The Faint Glow of Life: Science Meets Spirit in the Mystery of Biophotons

What if the soul’s light wasn’t just a metaphor, but something science can now measure?

When we talk about the soul, light is often the first image we reach for.

We speak of someone’s inner radiance, of “seeing the light,” of loved ones becoming a beacon in the dark.

But what if that wasn’t just poetry?

What if, scientifically speaking, our bodies actually emit light, faint, subtle, and fading the moment life ends?

A recent study out of the University of Calgary and the National Research Council of Canada has confirmed what many healers and traditions have long intuited: living beings emit measurable light.

Researchers captured ultraweak photon emissions, known as biophotons, in mice and plants, and the results are clear. While alive, cells gave off a visible shimmer.

When life ceased, the emissions dropped markedly.

Read-time: About 15 minutes if you want the full story.

Fast-Track Key Takeaways (for the skimmers):

• Science has just confirmed that all living things emit a faint light, called biophotons.

• That glow fades immediately after death, mirroring spiritual beliefs about the aura.

• I’ve personally witnessed this dimming effect in hospice and in psychic experiences.

• Emotional authenticity, nutrition, rest, and energy work like Reiki may strengthen your inner light.

• You can learn a simple technique to see your own aura at the end of this article.

And for any Reiki practitioners reading this, please share this article with your friends and clients.

You’ll find in these studies the very bridge between science and energy healing you’ve always felt in your hands.

If this is your first time here and you’re curious about how I work, you can learn more in What to Expect.

And if you already know you’d like to experience this for yourself, you can Book Your Reading With Me Here.

Does The Soul Give Off Light When We Are Alive?

Keep reading, you might discover proof you’re glowing right now.

Biophotons are tiny bursts of visible light created within our cells.

To a physicist, they’re explained as the natural byproduct of chemical reactions happening inside the body.

But to spiritual seekers, healers, and psychics, these flashes of light feel like confirmation of something long believed, that our soul radiates from within.

The most compelling part?

These emissions have only ever been detected in living organisms.

When life ends, the glow fades. For many, this suggests our essence isn’t just metaphor, it may literally be expressed as light while we are here.

On a practical level, this opens a fascinating possibility: our vitality, stress, and health might all influence how brightly this light shines.

Whether through nourishment, rest, or emotional authenticity, the way we live could be linked to the very photons our bodies emit.

Science is only beginning to explore it, but spiritual traditions have pointed to it for centuries.

And if you’d like a tool to connect more deeply with your aura and intuition, tarot can be a powerful ally, as I explain in How Tarot Strengthens Intuition (Even If You Don’t Believe in It).

Is The Human Aura Real and Does it Fade at Death?

What I saw at the bedside of a dying woman still shapes how I understand the aura today.

For centuries, psychics and healers have described the aura as a luminous field surrounding the body.

Skeptics dismissed it, but new studies suggest a scientific bridge.

The measurable glow of living tissue aligns with the aura’s description and gives language to what sensitives have always felt.

In hospice settings, I’ve personally witnessed this phenomenon in unforgettable ways.

Once, while holding a stranger as she passed, I experienced it vividly.

I had picked up a last-minute shift and, upon clocking in, went straight to her room.

I stared into her face until the room itself no longer existed; my eyes unfocused and I saw a beautiful light surrounding her.

As her breathing came to an end, it was like watching a lamp dim to a faint afterglow and then go out completely.

Yet I could still feel her presence in the room, and for a moment after she left, the air itself seemed lighter, as if the space had absorbed her essence before releasing it.

That moment changed me.

It was confirmation that light does not simply vanish at death, even if it’s no longer visible to the eye.

For those navigating loss, this is a reminder: the glow of your loved one hasn’t been extinguished.

It has shifted into a different form, subtle, but present, waiting to be felt rather than seen.

If you’re navigating the weight of loss and the dimming of someone else’s light, you may find comfort in Finding Peace After Loss of a Loved One.

Can You See Auras? My Own Vivid, Irrefutable Moment

This is the night I stopped doubting whether auras could be real.

People often ask me, “Can you see auras?”

The truth is, sometimes I can, but one moment in particular stands out as vivid and undeniable, the night I stopped questioning whether it was “all in my head.”

Seventeen was a life-changing year for me.

Even though I was still in Grade 12, I scraped together enough money to fly to Toronto for a weekend (I’ve always loved a seat sale and an adventure).

The reason was to finally meet my friend, psychic medium Brough Perkins.

We’d been chatting online for a few years, we’re the same age, and both share a love for the strange and unusual.

We’ll go further into this story in a later blog closer to Halloween, but when I first arrived, it felt like stepping into a living dream.

His room smelled of rich incense.

The walls were the deepest most spiritual shade of red I’d ever seen.

A large paper star lantern hung in the corner, glowing like an ember.

