What Is an Aura? The Colors, Layers, and Secrets of Your Energy Field Explained
Ever wondered about the ethereal glow said to envelop each of us? Welcome to the world of auras, where science and spirituality circle each other in a slow dance of energy fields and color. Picture the northern lights shimmering around the earth, then shrink that down to a human scale: an electromagnetic field radiating from your own molten core, the heart.
Never had a reading with me and wondering about the tone, the boundaries, the clarity I bring? Take a minute with what to expect from a reading with me. For deeper guidance, exclusive offers, and first pick of my most requested reading spots, join my email list, where I only send what actually matters and never a scrap of spam.
What Is an Aura, Exactly?
You’re basically a walking lava lamp.
At its core, the aura concept says we each emit a gentle electric charge that gives rise to an electromagnetic field. The rhythmic beating of your heart generates measurable electrical currents, and researchers at the HeartMath Institute have documented that the heart’s field is the strongest the body produces, detectable several feet from the skin.
That energy moves outward through the cellular walls of your skin, mingling with the fine water vapor forever seeping through every pore. Saltwater conducts electricity beautifully, which makes a poetic kind of sense of our emotional lives. When tears alone can’t carry the current, a hard sweat or a plunge into the ocean often finishes the release.
Ancient wisdom got here first. Hindu scriptures, notably the Vedas, describe the aura as a layered, multidimensional field woven through the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual facets of a person. Artist Christina Lonsdale of the Radiant Human project, who has photographed tens of thousands of auras, treats that old map as surprisingly current.
What Do Aura Colors Mean?
Your energy has a favorite crayon.
Every hue swirling through an aura is said to carry meaning, and shamanic traditions read those colors the way a musician reads notes. Orange signals the adventurer: spontaneous, curious, pushing at the edges of experience. Violet sits at the other end of the spectrum as the wise elder, marking spiritual depth and intellectual reach.
Blue speaks of intuition and spiritual connectedness. Green carries the social, nurturing frequencies of communication and care. Red grounds, yellow creates and befriends, indigo peers past the veil. None of these shades work alone; they blend and shift like a living watercolor, reflecting whatever season your inner life is moving through.
Vibrancy matters as much as hue. Bright, saturated color tends to mirror vitality and emotional clarity, while dull or muddied patches often point to exhaustion, stress, or something unprocessed asking for attention. Reading the palette together, rather than one color at a time, is where the real skill lives.
What Are the Seven Layers of the Aura?
Seven layers, and not one of them is cake.
Tradition maps each aura layer to one of the seven chakras, the body’s energy centers described in yogic philosophy. Together they paint a portrait of your inner self, from the earthbound to the cosmic.
- Root (red): grounding and energetic, the layer that anchors you to the present and fuels whatever challenge comes next.
- Sacral (orange): adventurous and thoughtful, balancing spontaneity with contemplation.
- Solar plexus (yellow): creative and friendly, the playful canvas of self-expression and warm connection.
- Heart (green): social and nurturing, where compassion for others meets care for yourself.
- Throat (blue): intuitive and spiritual, the seat of authentic communication and inner wisdom.
- Third eye (indigo): curious and connected, a heightened awareness reaching into life’s deeper mysteries.
- Crown (violet): wise and independent, the bridge to higher consciousness and clear-eyed purpose.
Esoteric teaching stacks a parallel set of layers over these, running from the physical (bodily comfort and health) through the astral, mental, and spiritual bodies to the absolute, the layer said to harmonize all the others like a conductor holding the orchestra together. Memorizing the system matters less than the takeaway: your energy is layered, and each layer answers to a different part of your life.
Are Auras Just Vibes?
Science hasn’t ruled on vibes. Your gut already has.
Auras and vibes may be the same phenomenon wearing different outfits. Lonsdale describes vibes as the vibrational frequencies that constitute an aura, the silent language our energy speaks before a single word leaves our mouths. You’ve felt it: the coworker whose mood fills a room, the stranger you trusted instantly, the house that felt wrong the moment you stepped inside.
Every living thing is believed to carry this field, from humans to animals to the plants on your balcony. Amazonian shamans take the idea further, describing specific colored auras around plants that guide which combinations become medicine, discoveries that quietly seeded compounds Western pharmacology still uses. Whatever the mechanism, the unspoken connection between living energies is the oldest conversation on earth.
