Week Two ~ Pranamya Kosha, The Energy Body
A Chairde,
As we ease into colder days and creep towards Samhain (my favourite festival of the year!) I hope that you are finding time to soften, pause, and breathe. I hope that the darker evenings offer you permission to do less and to rest more. The sleepiness that this time of year entices can, when embraced, lead the way for some poignant and necessary internal reflection...more time to dream. To wander in the twilight. To see what's hidden. It's a very creative time, I think.
This week our yoga theme is one of the best I know of ~ energetic balance. In both Hatha and Soft Stretch classes this Sunday we will explore what's called the Pranamaya Kosha, the energetic body. It will be a cleansing flow with lots of lovely openings for the hips, hamstrings, and spine. At the moment the Hatha at 5pm is full (thank you!) but please let me know if you'd like to come and I can add you to the waiting list in case there is a cancellation. I have three spaces available in the Soft Stretch for drop ins, if you would like to join us for a gorgeous gentle and more grounding yoga practice at 6:30pm :)
In yoga, the pranamaya kosha is seen as our second layer of perceiving reality, one layer inward from our physical form. We experience reality through our physical senses on the superficial level, but if we look a little deeper, we also see that we experience life on an energetic level. While the word 'energy' is sometimes thought of as synonymous with more esoteric (woowoo) terms, the kind of energy we're talking about here is firmly rooted in science. In fact, the pranamaya kosha is essentially an ancient study of our nervous system.
Did you know that when you walk into a room, your brain subconsciously scans faces to receive and interpret information regarding their mood and stance toward you? The resulting information can make the hairs stand up on your arm without you knowing why, or make your mouth go dry - or perhaps, with a soft smile, you could realise you're safe and your shoulders relax. Equally fascinating is that the brain also interprets information internally, from places like the gut and heart, and translates those signals into feelings like anxiety, enthusiasm, fatigue, contentment. This is called interoception. Both from outside and inside ourselves, we are constantly receiving information that is dictating how we feel in our energetic body - how we feel in our nervous system.
So, when the ancient yogis said that we have an energetic reality beneath our physical reality that allows us to sense intangible things without our conscious mind knowing about it, they were spot on!
As we know, when our brain senses danger a series of evolutionary responses trigger inside our body that allow us to better respond to the threat. Our heart beat speeds up, adrenaline rushes through our veins, our digestive and reproductive systems all temporarily shut down to allow us more energy, even our pupils dilate so that we can see into the shadows. Then, if and when our brain senses safety, all of our systems begin to reboot. Our entire body relaxes. Healing begins.
But...What about anxiety that catches you out when you're safe in your bedroom? What about lethargy? There's clearly some disconnect, some misalignment with our natural systems if we experience these things; yet they're so common. To have a dysregulated nervous system feels like a newage human phenomenon.
What's going on? When a bird gets into a fight with another bird, the exact same systems of flight, flight, freeze, fawn, ignite inside her body. Cortisol rushes through her blood and she responds to the threat just as we might. But, there is a crucial energetic difference. After the incident, that bird will undoubtedly shake her entire body for several seconds, releasing the stress energy she has just produced. Without any internal dialogue to plague her, she cannot dwell on the incident, and therefore she does not relive it energetically. She lets the stress go, immediately, and easily settles into safety again.
Sometimes I watch our little dog, Coco, respond to fireworks and I am dismayed to see how her natural relationship to stress has been undermined by domestication. She is a very anxious dog, sweet thing; she almost acts human. I remember that she used to shake her body more, move more, when she had big fields and beaches to play on in Connemara. I wonder, when we remove ourselves from the wild, do we compromise our energetic body?
Personally, as a domesticated person, I would like to learn how to feel worthy of rest, and cultivate a healthy relationship to stress. I want a grounded enthusiasm. An ability to feel alive, to meet my edge, to do my work, and then be willing to rest whenever I can. Wild animals spend an enormous amount of time moving and snoozing. And they have healthy nervous systems!
Practices like yoga, breathwork, sea swimming, even saunas and cold plunges, are my saviour when I'm anxious. And there's a reason for it. They all reboot the nervous system. They shake out stress and invite the body to rest and restore. They are all wilding activities. Have you noticed that yoga poses are often named after animals? It's intentional. We learn so much from observing nature. And returning to it.
You can have the other words – chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.” — Mary Oliver.
Le grá,
Macha