Brough could sway it using only his mind, then still it with a thought, something my rational mind couldn’t explain but my intuition immediately accepted.

Before settling in, he turned off the lights and said, “Sit up, I want to show you something.”

We sat cross-legged across from each other in total darkness, no external light at all, the kind of darkness that makes sound feel louder.

He asked me to hold my forearms out upright on my lap and describe what I felt.

Slowly, it felt like butterfly wings brushing down my arms, a tingling so gentle I assumed he was touching me.

He wasn’t.

Then he said quietly, “Tell me if you see anything.”

As my eyes adjusted, the pitch black began to take on shape.

That’s when I saw it: a faint blue vapor, like soft photons, extending from his hands about half a foot away from my arms. It shimmered and flickered like something alive.

That’s what caused the butterfly feeling.

It was subtle, beautiful, and unforgettable, a real-time, sensory experience of energy that mirrored everything I’d later read about biophotons and the aura, and it marked the moment I realized I wasn’t imagining any of it.

Strengthening your own inner radiance isn’t abstract, it starts with small, grounded practices, which I expand on in Developing Intuition: Practical Insights From a Psychic Medium.

What Does Science Say About The Soul Leaving the Body?

Even science can measure the moment our inner glow fades, and there’s something deeply human that lingers.

Science does not make claims about the soul. Its language is measured, empirical, restrained.

What it can do is record what happens in those final moments when life transitions.

In the recent study out of Calgary, scientists report a striking pattern: “significant contrast between the UPE from live vs dead mice”, and that after death, the biophoton glow was “distinctly different”, “nearly extinguished” in many areas. ScienceAlert+3PubMed+3Phys.org+3

The paper notes that the glow, which they call ultraweak photon emission (UPE), occurs at extremely low intensities (between 10 to 10³ photons per cm² per second) in the 200-1,000 nm spectrum. PubMed They used highly sensitive electron-multiplying CCD (EMCCD) and CCD cameras to capture single photons from living and dead mice. PubMed+2Phys.org+2

One of the lead authors said plainly, “the fact that ultraweak photon emission is a real thing is undeniable at this point”. Popular Mechanics+2University of Calgary in Alberta+2 In the team’s words:

“We saw that the level of light that they emit … is distinctly different between living and dead animals.” University of Calgary in Alberta+1

For spiritual seekers, this is more than a scientific footnote. It echoes the sense that something essential departs at death: a presence, a light, a consciousness beyond what instruments can measure.

The machines record silence, but for those who have been at bedside, felt the shift, held someone in their final moments, this fading of measurable light resonates deeply with experience.

What this teaches us is that our physical glow, our biological radiance, is inseparable from our life force.

When it dims, it signals not just the end of cellular processes, but, in poetic resonance, the passage of something subtler and profoundly alive.

For readers curious about the colors and meanings often associated with this glow, you’ll enjoy Illuminating 16 Intriguing Facts About Auras.

Can Our Aura Be Measured After We Die?

Cameras may stop recording, but the story of our light doesn’t end there.

According to this study, no. Once death occurs, the measurable photons drastically decline, even when the body is kept warm to remove heat as a variable.

In strictly scientific terms, the light seems to vanish.

The researchers themselves wrote that living tissue emitted a “distinctly different” level of ultraweak photon emission compared to non-living tissue, almost as if life itself was the fuel for the glow.

But this is only part of the truth.

While instruments register silence, many sensitives and mediums, including myself, witness something else in those moments.

The glow that science can measure may stop, but another kind of radiance lingers.

I’ve felt it in hospice rooms, where the air seems lighter just after someone has passed, and where presence hangs gently in the space even when the body lies still.

To me, it is not that the light vanishes, it transforms.

It moves beyond the spectrum of photons, into something no camera can capture but the heart can still perceive.

And for those grieving, this understanding offers comfort: your loved one’s light has not been extinguished.

It has shifted form, woven into the unseen fabric of existence, waiting to be felt rather than measured.

If you’ve ever wondered what truly happens when the light fades at the end of life, I share more on this in What Happens After We Die? 12 Lessons From Spirit.

Is Your Aura Proof of Life After Death?

Science shows the glow stops, but spirit insists the light carries on.

Biophotons themselves are not proof of the afterlife.

They are proof of vitality in the body, a biological shimmer that accompanies breath, heartbeat, and the spark of living cells.

In that sense, the glow is physical evidence of life. But what makes it meaningful is what it points us toward.

The fact that our cells shine while we are alive mirrors the spiritual understanding that our essence is luminous.

Ancient texts, healers, and mystics have long spoken of an inner radiance, a light of the soul.

Now, science is catching up, measuring what so many cultures have described for centuries.

When science says the glow fades, and spirit shows me it continues elsewhere, we’re invited to see life and death not as opposites but as transitions.

