Basti therapies for stiff joints, and which one suits where
People arrive already sure they want warm oil held in place on one spot. They are far less sure which spot the tradition would actually pick.
A stiff low back gets its own name for the pooling therapy built around it, a stiff knee gets another, and a tight neck gets a third, and each of those three already has its own explainer on this site. What none of those explainers do alone is set the three next to each other, so a reader with one particular joint and three unfamiliar Sanskrit words can actually tell which one applies, and where a full body oiling fits once that decision is made.
In all three names, basti refers to the low wall of dough shaped around a site and built to hold a pool of oil in place, not to the internal therapy classical texts also call by that word. Kati Basti pools warm oil on the low back. Janu Basti pools it around the knee. Greeva Basti pools it across the base of the skull and the back of the neck. The dam, the oil, and the length of time it stays warm are one idea, applied to three different places.
The short version
All three pool warm oil inside a dam of dough built around one joint or site.
Kati Basti sits on the low back, Janu Basti on the knee, Greeva Basti on the neck.
The oil stays warm across the session and is reheated rather than applied once.
Vata, the quality classical texts tie to dryness and movement, is read as the seasonal driver behind stiffness.
A consultation is what actually decides the site and the sequence, not a reader guessing alone.
Any of the three combines naturally with a full body oiling in the same visit.
What the three therapies have in common
Strip away the location and the three are the same therapy. A ring of dough, usually a plain wheat dough with no purpose beyond holding a shape, is built into a low wall around the joint or site in question. Warm oil is poured inside that wall until it pools an inch or two deep, and it stays there, topped up and reheated, for a set span of time rather than a quick application that ends the moment the oil is absorbed.
That single detail, oil held in place rather than rubbed in and moved on from, is what separates a pooling therapy from a massage. A massage works oil into tissue through motion.
A pooling therapy asks the oil to sit still and soak, at a depth and for a duration that a bottle of oil at home cannot really reproduce, which is part of why the tradition regards this as its own category of session rather than a longer version of an ordinary oiling.
The dough ring, the pooled oil and the reheating
Building the dam is not decorative. The dough has to hold its shape against the weight and warmth of the oil for the full session, sealed closely enough to the skin that nothing leaks past the edge, which is a small, specific skill on its own. Too loose and the oil runs off before it has done anything. Too tight and the ring itself becomes uncomfortable, working against the very stillness the therapy is built around.
The oil itself rarely sits at one temperature for the whole session. It cools against the skin, gets ladled out, warmed again nearby, and returned to the pool, a cycle repeated several times over the course of a single visit. That reheating is part of the method rather than a workaround, since a pooling therapy is understood to work through sustained warmth, not a single application that is then left to go cold on its own.
Ishtaka Swedana, the warm brick therapy also on the Ayurway menu, works on a related principle of sustained, held heat rather than a quick pass, though it uses a heated surface instead of a pooled liquid. The two are not interchangeable, but a practitioner reading a joint may consider either depending on what that joint actually needs.
Lower back, knee, neck: matching the site to the complaint
Each of the three is built around one specific site, and the tradition reads each site as carrying its own pattern.
Kati Basti sits on the low back, the area that classical texts associate with holding the body's central column steady through a full day of sitting, standing, and bending. A low back that feels stiff on waking or after a long stretch at a desk is the pattern the tradition reads this particular site against.
Janu Basti sits on the knee, a joint that classical texts describe as more exposed than most, without much natural padding of its own. Stiffness after a long walk, after stairs, or simply on waking is the pattern this one is read against.
Greeva Basti sits across the base of the skull and the neck, an area that holds one narrow, repeated position through most of a working day and rarely gets to move the way the rest of the body does. Tightness at the back of the neck, particularly the kind that builds through a screen heavy day, is the pattern the tradition has long associated with this site.
A reader who has stiffness in more than one of these places at once is not unusual, and it is exactly the situation a consultation is built to sort through, since the three sites are not ranked against each other in the tradition, only matched to whichever pattern is actually present.
Why stiffness rises in a dry season
Ayurveda associates Vata, the quality classical texts tie to dryness, movement, and the nervous system, with autumn and early winter specifically. A season that turns the air drier and cooler is read, in that framework, as a season that also makes joints more prone to feeling stiff, tight, and slower to warm up, independent of anything else going on in a person's week.
We think the harder habit to unlearn is regarding morning stiffness as simply what a body does now, rather than reading it as a seasonal pattern worth paying attention to. A joint that feels fine in July and stiff in October is not necessarily a joint that has changed.
It may just be a joint responding to a drier, cooler season the way the tradition has always expected it to.
This is also the seasonal logic behind an Ayurvedic fall routine, which reads a Bay Area September and October against exactly this pattern. A pooling therapy is not the only response Ayurveda offers to a Vata season, but it is the one built specifically around a joint that has already started to complain.
Combining a pooling therapy with a full body oiling
Abhyanga, the full body oiling that is Ayurveda's more familiar therapy, and a pooling therapy are not competing choices. Many visits pair them, an Abhyanga first to warm and soften the whole body, followed by whichever of Kati, Janu, or Greeva Basti matches the site that actually needs the deeper, held application.
The order matters more than it might seem.
A body that has already been oiled and warmed all over receives a pooling therapy differently than a body arriving cold, and a practitioner reading both together can decide whether that pairing makes sense for a particular visit or whether the joint in question is better served on its own.
Anyone new to what a session visit actually involves, arriving hydrated, eating lightly beforehand, allowing time afterward rather than rushing straight back to a desk, can read our guide to the 24 hours before a session before booking either therapy.
Where a consultation fits
None of the above is meant to replace an actual reading. A consultation, $130 for 45 minutes, is where a practitioner looks at which joint is actually complaining, in which season, alongside a person's broader pattern, and decides whether Kati, Janu, or Greeva Basti is the better starting point, and whether an Abhyanga belongs in the same visit.
Our guide to which therapy to book first goes further into how that first decision gets made across the full menu, not only these three. Kati Basti, Janu Basti, and Greeva Basti are each bookable directly once a reader already knows their site, and a consultation is there for anyone who does not yet.
Three names, one method, and three different places on the body that the tradition has never regarded as interchangeable. Reading them side by side is mostly a matter of noticing which one already sounds familiar.
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