This whole idea of the Five Layers of the Body is rooted in yoga. Everything is connected. Yoga is really about accessing, connecting and honoring all five layers of the body. These five layers in Sanskrit is actually called Koshas. Koshas basically mean sheets. You can also think of them as layers. Let’s first start with the outer most layer, which is your physical layer. Your physical layer is your literal physical body. The second layer is your energetic body. It’s your life force. It’s what keeps your heart beating. Your third layer is your mental/emotional body. They’re one and the same. The fourth layer is your inner knowing. Your intuition. That deep consciousness. Now, when we take that a step deeper, that is when we get to the innermost layer, your absolute highest self, your spirit, your soul, your heart center. This is what it means to come home to yourself.
How Do I Care For My Physical Layer?
First things first, we’ve got to take care of your physical body. Your physical layer is your literal physical body. Organs, bones, tissue, skin. When your physical layer is out of alignment, some of the things that may show up in the physical layer are things like digestive issues, injury rashes, inflammation, weight problems, aches and pains. You can actually literally feel physical ailments in your physical body. You feel ickiness in your digestive system. You have literal heartburn. All of these physical symptoms are coming from your physical body. Ways that you take care of your physical body in order to avoid these negative symptoms are deep breathing, eating nourishing foods, drinking lots of water, self massage, deep, restful sleep, exercise. The basics.
How Do I Care For My Energetic Body?
Your breath is what keeps you alive. You can go for days without food. You can go for days without water even, most likely. But you can barely go minutes without breath, without air. It’s what keeps you energetic and vital. And when that is out of alignment, you may experience anxiety. Anxiety, shortness of breath, they go together. When you hear about someone having a panic attack, they have shallow breathing. They feel erratic. You feel drained, exhausted, low energy, heart palpitations and burn out. How do you take care of those things? One of the things that you can think of right away is breath work, meditation, doing yoga, keeping a consistent sleep schedule, cutting off toxic relationships, setting good boundaries, releasing anger and laughing. All of this helps us to really keep our vitality up and running. It helps us to keep us alive. It helps us with our energy and our life force.
An Overactive Mind Holds Us Back
Your thoughts and your feelings and your processes, they’re one and the same. A lot of times we’ll feel something which then affects our thoughts or we’ll think something and then it will affect our feelings. How often do we start to have a negative thought and then we automatically feel like shit about that negative thought? They go together, you almost can’t separate them. This is why it’s so important for us to align our thoughts and our feelings together. Because a lot of times, that’s why we get so confused. My mind is saying “don’t do this runaway”. “Don’t spend the money”. “This isn’t right”. But your feelings, your gut is like “no, this is right”. “This feels good”. This is where you know we get in our own way. Basically, the overactive mind ends up playing throughout your emotions. It plays out in your emotions. So when your mind starts to act up, all of a sudden you start to shut down or you start to feel really anxious. It all starts to create the shit storm inside of you.
Replace Negative Thoughts With Positive Truths
Consciously replace your thoughts with positive truths. Notice how I very specifically use this language here. “Consciously replace negative thoughts with positive truths”. You cannot hide from the truth. A truth is a truth. It’s real. You can’t deny it, whereas a thought, a thought is fleeting. They come and go, but a truth is truth. So replace your negative thoughts with positive truths so that you can continue to clear through the overactiveness that can take over your emotions.
Yoga Is About Uniting All 5 Layers
Yoga is about feeling all five of my layers. A yoga practice does not have to be any kind of hardcore thing for me. A yoga practice these days looks like 15 minutes of breathing, doing “child’s pose”, doing “happy baby” and bridges, ‘cause once again, it’s not about doing a headstand. To me, yoga is about integrating and weaving all five of my layers. It’s about uniting. It’s about yoking. That is what yoga is. So, starting a yoga practice can literally be as simple as doing breath work, doing eight minutes of yoga every day. That is a yoga practice. So just like meditation, just like how meditation can be 5,10 minutes a day, a yoga practice can also be 5 to 10 minutes a day.
Wisdom Takes Time and Practice
This is your spiritual connection. That truth inside of us that knows that everything’s gonna be okay, that the universe has my back. The first three layers, they’re easier to access. We exercise, we meditate, we journal, great. Those are all the practical things. This is now going deeper into your knowing. That comes with time. That’s why it’s called wisdom. Someone who is older has way more wisdom than someone who’s 15. That literally just comes from years of practice and knowing and experience. When we are disconnected from this, we have a lack of awareness and integrity. We don’t actually know what the right thing is. We don’t trust our intuition. So, the more we stay in the practice, the more we do the work, the more we are able to tap into this wisdom spiritual body. That is when we start to build more of that trust and we know exactly where to go.
How Can I Connect To My Heart Center?
This is what it means to come home to yourself. This is your absolute highest self. This is your spirit, your soul, your heart center. This is your inner compass. The soul calls you to do the work. Your highest self wants you to do the work. Your highest self wants you to stay right here and not run away. Some of the ways that we can get a little bit more connected to the bliss body is being in nature, being in silence, disconnecting from the noise, getting off of our phones, going for a hike, dancing, chanting, singing, playing with dogs, being present with children and animals, drumming or creating of any kind. Painting, crafts, cooking, all of that kind of stuff. That helps you get in the present moment, so you get away from the noise. So that you can start spending time with yourself so that you can start to get more connected to your heart center.