  We study the entanglement entropy and the modular Hamiltonian of slightly
excited states reduced to a ball shaped region in generic conformal field
theories. We set up a formal expansion in the one point functions of the state
in which all orders are explicitly given in terms of integrals of multi-point
functions along the vacuum modular flow, without a need for replica index
analytic continuation. We show that the quadratic order contributions in this
expansion can be calculated in a way expected from holography, namely via the
bulk canonical energy for the entanglement entropy, and its variation for the
modular Hamiltonian. The bulk fields contributing to the canonical energy are
defined via the HKLL procedure. In terms of CFT variables, the contribution of
each such bulk field to the modular Hamiltonian is given by the OPE block
corresponding to the dual operator integrated along the vacuum modular flow.
These results do not rely on assuming large $N$ or other special properties of
the CFT and therefore they are purely kinematic.
