Yoga is a journey of self discovery. We explore the relationship between our body and breath on the mat. We notice where our mind goes in certain poses, where our mind goes when we meditate (How to Meditate, one-minute video; three-minute audio for adults or kids) or practice pranayama (breath control, one-minute video). As we delve deeper along the path, exploring the other limbs of yoga in our practice of svadhyaya (self study), we start to tap into the different layers of ourselves. These layers or sheaths are called koshas, and are often conceived of as the Russian Nesting dolls, which stack inside each other, or the layers of an onion.
The first layer, the Physical, is called Annamayakosha. Anna means food & maya means appearance. Annamaya is the gross (not yucky!) physical layer and is the one that most of us can access – our body, our physical bones and muscles. We work with this layer in our asanas – our yoga poses. We engage with this sheath with respect to what we eat, how we sleep, how we exercise. This concept is not anathema to us Westerners – we are taught about this part of ourselves and how to understand it.
The second is the Energy layer – Pranamayakosha. Prana means energy or life force and is often taught as relating to the breath, when we practice yoga. This layer became clearer to me after I my yoga teacher training where I learned to pay attention to the breath and its connection to the physical body – breathing into particular parts of our physical body as a way of bringing the attention to that part of the body. I often explain it to my students thus: when you walk into a room, you can feel when someone is angry, happy or sad, right? That energetic feeling extends beyond that person so that you are aware of it. This layer (or absence of it) is also very clear when you are in the presence of someone who is deceased – the lack of breath is fiercely obvious. In the West we consider the breath with respect to the Autonomic Nervous System – inhaling stimulates the fight or flight system, exhaling stimulates the rest & digest system.
The third is the Manomayakosha. Manomayakosha describes the thought and emotional layer that we work with, and become friends with, in meditation (Mano means mind, or mental). We start to recognize when certain emotions come up, how they affect us and then we start to notice how the Manomayakosha, Pranamayakosha and Annamayakosha are linked:essentially, how our emotions (our mind sheath) can influence our breath (our energy sheath) and body (our physical sheath), and vice versa. In the West we talk about this with respect to the Autonomic Nervous System – the fight or flight system, the rest & digest system and how the hormones relating to these layers interact to produce states of sweaty palms, elevated Heart Rate, faster breathing etc. In the West people consider the psychosomatic relationship (how the psyche – the mind and the soma – the body – effect each other). We know from research, for example that people are more prone to heart attacks after losing their temper. Stress affects the physical and mental body. These ideas and relationships are not novel in the West.
Wisdom is the fourth layer – the Vijnanamayakosha, and relates to our ego – that deeper level of the mind, which we work with as we delve further into meditation and start to realize that the ego is an illusion. These inner layers or Koshas are more subtle. In meditation we might glimpse the endless nature of the mind, and learn to recognize that the emotions and thoughts we have are impermanent and do not define us. The mind is the sky – the emotions & thoughts are the moving, impermanent clouds. According to Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras (II.6), the ego is thought to be the reflection of the True Self on the mind – what happens is that we confuse the mind and the True Self, and our job is to remove the false perception of the ego, which occurs as a result of our confusing the True Self with the tools of perception. Sri Swami Satchidananda’s commentary suggests that our life’s work is to remove the ego, the blemish of the dot on the little i to reveal the I – the True Self. Ego is worked with in the West in psychoanalytic traditions, for example Jung who thought that the ego was part of the self, which, developmentally needs to be established, but that as you reflect & grow you can perhaps let go of the dominance of the ego. This is done by learning to accept those difficult aspects of one’s personality.
Bliss, the bliss that is not to do with thoughts, feelings and reactions to external events, the deep-seated bliss that occurs from just Being – this is the Anandamayakosha, the fifth layer that we sometimes glimpse in meditation. Once you penetrate this fifth layer, you reach the self – Atman – the seat of consciousness. Some people describe these layers as progressive lampshades over the lightbulb of the Atman. I am not aware of a Western conceptualization of the bliss layer. This nerd wants know, so if you do, please comment or email me ().
“Perhaps the combining of the bliss layer and the atman would be like the bringing together of the opposites within the psyche in such a way that the individuation process (collective and individual unconscious coming together) had resulted in a perfect state of psychological transcendence. Literally mind blowing”. ~ James Astor
Tamsin Astor-Jack, PhD writes at www.YogaBrained.com/blog
©Tamsin Astor-Jack, Yoga Brained LLC