Chapter 3
Uncovering the Subtle Energy Systems
In This Chapter
Focusing on the three subtle forces
Surveying the subtle nervous system
Locating the building blocks of the tissues
Learning about the chakras
Introducing the invisible coverings of your body
In this part of the book, I journey into the more subtle parts of the make-up of your body. These elements don’t function independently but form an integrated matrix throughout your system, connected by pranic currents (energy). Like radio waves, these forces operate within your nerves (nadis) and channels known as srotas.
This chapter gives you a brief outline of how Ayurveda perceives the energy in your body on a subtle level, and how the food that you eat and thoughts that you think translate into your cellular and extra-cellular make-up. This is pretty esoteric stuff, but vital for your understanding of Ayurveda.
Pinpointing Three Essential Forces
The end products of all the food, images, air and fluids that you take in on a daily basis ultimately end up as ojas, tejas and prana – three forces that are akin to the finest elements of your immune system. The more you have of them, the less likely you are to get sick. I explain each in this section.
Outling ojas
Ojas is the refined essence of all your bodily tissues. It endows you with strong immunity and vigour. Without it, you would cease to live.
Ayurveda identifies two types of ojas:
Para ojas, which resides in your heart and maintains its activity.
Apara ojas, which moves around the body; it originates from your heart, nourishes your tissues, and supports your life.
You also derive ojas from pure bliss (or ananda) – that which makes you feel happy and content wherever you find yourself. In other words, the more you connect to that pure centre of your being where peace resides, the more ojas you put in the bank. Meditation is a great way to get there, and I explore meditation and its many benefits in Chapter 6.
Although ojas is a benefit to your body, too much can lead to trouble. If it increases faster than your body can process it, ojas is converted to ama (toxins) and can then incite issues such as high cholesterol and increased blood sugar.
If, on the other hand, you lack ojas, you leave your immune system weakened, which of course leaves you open to all kinds of illness. You might notice that your level of ojas is low when you have dry skin or feel an unusual level of anxiety or fear.
Targeting tejas
Tejas is connected to the fiery principle in your body – agni – but operates on a more subtle level. Visualise tejas as the container for agni. It works in many ways like a director, keeping order within your body through processes like regulating body temperature, guiding cell function, and otherwise maintaining balance. Tejas is the substance that enables you to digest food, emotions, ideas and thoughts.
Tejas helps to create and protect your ojas, which in turn supports prana (see the next section) in its work to defend and maintain the respiratory function of your cells. If the force of tejas is low, then your body produces too much ojas. On the other hand, if the flame of your tejas is too high, it burns ojas and therefore leaves you open to disease.
Your body’s innate ability to prioritise is part of what tejas controls. For example, if you’re under attack, your stomach shuts down and your blood supply is redirected to your limbs so that you can run away.
Tejas also contributes to the cellular intelligence that maintains the sizes and shapes of your bodily components. It dictates how your hair grows and the order of your cells within your organs and other structures. This same cellular intelligence enables wounds to heal.
More ethereally speaking, because tejas gives luminosity to your skin, eyes and hair, it’s said to create a glow. When someone is described as enlightened, they have tejas to thank. For those who can see auras, a halo is the manifestation of this light.
Promoting prana
Prana orchestrates and animates your existence. It’s the life force that enters you at birth and exits when you die. In Chinese medicine, it’s called chi. The prana shakti, or force in your body, is created by the food you eat and the air you inhale into your lungs.
Prana governs all the motor and sensory nerve transmissions in your body. All cognitive functions of your mind are related to pranic waves, as is the motion of your heart, which pumps vital nutrients around your body. From the moment of a foetus’s conception, prana acts to circulate ojas within it.
Cosmic prana abounds in the universe, which is why all of creation works as one harmonious whole. Prana is made up of air and ether elements, which gives it great qualities of expansion. (Refer to Chapter 2 to find out more about the building blocks of existence.) You can experience this expansion in meditation when you reach a stage of stillness and experience a sense of dissolution of all boundaries.
The seat of your emotional experiences is your lungs, which is where prana is garnered from the atmosphere. Kapha emotions like greed and attachment are stored in the lower lobes, while anger and hatred (connected to pitta dosha) sit in the middle region.
