Worlds Within: Rediscovering the Subtle Body

What if I told you that your body contains mountains, rivers, the sun and moon?

You might think I’ve drifted off somewhere between the inhale and exhale.

But this is exactly what the original yogis uncovered – an intricate map of esoteric anatomy known as the subtle body, sukshma sharira. In deep meditation, they charted the flow of prana through thousands of energetic channels called nadis, describing the body as containing all the elements of nature in microcosmic form: the sun shining through our eyes, a mountain rising within the spine, a lotus flower blooming in the heart, and rivers of vibrant energy flowing through every channel.

In making yoga more accessible to the Western mind, we’ve largely neglected this sacred inner landscape and reduced yoga to its physical form. We've traded the mystical for the measurable. We might be able to pinpoint every muscle needed for a biomechanically sound Chaturanga Dandasana, but we've forgotten that yoga was never meant to be only a physical practice.

The cost? Many practitioners come to the mat seeking something deeper—an unnamed longing that stronger cores and looser hamstrings can’t satisfy. They sense there's more, yet in our drop-in class culture, there’s rarely space to explore it.

So what's the point of imagining rivers flowing through your body or a crescent moon shining within your heart?

I remember once, after focusing on standing poses for several days, driving to a nearby mountain for a hike. Sitting in my car at the base of the trail, something within me shifted. My body felt heavy, rooted, and utterly still.  My breath released downward and a deep calm spread through me.  The mountain’s energy came alive within me.

The subtle body isn’t just poetic metaphor. It’s a living invitation—to awaken the archetypal forces and elemental energies within you, to evoke wonder, and to open to the mystery of being alive. When you attune to this inner landscape, you begin to harmonize body and soul with the universal forces moving through you.

What attunement to the subtle body offers isn’t new postures, but a new way of perceiving who you are.

Try this: The next time you practice Mountain pose, close your eyes and visualize yourself as a mountain. Don't just think it—become it. Feel its weight grounding your legs and feet, its steadfast presence rising up through your spine.  Then step outside and notice the earth beneath your feet, the silent conversation between you and the ground.

This is what we’re currently exploring in my online classes—practical and powerful ways to experience yoga's subtle dimensions.

This is where the inner journey meets daily life. When we realize that the sun, moon, rivers, and mountains live within us, our relationship to the outer world transforms.  The sun becomes a mirror of our inner light, the trees our kin, the mountains our ancestors. We begin to see that inner and outer were never separate.

This recognition awakens something ancient - our innate oneness and belonging to life that can never be lost because it is who we are.

Each of us contains worlds, and the path of yoga leads us to remember the vast, interconnected, living whole of which we are a part.

That's not spacing out between breaths.

That's yoga.