Yoga Philosophy: Koshas

The koshas are a means of understanding and tapping into the different parts of being human and doing yoga.

The outermost sheath is the body. It is what we are most aware of and the way we most interact with the world, through our senses.

The next layer is the energetic, the feeling we have when we experience the world. You’ve experienced this in yoga. When you forward fold, there is a sense of grounding and calm that you feel. When we raise are arms in a half sun salutation, you feel the electricity of it, you feel energized.

The mind layer is all of the knowledge and thoughts we have about our experience.

The discernment layer or wisdom sheath is when we make choices and apply our knowledge in a specific way. In yoga it’s when you decide to take it a little slower or you realize how the uote your teacher read at the beginning of class applies not just to the yoga class but to your life.

The final sheath is the bliss sheath, when we let go of all thought, sensation, and discernment and just are.

We have gotten used to thinking about the sheaths like Russian dolls, one inside the other, but that can make us see them as separate from one another. In the original teaching of the koshas, they were described as clouds, overlapping, sometimes one at the forefront, but often merged.