What is a Kosha?
The concept of kosha comes from classical yoga philosophy and refers to five interrelated layers of human experience. Rather than separating the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of a person, the kosha model offers a way of understanding how these different dimensions are connected.
As interest grows in yoga’s role within healthcare, and as yoga therapy continues to develop as a profession, the kosha model is increasingly being used as a way to assess and understand the individual more fully.
Each kosha represents a different aspect of experience:
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Annamaya kosha — the physical body
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Pranamaya kosha — the breath and energy body
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Manomaya kosha — the thinking and emotional mind
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Vijnanamaya kosha — the reflective and discerning self
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Anandamaya kosha — a sense of ease, connection, or underlying contentment
These layers are closely linked. A change in one often affects the others. In this way, the kosha model gives a more complete picture of health and well-being.
The Kosha Model as an Assessment Framework
One of the strengths of the kosha model is how it can be used in assessment.
Instead of focusing only on a presenting issue, it allows a practitioner to consider:
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how experience shows up across all five layers
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how different layers may be influencing each other
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where there is already some stability or strength
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where it might be most useful to begin
This supports a more person-centred approach. It also helps avoid jumping too quickly to conclusions about what is driving a particular issue.
A Practical Example: Anxiety in Older Adulthood
To consider the value of this, take the example of an older adult presenting with anxiety.
A yoga therapist, or a practitioner in another health discipline drawing on the kosha model, would first conduct a kosha assessment across all five layers.
This process identifies themes, explores how needs across domains may be linked or compounding one another, and recognises existing strengths that can be built upon. Only then would the practitioner determine where to focus and how to intervene.
Annamaya: The Physical Body
As the body ages, it can become a primary site of anxiety, with certain concerns consistently emerging at this stage of life and usually forming part of the initial enquiry. For example, balance often declines with age, and concern about falling is not misplaced.
A fall may lead to fracture, hospitalisation, or loss of independent living, risks compounded by muscle weakness and osteoporosis. Chronic pain, postural changes, cardiovascular conditions, and the cumulative effects of medication may also be present and shape how the body is experienced.
In keeping with the person-centred nature of the kosha model, one would also ask the client about their specific physical health issues and concerns. The practitioner would also attend to what is observable in front of them, noting movement, stability, and physical organisation, and holding this either as part of their own clinical understanding or bringing it into the enquiry with the client where appropriate.
The cumulative picture, informed by commonly associated age-related concerns, the individual’s own experience, and what is observed, begins to indicate whether anxiety is being driven, or significantly shaped through the body, and how this may be influencing other layers.
Pranamaya: Breath, Energy, and Sleep
Ageing often affects breath, energy, and sleep in ways that are both physiological and cumulative. Respiratory efficiency tends to decline, sleep often becomes lighter or more fragmented, and energy may be reduced or fluctuate in ways that were not previously present. These changes are common enough to warrant direct enquiry at this life stage, as poor sleep and low vitality feed anxiety, and anxiety in turn disrupts both.
As with each layer, the practitioner would ask what the individual notices and wishes to address here, whilst attending to what is visible, breathing patterns, pace, the presence of restriction or agitation in the chest, holding this as part of their own clinical picture or bringing it into the enquiry with the client as the relationship allows.
The cumulative picture begins to indicate whether anxiety is being sustained through depletion, dysregulation, or a system that feels chronically unrestored, and how this may be influencing other layers.
Manomaya: Thoughts and Emotions
At this layer, certain emotional and cognitive patterns are more likely in older adulthood and would form part of the enquiry. Loss tends to accumulate differently at this stage of life. Bereavement may be multiple and proximate, social circles may have narrowed significantly, and loneliness is common. Concerns about independence, mortality, and how one is perceived by a society that does not always hold older people well are also worth asking about directly.
At the same time, each person carries their own history. Some difficulties may have been carried unresolved across a lifetime and are now more prominent. Others may have been well managed, but the conditions of later life — the loss of structure, role, and social connection — may erode what previously kept them contained.
As with each layer, the practitioner would ask what the individual notices and wishes to address here. As the mind cannot be directly observed, the practitioner would attend to social cues to extrapolate additional information — eye contact, voice tone, and micro movements — to sense what may be present beyond what is spoken.
Vijnanamaya: Insight and Cognitive Function
With age, there is a natural decline in certain cognitive faculties. Attentional control and processing speed may be dampened, and the retrieval of information may become less fluid or require greater effort. An older adult may worry that this process is occurring, may be actively noticing it, or may have experienced a more significant change and consequently be less aware of the extent of it. Each of these possibilities sits differently in the assessment.
Enquiry at this layer involves asking about concerns regarding mental acuity and any changes the person has already noticed. The practitioner would also observe this for themselves, drawing on an understanding of what mental prowess might reasonably be expected at a given age and inferring change against that baseline — unless the individual is clearly aware of change and can report it directly.
As with each layer, the practitioner would attend to social cues — the quality of reasoning, attentional presence, and how the person tracks and engages with the conversation — to build a fuller picture beyond what is reported.
Anandamaya: Joy and Meaning
This layer has the greatest capacity for variation across the koshas it is possible to experience a significant decline in other layers and remain deeply joyous. An older adult presenting with anxiety, however, is unlikely to be such an example.
Physical limitations may have closed off activities that once provided pleasure, aliveness, or a sense of self. Roles and structures that carried meaning may have dissolved. Spiritual communities or practices that once provided connection and continuity may have been lost or disrupted. What remains may feel quieter, narrower, or belong to a former version of the self. The loss of loved ones also bears particular weight here — not only as grief held in manomaya kosha, but as the erosion of the relationships through which joy, belonging, and a sense of being known were experienced.
As with each layer, the practitioner would ask about levels of joy and any specific obstacles the person identifies. However, this layer also requires time. Behaviours and patterns that compromise connection and joy may not be immediately visible or reported, and a fuller picture often only emerges as the working relationship develops and the person becomes more known to the practitioner.
The Importance of the Kosha Model
Following such an assessment, a practitioner has a map that is unique to the individual in front of them, one that reveals where distress is most active, where imbalances across the koshas are compounding one another, and where existing strengths may be built upon.
This allows a practitioner, or a yoga therapist specifically, to select treatments and practices that the person is capable of doing and willing to undertake, and with those two factors accounted for, practices that are likely to have the highest impact across domains.
A Whole-Person Approach
The kosha model offers a way of working that reflects the complexity of human experience.
It allows practitioners to take into account the body, breath, mind, and wider sense of meaning, without reducing the person to any single aspect. It also supports a more responsive approach, where interventions are shaped by the individual rather than applied in a fixed way.
In this sense, the kosha model continues to be relevant both within traditional yoga and in contemporary therapeutic settings.
