Knowing how to connect with your subtle energy body gives you another tool in your kit for alleviating physical, emotional and mental imbalances.  

I’ve seen many clients lately with similar scenarios….   Sleepless nights, hot flushes, chronic tiredness, back aches and gut troubles. There are always treatments that help these conditions. With herbs, habit changes and gut support they feel better. 

But, often there is a deeper driving force that perpetuates some of the symptoms. 

I work with my clients on three levels. Ayurveda calls them the Three Pillars of Health: physical, emotional / mental, AND energetically; or, as I call it, Subtle Body Medicine.  

These three layers of your being are completely intertwined.  We cannot separate our physical body and its ailments from our mental, emotional or subtle body and vice versa.   

Just like your muscles or uterus can get tight and painful, or your digestion can get blocked, you can also experience stagnation (lack of flow) in your subtle bodies.   Physical symptoms almost always have an underlying subtle body connection. 

 

 

 

Both Ayurveda and Yoga teach us that we have 5 levels of our being. These are described as sheaths or Koshas.   

Starting with the most tangible is your physical body, the Anna Maya Kosha. This body is nourished by food (called anna in Sanskrit).   

Your Prana Maya Kosha is your lifeforce energy body. This subtle energy is in every cell of your being. It gives life to your physical body and extends some distance (2-20 cm) outside your body as your aura.  

Prana, (called chi in TCM), is the flow of life that moves through your body and gives you life! It makes your heart beat, your neurons fire, your inner wisdom connect with your physical body.

Next, is your Mano Maya Kosha. This is your rational thinking, doing mind. It is your capacity for thinking in an outwardly engaging way.  

More subtle again than your Mind is your Vjnana Maya Kosha.

Vjnana means ‘to know’.

This is your intuition. Your subtle knowing that, with stillness and practice you can tap into and trust. 

Our intuition is all too often  overpowered by our Mano Mind. 

As one of the greatest minds of our time said, 

 

 

Einstein put great faith in his intuition and creativity. 

These days we expect our left brain to to all of the thinking and decision making.

How tiring for it!   

We’ve forgotten that we have deeper wisdom, especially in our hearts, our gut, our bones and our energy/Prana. 

Learning to connect, listen and trust is key! 

Lastly, the most subtle and inner most layer of your being is your Ananda Maya Kosha, your Bliss sheath.

This is closest to your Citta/consciousness and the divine within you.

The Ananada Maya Kosha connects you with unconditional love, oneness and complete unity with all beings.

This part of you is subtle, but always there. It is woven into the fabric of your being. We often forget it is there, obscured as it can be by our thoughts and the illusion of what we call reality… our day to day life.   

Connecting with your subtle energy body helps you to feel more alive, awake, conscious and blissful. 

When there are blockages in  between our Koshas you can feel more disconnected from yourself and from life. 

Disconnection means less communication, connection and flow and then our bodily processes, that are fed by our subtle layers, do not function as well as they could.

Vitality is lower and you lose the connection to your deeper body wisdom. 

You probably (hopefully!?) know how to nourish your physical body. But how do you nourish your subtle bodies? 

 

 

Let’s start with the most obvious, our physical self and work our way inward.  

 

Your Anna Maya Kosha – Physical Body

 Your physical body needs nourishment from good food, water, sleep and moderate exercise.

You are what you eat…or really, you are what you can digest well because even organic home grown food will gunk up your channels if you care not digesting well!

The better your digestion is working the cleaner and clearer your physical body will be and the more prana it will hold.   

 

Connecting with Your Prana Maya Kosha

Next, your Prana Maya Kosha, your Life Energy body wants your attention.

You feed what you focus on.

When you bring your loving attention within yourself this will help your prana to grow, give you a sense of being centered and experience your inner vitality!

Feeling spacey and scattered?

Need more grounding?

Take your attention into your belly first, connect with your breath.  Then imagine you are growing roots into the ground.

Where your attention goes your Prana follows. 

I’d like to hazard a guess that most of the time your attention is going outward away from yourself as you go about your day. Fair enough too… we all live in the world and have jobs to do and most likely people to care for. 

