Quick Answer
The human aura is understood in esoteric and spiritual traditions as a multilayered energy field surrounding and interpenetrating the physical body. Most systems describe seven distinct layers or bodies, from the densest etheric body (closest to the physical) through emotional, mental, astral, etheric template, celestial, and causal bodies, each operating at progressively higher frequencies and governing progressively more refined aspects of experience. These seven bodies correspond to the seven main chakras, the seven planes of existence in Theosophy, and the seven koshas (sheaths) of the Vedantic tradition. Understanding and working with the aura layers provides a comprehensive map for spiritual development, energy healing, and the conscious refinement of all dimensions of human experience.
Table of Contents
- Historical and Cross-Cultural Understanding of the Aura
- Scientific Perspectives on Human Energy Fields
- The Seven Layers of the Aura
- Layer 1: The Etheric Body
- Layer 2: The Emotional Body
- Layer 3: The Mental Body
- Layer 4: The Astral Body
- Layers 5-7: The Higher Spiritual Bodies
- Developing Aura Perception
- Aura Cleansing and Strengthening Practices
- Frequently Asked Questions
Key Takeaways
- Universal recognition: The concept of a luminous field surrounding the human body appears independently in Indian (prana/kosha), Chinese (qi field), Western (aura/subtle body), Islamic (lataif), and indigenous traditions worldwide - suggesting empirical observation of a genuine phenomenon rather than mere cultural construction.
- Scientific measurement exists: The human body emits measurable electromagnetic fields, biophoton emissions, infrared radiation, and electrochemical signals. While these measurable fields do not fully account for the aura as described in esoteric systems, they confirm that the body radiates fields beyond its physical boundary.
- Layer interdependence: The seven aura layers are not separate entities but interpenetrating fields that influence each other continuously. Changes in any layer ripple through adjacent layers - which is why emotional disturbances have physical health effects, and why physical health practices affect mental and spiritual states.
- Barbara Brennan's systematic mapping: Barbara Brennan's "Hands of Light" (1987) provides the most detailed and practically applicable contemporary map of the seven aura layers, based on her work as a NASA physicist combined with years of clairvoyant observation as a healer.
- Cultivable perception: The ability to perceive the aura is not an innate gift limited to a few "psychics" but a perceptual capacity that can be developed through systematic training - as documented in the structured curriculum of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing and other formal energy healing programmes.
Historical and Cross-Cultural Understanding of the Aura
The perception and systematic description of a luminous field surrounding the human body appears in virtually every major spiritual and healing tradition with striking consistency across geographic and cultural separation. This cross-cultural convergence is one of the most compelling arguments that the aura represents a genuine aspect of human subtle physiology rather than a culturally constructed belief.
In Hindu and Vedantic tradition, the concept of the pancha kosha (five sheaths or bodies) describes layers of existence that surround and interpenetrate the physical body: the annamaya kosha (physical body, literally "food body"), pranamaya kosha (energy body), manomaya kosha (mind body), vijnanamaya kosha (wisdom or discriminating intelligence body), and anandamaya kosha (bliss body or causal body). The Taittiriya Upanishad, one of the principal Upanishads (c. 600 BCE), provides the earliest systematic description of these nested bodies and their relationship to consciousness and liberation. The seven-body model used in contemporary esoteric teaching essentially expands the five kosha system with additional distinctions in the spiritual layers.
The Aura in Western Esoteric Tradition
Western descriptions of the human aura have a long and detailed history. The 3rd century Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus described the soul as extending beyond the physical body in a field of luminous substance. Paracelsus, the 16th century Swiss physician and alchemist, described the "astrum" - an energy body that extends beyond the physical and mediates between the material and spiritual dimensions. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the Swedish scientist and mystic, documented extensive perceptions of the human energy field in his spiritual diaries. In the 19th century, Baron Karl von Reichenbach conducted scientific experiments documenting what he called the "odic force" - an energy field around living organisms that sensitives could perceive as coloured light. Theosophical co-founder Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater published "Thought Forms" (1901) and "The Chakras" (1927), providing the first detailed illustrated descriptions of aura colours and their psychological correlates that directly influenced 20th century esoteric aura teaching.
