
  38. Reply
  39. Reply
  40. Reply
  41. Reply
  42. Reply
  43. Reply
  44. Reply
  45. Reply
  46. Reply
  47. Reply
  48. Reply

    Its uplifting to have Sattva as my result.
    Its taken many, many years of committment and embracing practices to understand and notice when Im not ‘somatically wired’

  49. Reply
  50. Reply
  51. Reply
  52. Reply
  53. Reply

    Some options are not appropriate and confusion. In some questions I could not find suitable answer.

  54. Reply
  55. Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Disclosure: YogaBasics.com participates in several affiliate programs. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. When you click on external links, we may receive a small commission, which helps us keep the lights on.

  • Yoga Therapeutics

    Yoga Therapy is the use of yoga postures, meditation and pranayama to help the body naturally heal and balance itself. Check out our Yoga Therapy section to learn which yogic practices have been shown to have healing qualities for common complaints. Yoga Therapy Guides

  • MONTHLY YOGA GIVEAWAY!

    Each month YogaBasics’s readers can enter a new giveaway for a chance to win a great yoga prize. Previous prizes have included yoga books, clothes, and yoga festival tickets! Enter This Month's Giveaway!

  • Our Premium Membership

    Like what you see...and want more? Our premium members have access to deluxe features and premium content including: advanced asanas, yoga pose sequences, yoga therapy, and downloadable MP3s. Join Now!