Can You Photograph an Aura?
Say cheese, energy field.
Specialized cameras claim to capture this elusive glow, and the results are gorgeous whatever you believe about the mechanism. The Radiant Human project uses color-matching technology to translate biofeedback into those dreamy double-exposure portraits you’ve seen everywhere from galleries to fashion editorials.
An older cousin, Kirlian photography, produces a halo of light around living things through corona discharge, a technique that has fascinated both mystics and skeptics since 1939. Leaves, flowers, and fingertips all photograph with that eerie luminous fringe.
How Can You See Your Own Aura?
Soft eyes, patient heart, no squinting.
No camera required, though the DIY route asks for patience. Practitioners suggest softening your gaze and leaning on peripheral vision, letting color reveal itself gradually rather than forcing it. Treat it as a skill like any other, built through short, relaxed sessions instead of marathon staring contests.
Consistency beats intensity here. A few relaxed minutes in front of a plain, softly lit wall will teach you more than an hour of straining, and this guide on how to see your own aura offers a solid starting practice.
Can You See Other People’s Auras?
Some people glow louder than others.
Reading someone else’s aura is a less predictable art, hinging on your sensitivity to spiritual energy and theirs. Certain people simply radiate, broadcasting a field so pronounced that even skeptics register something the moment they walk in.
Perceiving your own field relies on meditation and steady concentration, while another person’s energy arrives on its own schedule. Energy worker Kadeem Alston-Roman suggests the real unlock is attention: shift focus from the physical self to the spiritual one and the signal strengthens on its own.
Can Your Aura Change Over Time?
Your energy field keeps a diary.
Absolutely, say proponents, and this may be the most hopeful thing about the whole subject. Your aura behaves as a living canvas, repainted by every joy, grief, triumph, and hard season you move through. Colors brighten, dim, and migrate as your inner landscape shifts.
Think of it as a mirror of your journey rather than a fixed portrait. The river shapes the land it moves through, and your experiences sculpt the contours of your energetic field in exactly the same slow, patient way.
Can You Turn Off Your Aura?
No switch, no dimmer, no off button.
Not likely, say spiritual teachers. The aura functions as an energetic organ, no more switchable than your heartbeat, mirroring your emotions whether or not you’d prefer privacy. It broadcasts as long as you’re breathing.
Only physical death ends the signal on this plane, and even then the story continues. Mediums often describe sensing that essence long after the body dies, which is precisely the interference psychics report when spirit brushes against a living field.
How Do You Cleanse Your Aura?
A spiritual detox, hold the juice fast.
Feeling energetically grimy is common, especially after heavy conversations, crowded rooms, or a long scroll through bad news. A handful of practices, drawn from ancient tradition and modern spiritual work, can restore the shine.
Positive affirmations reset the mental weather, replacing lingering negativity with deliberate light. Meditation clears static the way rain clears pollen, and even five quiet minutes shifts the field. Visualization works beautifully too: picture cleansing light pouring over and through you, dissolving whatever isn’t yours to carry.
Smudging with sage remains the classic ritual clearing, fragrant smoke standing in for the release of stagnant energy. For deeper imbalances, energy balancing with an experienced practitioner can identify and settle what solo practice misses. Protecting your energy is its own discipline, one I walk through in my guide to spiritual psychic protection.
Are Aura Readings Legitimate?
The jury’s out. The waiting room is packed.
Honest answer: legitimacy lives in the eyes of the beholder. Science hasn’t validated the aura as a measurable spiritual field, and no serious practitioner should pretend otherwise. What thousands of people report, though, is that a skilled reading surfaces emotional truths they couldn’t name alone, and that value is hard to argue with.
Auras, whether literal or symbolic, offer a lens into the connection between your physical, emotional, and spiritual selves. However you land on the mechanism, the curiosity itself is the point, an invitation to consider the unseen threads running between who you appear to be and who you actually are.
Curious how I use my third eye to read the energy you bring into a session? Learn more about me and how I work, then book a reading whenever the pull feels right.
Keep Reading
Chris Bennett is an internationally recognized psychic medium and tarot reader, widely considered one of the best in the world. Through The Tarot Medium, he reads exclusively online for clients across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, with more than 200 published articles and hundreds of five-star reviews to his name. His work blends evidential mediumship with the grounded symbolism of Tarot, always as a supplement to good therapy rather than a replacement for it.