Chinese medicine's model of qi (vital energy) flowing through meridian channels in and around the body represents another sophisticated description of the human subtle energy field. The wei qi (protective or defensive qi) - described as a field of energy extending outward from the surface of the body like a protective shield - corresponds closely to the etheric body of Western esoteric systems. The extensive system of meridians, acupoints, and energy flows documented in the Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine, c. 300 BCE) provides one of the most practically applied maps of the human energy field in human history, still used as the foundation of acupuncture and acupressure practice worldwide.
Scientific Perspectives on Human Energy Fields
The human body is unambiguously a source of multiple measurable energy emissions beyond its physical boundary. Whether these measurable fields correspond to the "aura" of esoteric tradition is debated, but their existence is not. Understanding the scientific basis of human energy field emissions grounds the discussion of aura layers in verifiable physical reality.
The human heart generates the body's strongest electromagnetic field, measurable several feet from the body using sensitive magnetometers. Research by the HeartMath Institute in California has documented that this field changes measurably with emotional states - coherent, positive emotional states produce more organized, sinusoidal field patterns, while stress and negative emotional states produce chaotic, disorganized patterns. The HeartMath research also documents that the heart's electromagnetic field can influence the nervous system of people nearby - an observation that provides a physical basis for the traditional understanding that we influence and are influenced by the energy fields of those around us.
Biophoton Research and Subtle Light
Fritz-Albert Popp, a German biophysicist at the University of Kaiserslautern, conducted decades of research on biophoton emissions - extremely faint light emitted by living cells. All living organisms, including humans, emit biophotons in the range of single photons to several hundred photons per square centimetre per second. This emission is biologically meaningful: Popp found that the coherence of biophoton emission correlates with the health and vitality of the organism, with greater coherence indicating greater biological order and resilience. He proposed that biophoton communication may play a role in the coordination of biological processes at speeds beyond what chemical signalling alone can achieve. While Popp did not make claims about the aura as traditionally described, his research confirms that the living body emits light beyond its boundaries - a physical substrate for what seers have perceived as the aura's luminosity for millennia.
James Oschman, a cell biologist and researcher who has worked at the interface of energy medicine and conventional biophysics, synthesizes extensive research in "Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis" (2000). Oschman documents the liquid crystalline nature of biological tissues - particularly the connective tissue matrix and fascial system - and their properties as semiconductor, piezoelectric, and optically transparent media that can transmit energy and information throughout the body and to its surrounding field. His research provides a physical basis for understanding how the body's energy field might be structured, layered, and responsive to various forms of energy healing.
The Seven Layers of the Aura
The seven-layer model of the human aura that most contemporary energy workers use was systematized in the 20th century, primarily through the work of theosophical writers and, most practically and accessibly, through the work of Barbara Brennan. Brennan, who holds a master's degree in atmospheric physics from the University of Wisconsin and worked as a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre before transitioning to energy healing, combined scientific rigour with clairvoyant perception developed over decades to produce the most detailed and practically applicable description of the seven aura layers available in contemporary English-language literature.
Her two foundational books - "Hands of Light" (1987) and "Light Emerging" (1993) - describe the seven layers of the aura with specific detail about each layer's structure, colour qualities, sounds, functions, psychological correspondences, and the ways in which damage, congestion, or depletion in each layer manifest as physical, psychological, and spiritual problems. The Barbara Brennan School of Healing in New York, which she founded in 1982, has trained thousands of energy healers in working with these seven bodies - providing a practical test of whether the seven-body model is clinically useful. The school's ongoing practice and the clinical results reported by its graduates represent one of the most substantial bodies of applied experiential evidence for the seven-body aura model.
Layer 1: The Etheric Body
The etheric body (sometimes called the "health aura" or "vital body") is the first and densest of the seven aura layers. It extends approximately 2-5 cm beyond the physical body and is closely associated with physical health and vitality. In Theosophical and Anthroposophical tradition, the etheric body is understood as the blueprint or formative template that organizes the physical body - death occurs when the etheric body separates from the physical, and the quality of physical health reflects the quality of the etheric body's vitality.
Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, gave extensive descriptions of the etheric body in his lectures and writings, describing it as a supersensible organism of formative forces that stands in a particular relationship to the forces of life in the natural world. His concept of "formative forces" operating through the etheric body corresponds significantly to modern research on morphogenetic fields - the positional information fields that guide embryological development, first proposed by embryologist Hans Spemann and later theorized by biologist Rupert Sheldrake in his "morphic resonance" hypothesis.
Perceiving and Nourishing the Etheric Body
The etheric body is the aura layer most accessible to beginning perception, both because of its proximity to the physical body and its relatively dense energy. Practices that nourish the etheric body:
- Time in nature: The etheric body draws vitality from the living etheric forces present in natural environments - forests, rivers, mountains, and coastlines. Urban environments with limited natural life provide less etheric nourishment. Regular time in genuinely wild or garden spaces is the most direct etheric body restoration available.
- Breathing practices: Prana (life force) is absorbed primarily through breathing. Pranayama practices - even simple conscious deep breathing in fresh outdoor air - directly nourish the etheric body.
- Sleep: The etheric body repairs and regenerates most actively during deep sleep. Adequate, high-quality sleep is the most fundamental etheric health practice. Chronic sleep deprivation visibly depletes the etheric field - which may be why exhausted people look "grey" or "dim" even before physical symptoms manifest.
- Fresh, pranic-rich food: Freshly prepared food from living plants carries etheric vitality. Processed, stored, or heavily cooked foods have diminished prana. The Ayurvedic and yogic emphasis on fresh, sattvic food reflects the etheric body's need for pranic-rich nutrition.
Layer 2: The Emotional Body
The emotional body (or astral body in some systems) extends approximately 2-8 cm beyond the etheric body and holds the patterns of emotional life - the felt responses, desires, attractions, aversions, and moods that colour all experience. Unlike the etheric body's relatively stable, organized structure, the emotional body is fluid and changeable, reflecting the dynamic nature of emotional experience itself.
Barbara Brennan describes the emotional body as containing clouds of colour corresponding to the quality of emotional experience: warm reds, oranges, and yellows for passionate, energized emotions; blues and greens for calm, open states; dark muddied colours for suppressed, stagnant emotions. These are not physical colours visible to ordinary sight but perceptions accessible to trained or naturally sensitive clairvoyant awareness.
Emotional Body and Somatic Experiencing
The work of somatic therapists like Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, and Wilhelm Reich (whose concept of "character armoring" described how suppressed emotions create physical tension patterns) provides a physiological framework for understanding why the emotional body matters for physical health. Van der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score" (2014) documents extensive research showing that traumatic emotional experiences are stored as physical sensations, postural patterns, and nervous system dysregulation - precisely the physical-layer expressions of what subtle body models describe as emotional body disturbance. The energetic perspective adds a layer of explanation: when emotional experiences are suppressed rather than processed, they create congestion patterns in the emotional body that eventually manifest in the etheric and physical layers as tension, pain, and illness.
Layer 3: The Mental Body
The mental body extends beyond the emotional body, typically described as reaching 8-20 cm beyond the physical boundary, and holds the structures of thought, belief, and mental habit. In Theosophical tradition, the mental body is further divided into a lower mental body (concrete, analytical thought) and a higher mental body (abstract, conceptual intelligence). The mental body's quality reflects the quality of one's habitual thinking - clarity, rigidity, creativity, confusion - and directly influences the emotional and physical layers below it.
The mental body is where belief systems are held. Core beliefs about self, others, and reality - including limiting beliefs that create recurring negative patterns in life - are not merely psychological constructs but energetic structures in the mental body that shape perception and attract corresponding experiences. This is the energetic basis for the work of "abundance blocks clearing" and other forms of belief system transformation: changing a core belief requires energetic work in the mental body, not merely cognitive reframing.
Layer 4: The Astral Body
The fourth layer - variously called the astral body, the heart body, or the bridge body - is understood as the pivotal layer in the seven-body system, marking the boundary between the three personal bodies (etheric, emotional, mental) and the three spiritual bodies (etheric template, celestial, ketheric). Its location at this midpoint gives it particular importance in spiritual development: it corresponds to the heart chakra and governs the qualities of love, compassion, and connection that bridge personal and transpersonal dimensions of experience.
