This Yoga Nidra practice is a deep dive into Pranamaya Kosha, or the energy body. The last meditation I released in this playlist called “Journey through the Koshas,” was a deep dive into annamaya kosha, or the physical body. Annamaya kosha is the mass, the form, the structure and foundation of your being. As we move through each kosha, the layers of self become more and more subtle. Pranamaya kosha is the breath body, or the energy body. If you’re familiar with Chinese medicine you can think of it like the Chi. This is the layer of you that animates and also heals the physical: it’s the power of the heart rhythmically pumping blood through all the veins in the body, the breath ebbing and flowing in and out of the lungs. It’s your nervous system, the electrical impulses between the brain, body, and heart that create the electromagnetic field that surrounds your body. All of this is happening without any conscious effort, and the only conscious access point that we have to this layer of self is our breath. For instance, by intentionally lengthening the exhale, you create a relaxing effect for the nervous system and can even slow down the beat of your heart. Sometimes when I find myself in a moment of frustration or irritation, if I’m able to create enough space within my experience to identify that this isn’t a state that I’d like to maintain, I check the quality of my breath and intentionally deepen and lengthen my breath to try and shift course. I’m using this playlist to explore permutations of the yoga koshas, which are the layers of self in yogic philosophy. A full length yoga nidra journey includes 5 phases which explore these 5 koshas. In this playlist, I will focus on one kosha at a time, and use the koshas as a lens through which to explore all 5 of these layers. For instance, in this recording, I emphasize the flow of awareness through the rotation of consciousness, the chakras in the pranamaya koshas phase, a visualization of energy flow across opposite sides of the body for the duality phase, a visualization of flow and floating for the symbolic/imagination phase, and abide in silence following this drifting phase for anandamaya kosha. So each of the 5 phases have a particular emphasis on qualities that characterize pranamaya kosha.