Thirdly, you can purify the Manomaya kosha through meditation, positive thinking, proper behavior, karma yoga (selfless service), bhakti yoga (devotion), yamas and niyamas (yogic ethics). The Manomaya kosha is the mind, emotions and the senses, and in it you also have the subconscious.

Dhyana – Meditation

• Connects us with a Reality beyond thoughts and emotions
• Brings inner strength and peace of mind
• Provides clarity of purpose in life
• Increases concentration

Positive Thinking

• Being aware of negative thoughts
• Replace negative thoughts with positive ones
• Practice positive affirmations
• Over time eradicate negative and wrong thinking

Yamas and Niyamas

• Ethical foundation of Yoga
• Yamas include: Non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, and non-greed
• Niyamas include: purity, contentment, austerity, scripture study, and surrender of the ego
• Purifies the mind and the heart, removes selfishness

Fourthly, in order to purify the Vijnanamaya kosha, you have to purify the intellect and ego. In order to purify the ego you need get the selfishness out of the way through selfless service or Karma Yoga.  Morever, you can purify the intellect through self inquiry, jnana yoga techniques, and meditation.

Jnana Yoga

• The Study of Vedanta (Yoga Philosophy)
• Highest level of knowledge
• Knowledge passed down by Rishis or enlightened sages
• Teaches unity of life
• Proclaims the common Self in All
• The limited ego or “little s” self makes you feel separate
• Your true nature, or “Big S” Self is one with everything

Self Inquiry

• Self inquiry is a Jnana Yoga technique
• Always inquire: “Who am I?”
• Assert the you are Brahman, the imperishable supreme soul
• Brahman is one with everything
• Brahman is Sat (existence) Chit (knowledge) Ananada (bliss) absolute
• Happiness is your true nature

In order to practice Jnana Yoga and self inquiry, you must always ask “Who Am I?”. In addition you negate any attachment to the limited, illusory world or false sense of self. Meditation will show you that the intellect is also limited.

Eventually with practice you will know the intellect is limited because you have the experience of the absolute, infinite, primordial Self. This experience is known as Samadhi. 

Finally, through Samadhi you transcend the Anandamaya kosha. Meditation already leads you to anandamaya kosha, but your view of the Self is still being obstructed by a thin veil of spiritual ignorance.

The thin veil of spiritual ignorance is burned when you experience Samadhi, or complete absorption of the mind. Only at that time do you know that the reality is more than the anandamaya kosha, and you go beyond that kosha and merge with the Supreme.

Conclusively, the four paths of yoga lead to the unveiling of the five koshas and heal on a spiritual, mental and physical level. The four paths of Yoga are karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga (which includes Hatha Yoga) and jnana yoga.

In other words, practicing the five points and the four paths of yoga will lead the three bodies to be healed. When you remove spiritual ignorance,  you come closer your True Nature. That is to say you experience spiritual, mental and physical health.

Self-Realization

The classical Yoga teaching is always about Self-realization, with nothing else but that realization as the end goal. However, spiritual ignorance makes us believe ourselves to be something other than Self, which is when we are identifying with the vrittis (thought waves).

Alternately, we identify with our thinking in the mind and then the thinking becomes solidified and it manifests as karma. After that, the soul is born in the physical body in order to work through solidified karmic tendencies that come from the spiritual ignorance in the first place.  

For the healing aspect of yoga, we have to go into the deep root cause of the wrong thinking in the first place. Because of this, Yoga primarily focuses on spiritual progress. In order for spiritual progress to take place, there must be removal of the impurities in all three bodies.