The astral body is the vehicle for astral projection (out-of-body experiences), dream consciousness, and the subtle body that separates from the physical during sleep and at death. Near-death experience (NDE) research by physicians including Raymond Moody ("Life After Life," 1975), Pim van Lommel (published in The Lancet, 2001), and Bruce Greyson at the University of Virginia has documented consistent reports of a "body" that separates from the physical, can observe the physical body from outside it, and moves through non-physical dimensions - descriptions consistent with the astral body as described in esoteric tradition.
Layers 5-7: The Higher Spiritual Bodies
The fifth, sixth, and seventh aura layers are the spiritual bodies - progressively higher-frequency fields that connect the individual to transpersonal and cosmic dimensions of existence. Working consciously with these bodies requires the development of spiritual awareness that goes beyond ordinary psychological work and involves genuine contemplative development.
The fifth layer, the etheric template body, is described as the blueprint or template for the etheric body - a higher-dimensional mold in which the patterns of the etheric and physical bodies exist in their ideal, undistorted form. It is the level at which the divine blueprint for the individual's physical existence resides. Energy healing work at this level involves restoring the correspondence between the physical pattern and its ideal template.
The sixth layer, the celestial body, is the body of spiritual ecstasy and divine love - the level at which the individual's love nature connects with universal love. It is experienced as unconditional love and spiritual bliss, associated with mystical states and the experiences that religious traditions describe as divine union. Its development correlates with the opening of the brow chakra (third eye) at a spiritual rather than merely psychic level.
The seventh layer, the ketheric template or causal body, is the outermost layer of the aura and the most spiritually refined. Brennan describes it as an eggshell of golden light that contains all the previous layers and connects the individual to the universal field of consciousness. The ketheric body holds the causal pattern for the individual's entire incarnational journey - the "soul plan" from a metaphysical perspective. The crown chakra's corresponding reality is this outermost body.
The Koshas and the Seven Bodies
The correspondence between the seven aura layers and the Hindu kosha system is instructive for understanding both. The five koshas (annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya, anandamaya) correspond approximately to the seven aura layers with the physical body as the annamaya kosha and the causal/ketheric body as the anandamaya kosha. The Vedantic understanding is that liberation involves seeing through the superimposition of the koshas - recognizing that the pure awareness (Atman) is neither any of the sheaths nor all of them together but the unchanging witness in which they appear. This is why spiritual development involving all seven bodies eventually points beyond the seven bodies to the awareness that witnesses them - a recognition that Rudolf Steiner, in his Christological framework, calls the "I AM" principle that transcends all the sheaths while dwelling within and giving life to all of them.
Developing Aura Perception
The ability to perceive the aura is not confined to a rare few "psychics" - it is a latent perceptual capacity that can be developed through systematic practice. The key is understanding that aura perception initially works more through felt sense and peripheral visual sensitivity than through dramatic clairvoyant vision of coloured lights.
Beginning Aura Perception Practice
- Soft focus exercise: Stand in front of a mirror against a plain, neutral background. Look not AT yourself but slightly PAST yourself, with unfocused, peripheral-style gaze. After 1-3 minutes of this soft, unfocused looking, many people begin to perceive a slight haze or shimmer extending a few centimetres from the body's outline, particularly around the head and shoulders. This is the etheric body becoming visible to peripheral vision.
- Partner practice: Have a partner stand against a plain white or light-coloured wall in good natural lighting (not fluorescent). Stand approximately 3 metres away and use the same soft, unfocused gaze, looking slightly beyond the person's outline rather than directly at them. Start with their head and shoulders area. Note any colour impressions, however subtle.
- Feeling the etheric body: Hold your hands approximately 30 cm apart, palms facing each other. Slowly bring them together until you feel any sensation - resistance, warmth, tingling, or magnetic-like push. This is the felt sense of the etheric field between the hands. Now move your hands slowly apart and together, exploring the boundaries of this field. This simple practice develops the felt-sense channel of aura perception that most practitioners find develops faster than visual perception.
- Meditation and aura sensitivity: Regular meditation develops the attentional sensitivity that aura perception requires. The same capacity to notice subtle inner sensations that meditation cultivates transfers to the perception of subtle outer energy fields. Many students of energy healing report that their aura perception developed in parallel with their meditation practice.