The body’s photons dim, yes, but the light of consciousness does not.

I’ve felt it in readings, in hospice rooms, and in the presence of grieving families: the unmistakable sense that something continues, just in a form that isn’t bound by cells or measured by instruments.

For those sitting with loss, this is where hope lives.

The glow that science detects may end, but the radiance of your loved one, their presence, their essence, remains.

It doesn’t vanish.

It transforms into the unseen, reminding us that what makes us human was never just the body, but the light it carried.

Just as science measures photons, tarot can mirror your own energy back to you, showing where it’s brightest and where it dims, explored further in how tarot reveals the unseen layers of your energy.

Can Light Actually Heal The Body?

Your light isn’t fixed, it responds to how you live, how you feel, and how you care for yourself.

If our bodies carry an inner radiance, then tending to our physical and emotional health may literally affect the strength of that glow.

Meditation, breath practices, time in nature, good nutrition, and regulated sleep are not only psychologically beneficial; they may reduce cellular stress and the reactive chemistry that dims our light.

And here’s the truth: increasing this light in us isn’t about being radiantly positive all the time.

It’s about fueling our minds, bodies, and emotions with the right components, and living with authenticity.

Light isn’t made out of pretending, it’s made out of feeling the full spectrum of our emotions.

That’s what magnetism is. That’s what spirit is.

This is also why energy work, like Reiki, resonates so deeply.

Reiki practitioners describe channeling universal life force energy to restore balance, calm the nervous system, and reawaken a person’s natural radiance.

To those who practice Reiki: this study may feel like science catching up to what you already sense every day, that the body’s light can be nourished, strengthened, and gently redirected back into harmony.

Eat whole foods whenever possible.

Fill your plate with leafy greens and fresh vegetables. Drink plenty of water. Invigorate your mind with learning and wonder.

Vitality is precious, and it’s built in the ordinary choices we make daily.

At the end of the day, we’re all just ghosts driving meat-coated skeletons made of stardust, so why not let that stardust shine?

For those grieving, knowing the light doesn’t simply vanish can be deeply reassuring, something I’ve written more about in what happens when we pass on.

How to See Your Own Aura?

Your body is already glowing, you just have to train your eyes to catch it.

You don’t need special equipment, just your own eyes and a moment of stillness.

If you’ve made it this far, here’s a gift: you can actually glimpse your own light with a simple practice.

Stand against an all-white wall in natural daylight and hold up your hand.

Instead of staring at your fingers, let your gaze rest just beyond them, into the space against the wall.

Allow your eyes to soften, to unfocus, and hold that vision.

Slowly, a faint color or haze will appear between or around your fingers. That is your aura, your radiance, plain and simple.

Now here’s the pleasant surprise: your brain may try to explain it away as an afterimage.

But the truth is, that’s exactly how ghosts and spiritual entities appear too, like afterimages, faint impressions of light that linger.

What you’re seeing is not an illusion, but the way the human eye perceives energy just beyond ordinary sight.

Another way to experience this is in complete darkness.

Find a pitch-black room, sit quietly until your eyes adjust, and then hold your hand out in front of you.

You’ll notice a faint glow around it, the subtle shimmer of your living light.

And here’s the deeper payoff: you don’t need anyone else to tell you what it means.

Yes, books and charts will try to map colors to traits, but in my experience, your personal associations are the ones that matter.

A blue haze might feel calming to you but powerful to someone else.

What matters most is your direct experience of seeing that glow and trusting your interpretation.

The unexpected reward of this exercise isn’t just that you’ll see your aura, it’s that you’ll realize your body is luminous, right here and now.

You’re not waiting for a spiritual awakening or a near-death experience to witness your light.

It’s already present, already alive, already shining through you.

Once you see it for yourself, you’ll never look at your hands, or your life, the same way again.

If this article stirred something in you and you’re curious about how a session with me works, you can read more in What to Expect.

And when you’re ready to experience the depth of this work firsthand, you can Book Your Reading With Me Here.

Written by Chris Bennett, known professionally as The Tarot Medium. Based in Canada, Chris is an internationally regarded psychic medium and tarot reader whose work bridges evidential intuition with contemporary culture. With hundreds of five-star client reviews and a growing global audience, he is recognized not only for the accuracy of his readings but for his ability to translate the unseen into language that is clear, elegant, and emotionally resonant. His essays and reflections, often described as among the best psychic blogs available today, explore the intersection of science, spirit, and human experience. Frequently sought after by those searching for a “psychic near me” yet unwilling to settle for the ordinary, Chris has become a trusted voice for individuals navigating love, loss, and transformation. His ambition extends beyond practice into cultural commentary, offering a standard of integrity and sophistication that places his work in dialogue with fashion, art, and the broader conversations on what it means to live with presence in a luminous, ever-changing world.