The Shala Daily

What if the harshest voice in your head—the one cataloging your failures, measuring your practice against impossible standards, whispering not good enough—isn’t actually yours?

And what if, beneath all that noise, there exists a dimension of your being that has only ever regarded you with unconditional acceptance?

The yogis mapped this possibility thousands of years ago. In the Taittiriya Upanishad, they described the panchamayakosha model—five interpenetrating sheaths that comprise the full human experience. But here’s what makes this model revolutionary: at its innermost layer rests what they called the anandamaya kosha, the bliss body. Not bliss as fleeting pleasure, but as sat-chit-ananda—existence, consciousness, and a love so fundamental it doesn’t depend on you earning it.

The path inward through these layers isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about returning to a self-acceptance that was never actually withdrawn.

🪷 The Layers We Mistake for Who We Are

Annamaya Kosha—the physical body, where we often locate our worth in flexibility or strength. Pranamaya Kosha—the energy body, pulsing with life force. Manomaya Kosha—the mental and emotional body, where the inner critic takes up residence. Vijnanamaya Kosha—the wisdom body, capable of witnessing without judgment. And finally, Anandamaya Kosha—that dimension of being that the heart chakra opens us toward: love without condition.

The model reveals something essential: the voice that says you’re failing? That’s weather in the manomaya kosha—mental formations arising and passing. It is not the sky. The kleshas that generate our suffering—avidya (misperception), asmita (false identification)—operate in these outer sheaths, convincing us we are our anxious thoughts, our inadequate bodies, our unmet expectations.

But the bliss body doesn’t argue with any of it. It simply holds it all in a field of acceptance that has never wavered.

🙏 Ahimsa Turned Inward

Ahimsa—non-harming—is the first of the yamas for a reason. We understand it as kindness toward others, but the radical application is turning that same reverence toward ourselves. Every time we meet our limitations with gentleness instead of judgment, we’re practicing ahimsa at the level of the mental sheath. Every time we refuse to weaponize our thoughts against our own hearts, we clear a path toward what waits beneath.

The eight limbs become, in this light, a curriculum of self-compassion. Asana teaches us to meet the body where it is today. Pranayama invites us to receive breath as a gift rather than control it as a project. Pratyahara withdraws us from the constant external measurement. And meditation—particularly practices like metta—explicitly cultivates the quality of loving-kindness that the bliss body already embodies.

💫 The Love That Was Never Conditional

Yoga Nidra moves practitioners systematically through each kosha, and teachers who guide this practice report something consistent: when students arrive at the anandamaya kosha, what they describe isn’t ecstasy. It’s relief. A homecoming to a self-regard that doesn’t require achievement.

This is what the Yoga Sutras point toward when they distinguish purusha from prakriti. The changing content of experience—including every thought you’ve ever had about not being enough—belongs to prakriti. The awareness witnessing it all, already at peace with what it sees? That’s closer to what you actually are.

🔍 An Inquiry for Practice

Next time the inner critic speaks—on the mat, in the mirror, in the quiet before sleep—try this: instead of believing it or fighting it, simply locate it. Which kosha is generating this? (Almost always: manomaya, the mental sheath.) And then ask: what’s witnessing this thought arise?

That witnessing presence, patient and vast, is already practicing the radical acceptance you’ve been seeking. You don’t have to manufacture self-love. You have to stop abandoning the dimension of yourself where it already lives.

— MJH

Original article: Koshas / Panchamayakosha Model: Introduction & Overview on Ashtanga Tech