Aura Cleansing and Strengthening Practices
Maintaining the health of the aura layers requires both practices that clear congestion, breaks, and disturbances, and practices that strengthen and protect the field's integrity. The following practices address both dimensions.
Daily Aura Maintenance Practices
- Morning shower visualization: During your morning shower, visualize the water not merely washing the physical body but clearing the etheric and emotional bodies of any residual energetic material from sleep, dreams, or the previous day. This simple visualization, practiced consistently, has measurable effects on how energetically clear and fresh you feel after showering.
- Smudging: The use of sacred smoke (white sage, palo santo, cedar, sweet grass, copal) to clear the aura is among the most universal cross-cultural practices of energy cleansing. Research by Erach Bharucha published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology (2007) documents significant antimicrobial properties in several traditional smudging plants - an interesting scientific correlate for the traditional understanding of smoke clearing harmful energies.
- Salt bath: Full immersion in a Himalayan or sea salt bath (approximately 2-4 cups of salt per standard bath) is one of the most widely used practices for clearing the aura of accumulated emotional and psychic material. Salt's mineral properties, its historical use in purification rituals across cultures, and the psychological effect of dissolving in warm water create a reliable experience of cleansing that most practitioners can notice subjectively.
- Earthing/grounding: Direct contact between bare skin (feet, hands) and the earth discharges the accumulated electrostatic charge in the body and provides a physical mechanism for aura clearing that has been documented in research by Clint Ober and published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health. Regular earthing supports etheric body health and the physical grounding that prevents the dissociated, ungrounded quality that appears in the lower aura layers of chronically stressed or spiritually bypassing practitioners.
- Sound clearing: Tibetan singing bowls, crystal bowls, tuning forks, and other resonant instruments produce sound frequencies that interact with the aura's energy field through sympathetic resonance. The particular frequencies of singing bowls are chosen traditionally for their specific effects on different layers of the subtle body. Research at the Monroe Institute and elsewhere has documented that specific sound frequencies produce measurable changes in brainwave activity and subjective states - a physical correlate for the traditional understanding of sound as a subtle body clearing tool.
Aura Strengthening and Protection Practice
This practice, combining visualization and intentional awareness, creates and reinforces the coherence and integrity of the aura field:
- Sit or stand comfortably with spine aligned. Take several deep breaths to settle.
- Visualize a sphere of golden-white light at the centre of your chest, at the heart centre. Allow this light to grow and pulse with each breath.
- With each exhale, allow this light to expand outward through all seven aura layers - first as a shimmer just beyond the skin, then expanding to fill a sphere approximately 1 metre in radius around the entire body.
- Visualize the outer boundary of this sphere as a semi-permeable membrane of light - allowing love, healing, and genuine connection to pass freely in both directions, while reflecting or neutralizing energies that do not serve your highest wellbeing.
- State inwardly or aloud: "My field is clear, coherent, and protected. I am in alignment with my highest nature."
- Hold this awareness for 3-5 minutes, refreshing the visualization with each exhale.
- Close by drawing the field slightly closer to the body (to about 30 cm radius) and affirming its protection for the day ahead.
Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field by Barbara Ann Brennan
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can everyone see auras, or is it a special ability?
Aura perception exists on a spectrum, with full-colour clairvoyant perception at one end and the ability to feel subtle energy with the hands at the other, and many intermediate forms of sensitivity in between. Research on synesthesia (cross-modal sensory perception), studies of aura perception in controlled conditions, and the testimonies of systematic training programmes like the Barbara Brennan School of Healing all suggest that aura perception is a cultivable human capacity rather than a rare innate gift. Most people who develop genuine aura perception report that it developed gradually through consistent practice - soft-focus visual exercises, felt-sense development, and the sensitization of attention through meditation. Children often perceive auras more readily than adults, and this capacity typically diminishes with the development of conventional perceptual habits and the suppression of anomalous experience in standard educational contexts. Its redevelopment in adulthood is possible but requires patience and consistent practice.
What causes damage to the aura?