Finally, fear and sadness attributed to vata dosha are stored in the upper lobes of your lungs. No wonder that Ayurveda puts so much importance on the smooth operating of the lungs and the practice of pranayama (breathing techniques). Chapter 14 tells you more about pranayama.
Navigating the Nadis: Surveying the Subtle Nervous System
Energy flows around your body through the nadis, channels (72,000 of them!) that emanate from a central channel along your spine to create a simmering network of very fine forces. These channels are practically untraceable by direct empirical observation, rather like the meridians in Chinese medicine. They connect at several points of your body to create areas of unique intensity, the chakras, which I discuss in the upcoming section, ‘Working with the Wheels of Power: The Chakras’.
Three nadis form the foundation of this intricate network:
Sushumna nadi runs through your core, alongside your spine, and is the central channel from which all others emanate. The chakra system (see the following section) is located along this nadi.
Pingala is identified with energising masculine qualities and opens in your right nostril.
Ida has pacifying feminine characteristics and finds its opening in your left nostril.
The left channel is more cooling and passive, while the right is warming and generally more active. You can learn to use this knowledge to help you in your daily life, by the practice of pranayama (breathing exercises), which I describe in Chapter 14. Meditation and a balanced lifestyle clear and bring harmony to this network of channels and help unblock it if needs be.
The other principal nadis include:
Alambusha nadi relates to seeing, especially your right eye and its optic nerve.
Chakshusha nadi connects to your left eye and its optic nerve; it supports your ability to perceive forms.
Hastajihva nadi relates to your right ear, ends in your left big toe, and aids speech production.
Ghandhari nadi relates to your left ear and ends in your right big toe. It aids perception of speech.
Kuhu nadi connects to your channels of excretion, opening at the anus via the rectum.
Saraswati nadi is named after the goddess of wisdom; it begins in your tongue and ends in the oral cavity, where it perceives the six tastes. It also gives you the wisdom and capacity to speak.
Shankini nadi relates to the prostate and cervix and finds its opening in your genitals; it helps in the production of male and female reproductive tissue.
Vishvodara nadi is located in the umbilical area; it aids in the distribution of prana and promotes the healthy working of your pancreas and adrenals.
Discovering the Dhatus: Building Blocks of Your Body
The dhatus are the original building blocks of all the tissues in your body. They make up your physical body, the one you touch and see. (I explore your other bodies – yes, you have more! – in the later section ‘Placing the Pancha Koshas: The Invisible Coverings’.)
Dhatus are the basic types of cells which make up your body: lymph, blood, bone, fat, muscle, nerve and reproductive cells. They’re formed from the nutrient chyle, which enters your bloodstream at the thoracic duct. Like a roman fountain, the effective production of the first dhatu leads to the creation of the next one, and so on down the line until your reproductive tissue and ojas are produced.
Dhatus also produce secondary tissues known as upadhatus, which don’t go on to make other cells. An example of this is your teeth, which are a by-product of bone tissue. So the health of your bones can be observed by looking at your teeth.
Each dhatu has its own agni, which is the fuel that helps to generate tissue elements that make up your unique physiology. When dhatus are formed, waste products are also produced. When the srotas (channels – see Chapter 2) are operating optimally, they carry these waste products away, otherwise the waste creates ama (toxins; explained fully in Chapter 5) and disease in your system.
The seven dhatus, in the order that they form, are as follows:
Rasa dhatu: Meaning ‘sap’, rasa equates to lymph and occurs in tissue fluids such as plasma and chyle. It feeds all the other tissues of the body.
Rakta dhatu: Rakta refers to blood. It functions to preserve life and nourish and oxygenate your whole body, and so brings vigour, good colour and warmth.
Mamsa dhatu: Mamsa is the muscle tissue, which covers the bone and provides strength and support, especially to the fat tissue.
Meda dhatu: Otherwise known as fat, meda dhatu plays a vital role in your body. It lubricates all your muscles, joints and ligaments, and acts as an insulator.
Asthi dhatu: Asthi refers to bone tissue, which provides support for all the organs and musculature to function effectively.
Majja dhatu: Also known as bone marrow, majja fills your bones and lubricates the body – especially the eyes, stools and skin.
Shukra dhatu: Shukra means ‘semen’; its female counterpart is known as artava. It’s the substance that creates life, and it also produces ojas, which guards your immune system.