But… because your Prana follows your focus… can you see what’s happening? 

Most of your focus is leaking out to your work, your family, your tasks.

If you don’t spend some time in the day bringing your attention inwards Life becomes depleting. 

Your Prana Maya Kosha is intimately connect with your breath. You can nourish and develop a stronger relationship with your Prana body by mindfully connecting with and slowing your breathing.

More prana in your body equals more awareness and will deepen your connection to and communication with your body. This will help you to notice how your choices make your feel.

This is the science of cause and effect. Ayurveda is all about joining the dots between our choices and how we feel and knowing ourselves from the inside out! 

How do you feel after doing…..? (Fill in the blank!).

If it lights you up and makes you feel great not just in the moment but with lasting benefits (like a good nights sleep or a deep connection with a friend), repeat.

If …… makes you feel crappy then have a think about what else could fill the blank to help you to feel great.   

Here are some other points for building connection to your Prana Maya Kosha:

• Meditate… regularly! Spend some time in stillness with yourself.  
• Breathe well without strain. Keep your shoulders soft and let your breath drop into your belly
• Keep good company! Spend time with those who uplift you!  
• Practice Yoga, Chi Gong or Tai chi to connect with and raise your prana.
• Walk in nature without listening to music or a podcast. Tune in to your body moving and your breath. 

Connecting with and raising your Prana will also bring more clarity to your Mind. your Mano Maya Kosha.  

You’ll start to crave ‘right choices’ for your body and health!

 

Connecting with your Mano Maya Kosha – Your Mind

When there is a lack of Prana/lifeforce/consciousness in the mind we can get stuck in old thought patterns, emotional patterns and just feel stuck in our lives. 

Here are ome healthy ways to connect with your mind:

• engagement with inspirational material that it enjoys.
• stimulating conversation with friends, or work that you truly love and thrives with.

Your mind also needs time out.

Stillness.

Our Minds can have conflicting ideas which create confusion and inner turmoil in the body.

Meditation is, once again, the best practice to invite spaciousness, non- grasping to thoughts and help us to be able to shift our negative thought habits. 

Remember that it is a practice! We don’t have to be ‘good’ at it… we just have to do it, even for a few minutes a day!  

 

Connecting with Your Vjnana Maya Kosha – Your Intuition

Next, deeply connected to the mind and the bliss body, is the Vjnana Maya Kosha.

As Albert Einstein said, the mind will overpower our intuition. 

The voice of your intuition is soft and subtle.

With stillness and meditation, journaling and day dreaming, and other inner explorations that you are attracted to, you can tap into this wellspring of knowing and disconnect from the mental chatter that otherwise ends up creating our reality. 

When you have a connection to your intuition, your vjnana maya kosha, all of your life choices become easier!

There is no second guessing and over thinking (which by the way is sooo draining to our energy), no battle in the mind, just an easy and gentle knowing that imbues all of our decisions!

Bliss!

 

 

Developing more connection with your subtle energy body of your intuition also connects you with your bliss body, your Ananda Maya Kosha.   

Looking after your physical food body, your prana/breath body, your mind and intuition gives you clearer access to your Bliss Body!!

How can you build more connection with your subtle energy body?

To put it simply…

Make time for it!

Slow down!

Commit to connecting inwards with yourself and your subtle energies!

Start small but with the loving attention to drop out of your head and into your body. feel your body.

Ask your body, your energy, what it would like to communicate with you.

Be still and practice deep listening. 

Even 5 minutes a day is a beautiful start. 

Stillness with oneself can be confronting for some.

Go gently with yourself.

If it feels too intense or trigger trauma or strong emotions, reach out and seek support for resolving the inner emotions that disturb your being. 

Connect with those people who uplift you, care for yourself and schedule time to do what you love.   

Make some time for yourself before your body forces you to stop! 

I love to teach my clients how to connect with their subtle energy body, raise their Prana and support it’s flow to help them release the subtle blocks that connect to their emotional and physical bodies.

You too can create more stillness and quietude in your life to strengthen your connection to our subtle energy bodies. 

Want to know more? I invite you to book a free clarity call to see how I can support you! 

With Love,  
Jacq