Both physical and non-physical events can disrupt aura coherence and integrity. Physical causes include: illness, injury, surgery, and any severe physical stress. Emotional causes include: unprocessed trauma, chronic grief, sustained anxiety, severe interpersonal conflict, emotional abuse, and the accumulation of unexpressed emotion over time. Energetic causes include: proximity to people with significantly disturbed or depleted fields (without appropriate energetic boundaries), exposure to environments with strong disruptive energies (hospitals, conflict zones, large crowds in distressed states), and practices that forcibly open the energy field without appropriate preparation (certain drugs, forced spiritual development without adequate foundation). Mental causes include: sustained negative thought patterns, deep self-hatred, and the particular form of energetic disturbance that Wilhelm Reich called "character armoring" - the cumulative energetic effect of chronic psychological defense mechanisms.
What do different aura colours mean?
The interpretation of aura colours is complex and varies between traditions and individual practitioners - there is no completely standardized system. The most commonly used contemporary interpretations derive from the Theosophical tradition and Barbara Brennan's elaborations. Generally: bright, clear colours in any range indicate healthy, flowing energy in that layer; dark, muddy, or clouded versions of any colour indicate congestion, blockage, or disturbance. The specific colour meanings most commonly described include: red (physical vitality, passion, strong will, or alternatively anger and physical distress); orange (creativity, social energy, reproductive vitality); yellow (mental activity, intellectual clarity, confidence); green (healing ability, heart energy, growth); blue (communication, spiritual devotion, calm); indigo/dark blue (deep spiritual perception, clairvoyance); violet/purple (spiritual development, transformation); white or golden (high spiritual states, protective energy, healing ability); grey or dark patches (depletion, illness, or emotional armoring in that area of the field).
Is Kirlian photography capturing the aura?
Kirlian photography, developed by Semyon and Valentina Kirlian in 1939, captures the corona discharge of high-frequency electrical current passed through an object placed in contact with photographic film. The resulting images show luminous patterns around living organisms (including humans, plants, and animals) that vary with the organism's physiological state. Whether these patterns represent the "aura" as described in esoteric tradition is debated. What is clear is that Kirlian images change with the subject's physical and emotional state: a person who is ill, exhausted, or in acute stress shows a dimmer, more fragmented corona than the same person when healthy and calm. Some researchers have used Kirlian photography to study the effects of energy healing, meditation, and acupuncture, finding measurable changes in corona patterns following these interventions. The images capture something real about the body's electromagnetic emissions at the skin surface but cannot capture the higher frequency, extended layers of the full aura as described in detailed esoteric accounts.
How does the aura relate to the chakras?
The aura and chakra systems are intimately related and are best understood as two different descriptions of the same subtle body reality from different angles. The chakras are the primary energy centres - vortex-like structures that function as intake and output points for subtle energy in specific regions of the body. The aura layers are the fields that extend from these centres and pervade the body. Each aura layer corresponds to a specific chakra: the etheric body to the root chakra, the emotional body to the sacral chakra, the mental body to the solar plexus chakra, the astral body to the heart chakra, the etheric template to the throat chakra, the celestial body to the third eye chakra, and the ketheric/causal body to the crown chakra. Disturbance in a chakra is simultaneously disturbance in its corresponding aura layer, and vice versa. This is why comprehensive energy healing addresses both the chakras and the aura layers - they are complementary views of the same energetic reality.
Can the aura be deliberately strengthened and expanded?
Yes, and this is one of the primary outcomes of consistent spiritual development practices. Meditation, pranayama, physical health cultivation, emotional processing work, devotional practice, acts of genuine service and love, and the consistent orientation of consciousness toward higher values all strengthen and expand the aura field. The qualities associated with an expanded, coherent aura - presence, groundedness, warmth, clarity, the sense of being in a field of positive influence - are recognizable even without specific aura perception. We notice them in teachers, healers, and spiritually developed individuals. Their "presence" is literally the presence of an expanded, coherent energy field that we can feel through our own subtle sensitivity. This recognition - that the aura is not a metaphysical extra but the felt dimension of a person's actual spiritual development - is one of the most practically important aspects of understanding the seven bodies.
What is the relationship between the aura and psychic attack?
