As a built-in feature, our new car has a GPS system which I was reluctant to embrace. Why was it necessary, I thought. And then I realized this summer, driving in Quebec’s Eastern Townships on the unfamiliar way to a yoga retreat, how great it was to have this automatic map indicating my route. I could rest and follow the navigation system to the destination. Wouldn’t it be great if we had such a life map!

What draws us to yoga? Often we are unsatisfied in some way, in some aspect of our life or our life journey is stuck. We then end up in a yoga class and start to feel better. The connection between these may at first seem intangible and yet yoga philosophy tells us that the koshas provide a map for transformation and our yoga practice facilitates this.

The koshas, first written about in the Upanishads some 3000 years ago, chart such a navigation system. The yoga sages who outlined this map suggest that humans are made up of five sheaths that navigate a path from the periphery of the physical body to the core – the embodied Self or Atman.

To better understand this, picture a lamp with five lampshades. The lampshades provide covering for the light and individualize the lamps creating difference but they also obscure the pure light of the lamp. Yoga then is the process of moving through these lampshades or koshas to experience the pure Light of the Self.

The sheaths range from dense to more subtle. While we often talk of them as separate, the lampshades are more like the threads of a tapestry woven together. There is overlap and connection between the sheaths and so in our journey working on one layer automatically impacts the others.

The first and “outermost” layer, the annaymaya kosha is the densest. Translated, anna means food so this is our physical self (what we can touch) or our food body. The Upanishads recognized that we are made up of elements or food from the Earth and our physical body will return to it. In yoga, we spend a lot of time connecting to the physical body in detail: arches of the feet, lower back ribs, back of the neck, heart centre and on and on. This is an important first step since developing a keen awareness of the first kosha makes the others more accessible.

The following layers are the subtle or unseen layers. While they cannot be touched, they however can definitely be felt. For example, the second layer is the pranamaya kosha or life-energy body. It is the breath that enters and leaves our body and energizes our annamaya kosha. It is deeply connected to emotions and you can notice how the presence of a strong emotion impacts the breath. As you know, we cannot touch the breath but we can certainly feel its presence. So, when your yoga teacher is telling you to breathe, she/he is connecting you to the pranamaya kosha.

The manamaya kosha is the mental body where we process our thoughts. When we talk of stillness in a pose, it is our manamaya kosha that we are often most challenged to still. Resting in a yoga pose, wait to see how long before a vritti or thought enters into the stillness. Often it is not long.

The vijnanamaya kosha or wisdom body provides insight and reflection. When some sense of the other koshas have been integrated into our yoga practice, we can then have a sense of what deeper meaning this pose might have in our life or what it might be telling us of ourselves. This is the wise witness who observes our practice and also takes us deeper into the experience. Finally when the witness dissolves into the full experience of the moment, there is a glimpse of the anandamaya kosha or bliss body.

Often the bliss body or anandamaya kosha is thought of as our destination, the end point of the map. Yet this kosha too may obscure the true destination: contact with the Atman or embodied Self. The Atman is the Light in the lamp metaphor that burns eternal and transcends the differences and separatenesses of the different lampshades.

In February 2009 Carla Wainwright and I will explore the koshas in detail at a week-long yoga retreat in Mexico. (In addition, the kleshas [obstacles to enlightenment] will be investigated – more about this in an upcoming newsletter). Together we will integrate awareness of the koshas into the daily yoga, pranayama and meditation practices. Come join us to go deeper into the philosophy and the experience of yoga’s road map to the Self and the obstacles we meet along the path. For more information on the retreat, see Mexico retreats