Pure Consciousness, the undulating vibration of the universe as a whole, expresses as us in 5 energy fields, called koshas, or sheaths. These 5 energy sheaths are how you experience your individuated soul, and each of the 5 sheaths has its own intelligence.

The first sheath is the physical body. It is the only body dense enough for us to perceive as matter. It’s intelligence is emotional. It’s how we sense how others are feeling, for example.

The second sheath is the energetic body. It’s intelligence is energetic. It’s how we exert energy and recover. It is where your chakras exist, and it bridges the physical body with the rest of the subtle bodies.

The third sheath is the mind, sometimes called the sensate body. It’s intelligence is aesthetic. It makes sense of what we perceive through our senses. The mind is known as the great barrier sheath because we are most often slave to the mind. It’s cunning and deft and always convinces us it’s in charge; it’s got sensory experience to prove it’s right. The functioning of the mind blocks our access to the most subtle energetic sheaths, and by doing so, it keeps us understanding ourselves as separate and discrete. You cannot change your mind with your mind, but you can with your breath and we’ll do that.

The fourth sheath is the wisdom body. It’s intelligence is intellectual discernment. It is the seat of wisdom, or what is commonly called the Higher Mind.

And the fifth, most subtle energy sheath is the bliss body. It’s intelligence is mystic. It is the seat of our ability to transcend the individual self to experience and understand ourselves in unity with the universe.

You may notice that you are naturally gifted in one of these intelligences—emotional, energetic, aesthetic, intellectual or mystic—or that you operate from one more than the others. We are all more naturally gifted in one than the others. Very few, if any, of us are naturally gifted or inclined to all 5. It’s not accidental; it is part of our very nature.

Our natural intelligence runs through who we are, what we do, and how we do it. It is foundational to everything, and it arises from this energetic pattern of your individual soul.

Understand this, understand how to use this and you have the means to radically transform your experience, cease fighting yourself, and create your work from the essence of your being.

Yoga gives us the practices to do this. Meditation, Pranayama (which is breath manipulation), mantra (which is the repetition of sacred sound) and yantra (which is sacred geometry, of which the practice of physical yoga postures is a part) all unify your 5 energy fields. They provide the means to experience our own place as a vibrational aspect of a whole. They also develop in us deeper & deeper awareness of and sensitivity to our 5 intelligences. You can then consciously perceive them and use them with greater frequency and effectiveness to create your deepest, most mature work.