by Donna Quesada: This article—the fifth in my series on Kundalini Yoga’s 10 Bodies—focuses on the “Fifth Body of Light,” which is the physical body.
In the ancient tradition of Kundalini Yoga, the Self is understood, not as one body, but rather, as 10 Bodies. The ten body system is comprised of the physical body, six energetic or pranic bodies, and three mental bodies.
Taken together, the 10 Bodies are different aspects of our consciousness, all of which work together to cultivate our mood, our way of being, and the way we see the world
Our first in this series was The Soul Body, followed by The Three Minds. After this entry, on The Physical Body, we will study The Arcline. As you can see… of the ten, The Physical Body is the most tangible. The other bodies are very abstract. Our body is what we relate to the most. It’s what we see when we look in the mirror, and when we take pictures of ourselves. It’s what we first see when we look at others.
It’s the first order of business when we describe ourselves to others. Only later do we share more subtle aspects of who we really are. On a practical level, our body is what drives the car and what takes the dog out for a walk. Our bodies are our physical representatives to the world. You might say that The Physical Body is the hardware, whereas The Mental Bodies are the software.
Using Yogic language, The Physical Body is what carries us into our destiny and into the fulfillment of our purpose here on earth. From the Yogic point of view, we’ve had 8.4 million incarnations. And the reason for so many, is that it usually takes that long for the soul to evolve fully into a Self-Realized state. The idea is that the eternal and immutable soul takes birth in a physical vessel time and time again, for the purpose of learning lessons and growing, as a result of those experiences.
It’s considered a boon to be born into a human body that is capable of this level of enlightenment. (Which doesn’t mean that humans are better than other creatures… it just means that our mission is different. And part of that mission is to develop the compassion necessary to serve as a proper steward for this planet and its creatures.)
With that said, having a physical body is a mixed bag type of experience! On any given day, we’re grappling with myriad challenges and unexpected set backs. Good things happen, but they often come with worries. We’re happy, then we’re sad. We celebrate, then we lose what we love… It’s hot. It’s cold. We’re up, then we get injured. You get it. The point is, having a body comes with extremes of polarity. It’s just a package deal. A two-for-one that we didn’t ask for. But if we didn’t have the experience of human life in a physical body, we’d wish we could!
The Physical Body is our vehicle. It enables us to have these experiences… from our first kiss, to playing sports, to fixing things, to making music.
But here’s the thing, our body is the litmus test for how we’ve been living. We’ve been collecting a bunch of experiences, learning the lessons that we came here to learn… some pleasurable, some traumatic, and some that strengthen us as human beings. And it all gets stored in our nervous system, which affects the rest of our physical system, as a whole.
For example, according to Yogic healing philosophy, when we suddenly injure ourselves, and we can’t figure out why… we don’t remember bumping our knee, for example… the answer may be metaphysical, rather than physical. The first place to look is into our stored trauma. Have we been accumulating tension? And has that tension tightened us in some way that made us prone to injury? My neck often gets stiff, and for me, when I’m anxious or stressed, that’s the first visible sign. In this way, The Physical Body is a clue into what we need to work through.
In the west, the idea of making the body beautiful is prioritized. But, in stark contrast to this ideal and purpose, these ancient teachings tell us that our goal—while embodied in physical form—is not physical beauty, but rather to use the physical body to work through our challenges and awaken our soul in the process.
To meet these challenges, it serves us to be healthy. So we eat well and take care of ourselves, so that we can make the most of our existence and realize what we’ve come to realize. And to go even deeper, our body is our vehicle for not only awakening spiritually, but for serving the people that our soul has chosen to travel with, in this lifetime. Any time we use our body to sacrifice (to help and to serve), we are stepping outside our own needs and our own ego in order to be of service to someone else. And this is the highest goal of having a body.