The concept of psychic attack - the deliberate or inadvertent projection of negative energy toward a person that disturbs their energy field - is taken seriously in most esoteric traditions and is described from a psychological perspective as well as a subtle energetic one. Psychologically, sustained malevolent attention, hostile intent, and strong negative projection directed toward a person can influence their emotional and mental states through the power of suggestion, energetic resonance, and the documented psychological effects of perceived social threat. Energetically, deliberate projection of negative intention may be able to influence the recipient's field in ways beyond ordinary psychological channels - this is the basis for traditional protection practices like aura shielding, warding, and the various forms of psychic protection described in esoteric literature. The most effective protection is a coherent, well-maintained aura field, positive emotional and mental habits, and clear personal boundaries - both psychological and energetic. Specific protective practices (visualizations of protective light, the use of protective stones like black tourmaline and obsidian, and the cultivation of genuine spiritual resilience through practice) supplement these foundational measures.
How does the aura change during meditation?
Research using various measurement approaches (GDV/Kirlian photography, electromagnetic field measurement, thermographic imaging) consistently documents measurable changes in the body's energy emissions during meditation. Subjectively, most experienced meditators report a distinct expansion and brightening of the aura field during deep practice - what feels like the field becoming more spacious, luminous, and coherent. The specific changes observed include: expansion of the field's radius (sometimes dramatically in advanced practitioners); increased brightness and clarity of colour; greater coherence and organization in the field's structure (less turbulence, more ordered patterns); and the distinct quality of what practitioners variously describe as "radiance," "presence," or "stillness" in the expanded field. These changes have immediate practical effects: many meditators notice that their mood, creativity, and quality of presence for hours after a good meditation session reflect the expanded, coherent field state produced during practice.
Can trauma be stored in the aura?
Both esoteric tradition and modern trauma research support the understanding that traumatic experiences are stored in the body and its energy field. Peter Levine's somatic experiencing work, Bessel van der Kolk's body-based trauma research, and Babette Rothschild's "The Body Remembers" all document that trauma is held in the body as physical tension, disrupted nervous system regulation, and specific somatic patterns. From an aura perspective, these physical holdings have corresponding disturbances in the etheric and emotional body layers - tears, congestion, depletions, and rigid crystallized structures that prevent the free flow of energy through the affected area. Energy healing approaches like Brennan Healing Science, Reiki, and craniosacral therapy work with these aura-layer disturbances alongside the physical holdings, providing a multi-dimensional approach to trauma release. The progressive clearing of trauma material from the aura layers over the course of sustained healing work is often visible to sensitive practitioners as a gradual brightening and softening of the field in affected areas.
How does the aura change at death?
The process of dying and death involves a progressive withdrawal of the higher aura bodies from the physical, culminating in the complete separation of the subtle bodies from the physical at the moment of death. This process is described in detail in Tibetan Buddhist teaching (the bardos, or transitional states, describe what happens to the subtle body after physical death) and in Theosophy (which describes the gradual dissolution of the sheaths from the physical outward over time after death). Near-death experience research - particularly Pim van Lommel's prospective study of cardiac arrest survivors published in The Lancet (2001) - provides clinical accounts that are difficult to explain without some form of consciousness operating independent of brain function during the period of clinical death, consistent with the esoteric description of the subtle bodies separating from the physical. The dying process in holistic and hospice care contexts is increasingly recognized as a profound spiritual event involving changes in the energy field that are perceptible to sensitive practitioners and sometimes to family members present at the death.
Sources and References
- Brennan, B.A. (1987). Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field. Bantam Books.
- Oschman, J.L. (2000). Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis. Churchill Livingstone.
- Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
- Van Lommel, P. et al. (2001). Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest. The Lancet, 358(9298), 2039-2045.
- Sheldrake, R. (1981). A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance. Blond and Briggs.
- Popp, F.A. and Beloussov, L. (eds.) (2003). Integrative Biophysics: Biophotonics. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- McCraty, R. (2015). Science of the Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance. HeartMath Institute Research Center.
- Steiner, R. (1909). Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World. Anthroposophic Press.
You Are More Than a Body
The seven aura layers reveal what contemplatives have always understood and what science is slowly confirming: you are not a solid physical object moving through an empty universe. You are a field of consciousness - layered, luminous, interpenetrating, and in continuous relationship with everything around you. Your health, your emotions, your thoughts, and your spiritual development all have their reality in this field before and alongside their reality in physical matter.
To tend the aura is to tend the whole self. There is nothing more complete than this care.