You Don’t Just Have One Body—You Have Five

You Don’t Just Have One Body—You Have Five
A new way to understand pain, stress, and healing

by Lisa Parker

If you've ever felt like traditional approaches to healing only go so far, you're not alone. Maybe you've tried talk therapy, but your body still holds tension. Maybe you've had bodywork sessions that leave you feeling lighter, but your anxiety creeps back in by the end of the week. Or maybe you've done deep spiritual work but still wrestle with limiting beliefs that show up in your daily life.

There’s a reason for that.
You don’t just have one body—you have five.

The Origin of the Five Bodies

The idea of the "Five Bodies" comes from ancient yogic philosophy, which speaks of five koshas—layers or sheaths of the self. These include the physical, energetic, mental, wisdom, and bliss bodies. While I’ve adapted the language and framework to be more accessible and relevant to modern healing work, the roots go back thousands of years.

What these traditions understood—and what science is beginning to catch up with—is that human beings are layered, interconnected systems. We experience life through more than just our physical form. Our emotions, thoughts, energy, and spirit all play critical roles in how we feel and how we heal.

In my work with clients and students, I use the Five Bodies framework to help make sense of complex patterns that show up in the healing process. Here's how I define them:

The Five Bodies

1. The Physical Body
This is the one we know best—our muscles, bones, organs, posture, breath, and nervous system. Trauma and stress often show up here as chronic tension, pain, fatigue, headaches, digestive issues, or immune dysregulation. But physical symptoms are rarely just "physical."

2. The Emotional Body
This is where our feelings live. It's where we hold grief, joy, anger, fear, shame, and love. When emotions aren't processed or expressed safely, they get stored—sometimes for years. The body often compensates by tightening muscles, numbing out, or triggering stress responses that feel confusing or disproportionate.

3. The Energetic Body
This is the subtle system—our life force, boundaries, intuition, and the state of our nervous system. It’s how we interact with the world without words. Sensitive people often feel this body strongly. An overstimulated energetic body can show up as anxiety, burnout, spaciness, or feeling "wired but tired."

4. The Intellectual Body
This includes our thoughts, belief systems, identity, and internal narratives. It's where we form our understanding of who we are and how the world works. If you've ever had a breakthrough in therapy or coaching where a belief shifted, you’ve felt the power of this body. But beliefs alone don’t always create change unless the rest of the system is also addressed.

5. The Spiritual Body
This is your connection to something greater—your purpose, your values, your soul. When this body is nourished, life feels meaningful. When it's disconnected, people often describe feeling lost, hollow, or deeply alone—even if everything on the outside looks fine.

The Connection Between the Bodies

While each body is distinct, they are deeply interwoven.
What affects one will inevitably ripple into the others.

Here are some common examples:

• A chronic injury (physical) leads to feelings of helplessness (emotional), which triggers a belief that you can’t trust your body (intellectual), drains your energy (energetic), and leaves you questioning your path (spiritual).

• A childhood experience of emotional neglect (emotional) results in a hypervigilant nervous system (energetic), contributes to tension and pain (physical), reinforces a belief of “I’m not safe” (intellectual), and disrupts your ability to trust in life (spiritual).

• A psychedelic experience (spiritual) opens your awareness, but without integration, your body might feel overwhelmed (physical/energetic), and old fears resurface (emotional/intellectual).

The body tells the truth. But that truth is layered.

Why the Five Bodies Matter

When people come to me, they’ve often tried everything—from therapy to bodywork to supplements to plant medicine. And each modality likely offered something useful. But true, lasting transformation comes when we stop trying to “fix” one part and start seeing the whole.

This is why the Five Bodies model is central to my work. It helps us ask better questions:

• Where is the tension really coming from?

• What emotion hasn’t been felt?

• What story is still running in the background?

• How is your nervous system adapting to stress?

• What deeper truth is trying to come through?

We don’t have to force change. When each body is met with presence, safety, and support, the system begins to regulate itself. The pain softens. The beliefs shift. The energy clears. The clarity comes.

Healing Isn’t Linear. It’s Layered.

This framework isn’t about putting people in boxes—it’s about seeing people more fully. It reminds us that symptoms are messengers, not enemies. That healing is personal. And that your body, your emotions, your energy, your mind, and your spirit are not separate.

They are all you.

And when they begin working together again, that's where the real magic happens.