The Bliss Body Kosha

What is Joy? 

Now before I go on, I will say that this post isn’t for me to explain what joy is, but more so to guide you to reflect on what it is for you, to allow you the space to sit with it’s meaning within your body as we may all have a different relationship to joy and a different sense of what it is, so let me ask you...

What is joy? 

What does it feel like? 

Where do you feel it? 

...and really answer these questions out loud as if  you were describing it to someone who had never felt it. 

Once you’ve got the answer or the sense of what joy is for you, now ask yourself what you do to obtain it? Or even deeper, do you believe it’s something that we obtain, or is it something that’s always there? 

The yoga tradition teaches that joy is at our very centre. It teaches that joy is not something we find if we are lucky, something we experience momentarily, but it’s a state of happiness that is constant. Even more, beyond it being something that’s always there, it’s actually what we are at the very centre of our being. It is only our conditioning, fears, habits, thoughts etc. that shield, cloud and layer the joy that exists within. 

Yoga is the practice of unravelling those layers and unclouding the vision that joy exists outside of us. 

Yoga teaches that at our core is pure consciousness, Purusha. Otherwise known as our Spirit, Self or Soul. Covering this pure consciousness are 5 layers or sheaths of consciousness and energy varying at different frequencies and densities that make up our ‘body’. These are called the Koshas. 

The goal of yoga is to master these five koshas and ultimately move beyond them.

The koshas, in order of most peripheral and dense to most deep and subtle comprise of our food/physical body (Annamaya Kosha), the energetic/breath body (Pranayama Kosha), the mental body (Manomaya Kosha), the awareness/intelligent body (Vinjnanamaya Kosha) and finally the bliss body (Anandamaya Kosha). 

We can see that the yogis saw that our deepest core layer, our Anandamaya Kosha is the home of our unique essence, and that essence is joy and bliss.

As my teacher shares, the bliss body can be felt during those few moments after you start falling asleep before consciousness suspends. There is a moment where all of your worries and thoughts dissolve and you rest in a cloud of love, peace, joy and bliss and you recognise on a felt level rather than a thought construct that this joy is our deepest truest reality. 

Deep states of meditation allow this sheath to be accessed and for longer periods.  Accessing, inhabiting and embodying all aspects of the body and simultaneously being completely free of it is the ultimate goal of yoga.

From here we can see that joy itself isn’t necessarily something that we access, earn or achieve, it’s always there within, yet this state of joy is often just hidden. It’s up to us to surrender into this knowing that joy is at our core and it’s our job is to clear the path of all that stands in the way. 

One of yoga’s greatest gifts is to awaken us to our body of bliss, to awaken us back to joy.

So, let’s practice.