The 5 Koshas Explained (through the eyes of Harry Potter)

All it takes is a few bars of the theme song to bring me back to that magical feeling of watching Harry Potter the movie for the first time.  I can close my eyes and just feel it.  It’s as if something deep inside my inner webbing has just gotten pulled. Ahhh… 

According to ancient yogic texts, this inner webbing and the subtle pulls upon it, are the 5 koshas. If the pull is emotional, it’s part of the manomaya-kasha.

I decided to read the Harry Potter book series aloud to my daughter, which then added another layer of webbing inside of us both.  We read and talked and learned new words for this new world.  This intellectual layer of webbing, vijnanamaya-kosha, gets pulled when I hike and chat with my daughter (now in college). “This girl on my floor reminds me of book 3 when…” 

But what I loved the best about reading the book series aloud, was the space we created.  For over a year, the business of the day would come to a halt as we sat in bed and just read.  Time slowed, thoughts of the day were forced to float up and away for a bit.  (Have you ever tried reading aloud with a mind full of worldly worries?  It doesn’t work.)  That peaceful space is also a webbing deep within me: anandamaya-kossa. And I got a double-layering of it.  As soon as I finished reading the series to one daughter, the next daughter was ready with book 1 in her bed. If I need to find my “happy place”, I tug on that web and find that peaceful bed.   

Going to the Harry Potter theme park added yet another layer of webbing.  Threaded around inside me is now the smell of butterbeer, the taste of every-flavored-jellybeans, the feel of the 4-D broom ride. (What a thrill!)  Annamaya-kosha is what yoga calls the web of the physical senses.

Certainly not everything in our lives needs to be so intertwined.  We can have a very valuable experience with just one of the koshas at a time.  When I hike a challenging hill, I add to my web of pranamaya-kosha, the webbing of breath/energy/health. It’s a webbing that I very much value.  But still, there is something to be said for having a few things in our lives, like Harry Potter, that intertwine several of our koshas.   

A couple of students at our local college started an interactive yarn art in the middle of campus.  They made a wobbly thin wire igloo and started weaving it with a few yarn scraps. Students from all majors started adding their yarn scraps to the webbing.  After a while - years actually - the structure was such a strong, crazy, colorful intertwining that the wobbly thin wire was no longer needed.  It stood on its own.  One big crazy beautiful intertwining.            

I think that’s what I want from my koshas. I think that’s what I want from my life!  One big crazy beautiful intertwining.

Until next time,

Laura    

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