What is the subtle body? Exploring the ways energy moves through us!

I sit. Eyes closed, spine centered and long, my awareness going inward. Or at least that is what I tell myself. My mind is distracted by the noise of the day’s To Do list that echoes in my frontal cortex. I am waffling on my intention for my practice and distractedly breathing-not-breathing. My day is already getting away from me…until suddenly, I become aware that despite sitting in “stillness” my torso seems to be swaying. I am not intentionally moving my torso, so what is this sway? This gentle undulation of the torso is so curious, it holds my awareness in a single direction, and suddenly, I am engrossed in my seated practice. This oscillation is definitely not intentional. This moving of form, I feel like a leaf swaying in the breeze. What is this movement? Where does it come from?

The Subtle Body - a Primer

The yoga tradition speaks eloquently on the energies that move our bodies. Collectively, these energies make up the subtle body and are the vast majority of the being that is you. And yet, the subtle body is so hard for our beautiful rational western minds to swallow. Why is that? We seem to struggle separating the intangible from the tangible, but what we are talking about is the same energies that physics explores, that engineers use, that powers the world.

The yoga tradition breaks down an individual into three bodies or shariras - the karana sharira or causal body, the sukshma sharira or the subtle body, and the karya sharira or the gross body. These three sharira’s loosely align to the kosha system. The gross body is tangible - skin, muscles, bones and associated with manomayakosha. It is the form that makes up everything; it is mass. The karana sharira is the causal body associated with the anandamayakosha, and the seed essence of the other two bodies. In the yoga tradition, this is the carrier of karma and vasanas - the seeds of our personality.

The subtle body is multi-faceted, non-visual, and non-tangible. It is composed of breath, mind and intellect - the second, third and fourth koshas - among other subtle energies in the body such as the five elements, perception, action, etc. It is the energy that gives form to life— the breath, the neuro- and electro-magnetic fields of the body, the energy that is passed via chemical, electrical, and mechanical processes. Energy - like that which takes a lightbulb and makes it light up - is what yoga often calls the enlivening principle; that which transforms our bodies into beings. In other words, the subtle body is the various systems and processes that create, move or focus subtle energy in the body to transform our experiences.

"The subtle body is the various systems and processes that create, move or focus subtle energy in the body to transform our experience."

What is energy?

Energy is defined as information that vibrates. Energy is the vibration moving information and consciousness, creating pathways for connection in all things. Some energy is more physical in nature, easy to observe, easy to measure. Light is a good example. Other energy is less tangible, beyond space and time, and beyond humans ability to see. Quantum physics is helping understand or provide theories to this subtle energy, that is helping us better understand our world. However, people who participate in modalities that explore energy in the body, are often able to feel these subtle energies in action and learn to enhance and use these energies. The subtle body uses the combination of energies that move through us, giving our organs life, transferring information via energy pathways. Subtle, and yet, the affect on our lives can be quite profound.

Scientists today are finding ample research opportunities to measure and explore the existence of the subtle body and subtle energies and validate perspectives various traditions have proposed for millennia. Across science and some of these ancient traditions such as yoga, ayurveda, acupuncture, Chinese medecine, Reiki, etc. it is commonly understood that there are three structures that make up the "anatomy" of the subtle body - fields, channels and bodies.

Structures of the subtle energy body

Fields are bands of energy that permeate within each cell and radiate outward, expanding omnidirectionally. A common practice is to meditate on the heart field, to visualize and feel it within you as compassion, love and gratitude, and then radiate that energy outward. As you meditate, you slowly expand this field to encompass your entire being, then your community, your city, your country, and the whole world, perhaps even all the cosmos. In this way, we begin to experience the energetic field within which we exist, as well as how the field influences us, and we in turn influence the field. One excellent institution exploring fields of energy is the Heart Math Institute that has explored various electro-magnetic fields and pioneering evidence on heart-brain coherence. They even have a free app that enables you to meditate on heart-brain coherence with other practitioners around the world with the aim of raising the vibration of the global field.

"We only can experience what we bring our awareness to, and so the opening to the subtle body first comes from shifting where we place our awareness."

Second, bodies are centers or nexuses within one’s form containing subtle energy that vibrates at the same frequency. One example of these are the chakras. Translated from sanskrit as wheels of energy, chakras are like organs for energy consolidation, helping to support the integration of energy along certain frequencies to be channeled and used for our greater wellbeing and evolution. In Cyndi Dale’s excellent book on the subtle body, one can take a deep dive on the subtle body from many different perspectives. In regards to subtle bodies, one can learn about various chakra systems from around the world including the ancient Incan, Cherokee, Indian and Mayan systems to get a sense of how bodies of energy are used across various traditions.

Lastly, an energy channel can be described as a river of energy, often light, that transports energy in and around the body, often between energy bodies. In Chinese medicine, these are known as meridians, in the yoga and ayurvedic traditions, nadi lines. Modern science and researchers such as Dr William Tiller out of Stanford, are using various materials-thermal, radioactive and electromagnetic—to validate the existence of these channels, particularly emphasizing the role of intention and the subtle body. Whether supporting the path of Chi, Prana, or other flows of energy in the body, channels become important pathways to link various parts of the body and create a unifying whole.