Working with the Wheels of Power: The Chakras
The word chakra means ‘wheel’ in Sanskrit. The chakras are nodal points where your mental, physical and energy body interact (the next section explains these bodies). As many as 140 of these centres of awareness exist, but I focus on the seven main chakras, which are located along your spine.
The system of the chakras is related to the mano vaha srotas, the channels which carry your mental faculties (see Chapter 2). They can become perturbed by negative feelings and create mental ama or toxins. This ama can be stored and may block the movement of energy in the chakra system.
The chakra system’s points of subtle energy are located on the sushumna nadi, which runs vertically through your body from your head to the base of your spine. The workings of your endocrine and glandular system are intimately linked by a nerve plexus to each of your chakras, shown in Figure 3-1.
A plexus, also known as a chiasma, is where a network of nerves meet up with your lymphatic and blood vessels. The chakra system passes an electric current from one organ to another in order to maintain balance throughout your system.
Table 3-1 shows you a breakdown of the elements of the seven chakras. Each one is numbered in order of density, so the earth element is number 1 and ether is number 5. Each chakra has a vibration which resonates with a sound; these sounds (mantras) are also listed. You can chant these sounds and use them to meditate on to purify a centre.
Figure 3-1: The chakras.
The chakras also have direction of flow, so by way of example, the 1st and 2nd chakras govern the flow of the downwards energy force known as apana (explained further in Chapter 7). In practice, that may mean, if you’re constipated, for example, that the muladhara chakra is blocked and may be connected to an unprocessed emotion such as insecurity.
The chakras are connected with emotions as follows:
1st chakra: Security, self-confidence and body image
2nd chakra: Creativity, vitality, anger and gender identity
3rd chakra: Trust, intimacy, status and fear
4th chakra: Resolution of feelings, emotional pain and self-awareness
5th chakra: Self-expression, joy, maintenance of personal boundaries and integrity
6th chakra: Intuition, memory, discrimination and reasoning
7th chakra: Transcendental consciousness
There’s much to say about the emotions commonly associated with the chakras that is beyond the scope of this book. Perhaps a personal example will suffice. For years I suffered with almost continuous sore throats, because I found it very difficult to really express my needs. Through yoga, meditation and psychotherapy, I found my voice, so to speak, and the throat conditions no longer trouble me.
Placing the Pancha Koshas: The Invisible Coverings
According to Ayurveda, the human form is composed of three bodies: the gross body (physical), which you can touch and feel; the subtle body (mental), which is connected to your nervous system; and the causal body (energy), which links you to the astral world.
As well as this, your body is made up of five envelopes, or sheaths – called pancha koshas – creating layers of decreasing density, as shown in Figure 3-2. According to Ayurvedic thinking, you are, in fact, spirit in matter. These sheaths sustain you in the corporeal world until the day you die.
Figure 3-2: Your body is composed of five envelopes, or sheaths, which sustain life.
The pancha koshas, from the densest to most subtle, are:
Anamaya kosha, or the food-formed sheath, is composed of the five elements. It’s intimately connected to the first three chakras (explained in the previous section).
Pranamaya kosha expresses itself through the ether and air elements, which are invested in the anahata (heart) and vishudda (throat) chakras. Here, circulating air in the form of prana finds its home. This is also where the vital pranas (see Chapter 2) vitalise the mind and body by connecting the senses.
The third and fourth layers share an intimate connection. Manomaya kosha refers to your mind, and vijnanamaya kosha to your intellect, where discrimination and true intelligence become directed towards the eternal. These two sheaths are closely tied to the ajna chakra in your pineal area. According to Ayurveda, energising this centre gives you innate inner vision – a ‘third eye’ that perceives things as they really are and recognises divinity in all things.
Anandamaya kosha is where you experience supreme bliss that’s part of your causal body but transcends all of your the senses and the experience of your physical body.
Ayurveda attempts to direct you towards sattwa guna, or the energy of balance, purity and truth, via meditation, yoga and dietary principles. This in turn benefits your anamaya kosha which, once vitalised by appropriate food choices, brings more sattwa (harmony) to the next covering, and so on until all the koshas are clear and functioning optimally.
This strategy eventually leads you to live in a state of perfect bliss. And who doesn’t want that?