The Pañcamaya Model
Me chanting before giving a talk on the Pañcamaya Model at a recent Yoga Retreat given by Yin Yoga Yoga 4 You.
To the ancients, yoga was a science of how to use the powers of body, energy and mind to connect to spirit. They observed how people behaved, moved, breathed and thought for generations, noting patterns, and developing a model of how the human system works. One of these models, described in the Upanishads, is the Pañcamaya.
The Pañcamaya model divides our human experience into five levels—body, praṇa, mind, judgment and personality—and the levels are give the term “maya,” meaning “pervading,” to convey the sense that, at all times, throughout our entire system, all of these levels are sort of blending seamlessly to make us who we are at any moment.
Doing some Vīrabhadrāsana during our practice to get our minds and bodies settled and open for learning.
Moving from the most substantial to least, we first encounter annamaya. This is the level of the physical stuff of our body, everything made out of food (anna literally means food). These are the tissues, cells, even atoms of our body.
Then there is praṇamaya, the vitality or functioning of our body. This would include all the processes that our body does, whether they are flowing well, or disrupted. (Traditionally, there were five areas of praṇa, which I’ll describe in a separate post soon).
The manomaya is the mind. Mind can perceive, process, store and access information. It allows us to think in words or images.
Our discussion during the talk. The Barn Abbey at New Harmony was filled with sunlight.
Vijñanamaya can be translated as wisdom, but it has more nuance. This is where our memories, judgment and beliefs, conscious and subconscious, are held. This level is related to the behaviors that result from our beliefs.
Ānandamaya is the deep personality or emotional core that is our own, the nature we are born with.
At the center of these five levels, at a place inviolable and completely undisturbed by change, is puruṣa—the soul, or pure conscious being.
(A quick note on the spiritual underpinnings of this model: My understanding is that puruṣa is at the center because it wants to experience and interact with the world. As pure consciousness, it can’t interact with a material world, so it essentially creates an “earth suit” of increasingly more substantial quality to have an interface for earth. And the implication is that this earth suit was created with purpose; that every aspect of the each human being’s personality, traits, birthplace and time, family, etc, was chosen to serve puruṣa’s purpose.)
The five levels are arranged in a sort of spectrum, from most material (body) to least (personality). And again, they are pervading, so every cell of your body has functions of energy, mind, beliefs and personality working through it. Likewise, the more material body and energy levels are actively affecting the beliefs and personality. It can help to conceptually separate the levels to work with them, but always with an understanding that each part is connected to all other parts. That’s what makes this a holistic system.
Now, what makes this model really fascinating to me is the practical application.
At any moment in time, the way in which these levels present themselves is a product of our experience.
Here are some random examples of how experience shapes us:
When I eat a sandwich, some of the food substance will be incorporated into my body. My body is slightly different as a result.
When I don’t sleep well, I am tired the next day. My energy level is altered.
I read a book, and now I can remember and imagine the story. My mind has more/different information.
I saw a youtube video of a bridge collapsing, and now I have this tiny fear that a bridge will collapse when I drive over it. My belief system was affected.
Again, all these experiences are working on all the levels simultaneously. So my concern of a bridge collapsing makes me feel a little anxious when I’m stuck on a bridge in traffic, and my heart rate increases, and maybe I’m distracted and a little tense.
These experiences can’t be undone. They have become part of who I am. I carry them with me everywhere I go.
And usually that isn’t a problem. Every day, every moment of consciousness is just another bit of experience that is stored in us.
But sometimes, an experience can change our system in a way that has a negative or problematic outcome. In my bridge example, for instance, if my experience had been more personal or real, my fear would be greater, and have a bigger impact on my life.
So if we can’t remove the experience, or avoid the experience, what is left?
We can have a new experience, or many new experiences, that over time change our system in a different way.
This is how yoga works!
The practices of yoga, from a therapeutic perspective, are specifically designed to give your body, energy, mind, belief system and inner self specific experiences .
And, with the help of a mentor/teacher, you can give your system an intentional experience that takes it in a different direction—a more useful direction—so that over time, the problematic effect of the other experience is diminished, eventually to the point that it no longer has a noticeable effect on your system.
Let’s go back to the bridge example to see how this might work. Say a student had an inability to drive over a bridge without feeling her heart race, breath shorten and her shoulders/neck freeze up. And it’s causing a problem in her life because she has to drive over a bridge to get to work, so every morning she have this stressful event, then get a headache and get cranky.
So here are her symptoms, in pancamaya order:
body - stiffness/reduced mobility in shoulders and neck
energy - headaches, tension, pain in shoulders and neck
mind - distracted, thoughts fast/racing
behavior/beliefs - She doesn’t believe she is safe, avoids the bridge when possible and stresses out when it’s not.
personality/emotion - fear
To reduce these symptoms, I might advise her to practice: gentle, slow movement in the neck and shoulders to reteach them they can be relaxed; breathing practices that relax the nervous system and reduce tension; meditative activity to train the mind so that she can choose what it is focused on; an object of meditation that leads in the opposite direction of fear.
The specific movements, breathing practices and meditation would be different from person to person. Each of us is a complex web of experiences that interact in unique ways. So the teacher is led by their own inner guide (puruṣa, intuition) to give the student a practice they can return to regularly (ideally every day) to begin creating new experiences.
It’s so elegant. I love the way this model ties together all the pieces of yoga in a tidy package. Once you understand it, it offers such a simple, cohesive way of designing yoga classes and practices to have a deep and lasting impact.
I should say that yoga practice itself was not created to provide therapy for the masses. It was a spiritual science of bringing the five levels into balance so that the practitioner was no longer subject to the distractions of a dysfunctional system. As the system moves closer and closer to a balanced state, then pure consciousness (puruṣa) can be heard more clearly, and the practitioner can act with skill, not distracted or motivated by ego, ignorance, likes and dislikes, or fear.
So ultimately, the goal was gain clarity and better connection to puruṣa. Freedom.
These days, most students don’t come to yoga for this. It doesn’t even occur to most people that it would be a benefit. And that’s fine. Yoga still works on all the other stuff too (like back pain, high blood pressure, tension, etc, etc). For many students, the peace and clarity that come with spiritual freedom are the side benefits they didn’t know they wanted.
But once you’ve had a taste of this freedom, a sort of veil slips, and you begin looking for it more. It’s a beautiful thing.
Mr. Desikachar wrote a chant about the Pañcamaya — I’ve uploaded a description and recording here in case you’d like to delve more deeply into the concepts: The Pañcamaya-ślokaḥ. I chanted this piece daily in preparation for the discussion I led.
Some of my personal understanding of this model has come through continued practice and study; for the most part, I am indebted to Chase Bossart for teaching me this information during the Yoga Well Foundations of Yoga Therapy Training. And to my own mentor, who answers my questions and guides my practice. Thank you!