Why does subtle energy matter?

When we start paying attention to the energy that moves our body, that supports the organs to function, to the breath and life force that breathes us, we have an entirely different experience of being alive. As embodied creatures, it is very easy to feel that our hands do the work, not the energy waves pulsing in and around us informing the matter that is our hands to act in their interest. And yet, when we start observing our lives in this way, it very quickly shifts what is at the center of our actions. We only can experience what we bring our awareness to, and so the opening to the subtle body first comes from shifting where we place our awareness. Then, shifting our awareness from one of seeing, into one of feeling.

When we open to being less focused on the external form, we end up experiencing the happy conundrum of experiencing more of our physical body.

Going Deeper into the Central Channel

In yoga, beyond the breath, one of the most important components of the subtle body is what is known as the Central Channel. The subtle body, in the broader yoga tradition was mapped and consolidated after the 8th century CE, despite ample reference and practices exploring the subtle body over the millennia. The central channel is one of the most universal and foundational components of the subtle body across lineages. It maps the energy lines that link all of the chakras running from the pelvic floor up to the crown of the head. It is understood to be a little in front of the spine and about as wide as a finger.

Unfortunately, in the 19th century, with the medicalization of yoga, aspects of the subtle body were placed on top of or synonimized with the aspects of the physical body obfuscating the importance of the energy body. In this way, the central channel, a formerly foundational aspect of the subtle body linking the chakras, and the pathway of kundalini up the body, became the spinal column. Thanks to various sanskrit and tantric scholars and yoga practitioners who are translating ancient tomes, we are regularly re-learning ancient perspectives on the subtle body.

One scholar is Christopher Wallis who clarifies in his translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (VBT), that the central channel is defined as starting from the locus of the reproductive area - to gender neutralize and clarify, often interpreted as the pelvic floor - to the apex of the energy body known as the devadhashanta, typically about 12 to 40 inches above the crown of the head. The pelvic floor is quite different from the coccyx both physically and energetically and serves as the foundation of life, and the base of the energetic body. The devadhashanta is both the place where the energy body merges with cosmic energy, as well as the location where the divine decent occurs into the human form. As such, this is an important location within the energy nexus of the human form. These two points, the root and crown of the energy body provide the poles for the energies in the body to flow as well as serve as the channel within which the energy fields can circulate. The yoga tradition therefore sees this central channel as a pathway for all the most important energies - from heart opening, loss, communication, digestion, gut instinct, sexual energy, flashes of insight, concentration, light of mystical experiences, creation of life - to flow both inward and outward.

"Through the subtle body, we realize we are not separate but intrinsically connected to the world around us, not just through sensation, but through the vibrations of life that pulse through us, within us, and emanate beyond."

In order to experience the central channel, it is important to sit straight up. Although other forms of meditation can be done in prone positions, the central channel works as a rising/falling force coiling up, and coiling down. One of the first things experienced when we begin to pay attention to the central channel, is it's undulation. The practitioner can experience the central channel as an oscillating wave. If one were to visualize a kelp forest, the central channel is the kelp undulating in the water being moved by the subtle energy forces or currents in the body.

The energy that travels within the central channel corresponds with the white light of the attunement of our chakras, and is said to be kundalini or kundalini shakti. This energy coils up the central channel, resonating through every chakra creating a sense of total harmony in the body. As Christopher Wallis shares, from his translation of the VBT, kundalini originally meant sonic power, mantric power, vibratory sonic energy that coils up from specific points in the body and then uncoils again. Kundalini was thus used with mantras, repeated phrases of a specific resonance or vibration to achieve harmony in the body. In this way, the idea of kundalini syncs with modern science understandings of energy as information vibrating. As we feel it, we can imagine it and thus can meditate on it. In this way, we are instructed to bring our awareness to this sensation of vibration pulsing through us and hold our awareness there. Explore it, be curious about it. Feel and imagine it.

Take your own exploration of the subtle body deeper by listening to the meditation below, offering a technique to explore the central channel from the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. The beauty of this meditation is that you experience the state of Bhairava, or spacious awareness, a divinity that exists within the human form when our energy matches the correct frequency. As a meditation exploring the subtle body, the practitioner has the possibility of experiencing the chakras or bodies of subtle energy harmonising up the channel and dissipating first into their own energetic field, and then beyond into the cosmic field. This meditation therefore unites the subtle energies in the body into their highest frequency, and then shares that energy back into the universe as both a gift to the practitioner, and an offering to the world.

As each individual takes their practice deeper, the subtle waves of energy that cross meridians, travel nadis, circle around the chakras and pulsate in the field become pathways to understand ourselves and means of communicating with the external world. Through the subtle body, we realize we are not separate but intrinsically connected to the world around us, not just through sensation, but through the vibrations of life that pulse through us, within us, and emanate beyond.

Enjoy the personal exploration of your subtle body, expanding deeper into that state of Bhairava as you join me in the meditation below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H6wLGG3imY