Your aura is your energetic skin
When we are talking about the aura we are referring to the electro-magnetic field of light and energy that surrounds the physical body, acting as a protective, semi-permeable ‘second skin’. It can reflect your emotional, physical and spiritual state through shifting colours and vibrations and vice versa, if something is happening in the body, it will show up in the aura.
It’s your buffer against external energies, this is how it may show up:
Physical: Fatigue, vitality, or physical discomfort can manifest as dullness or specific areas of congestion in the aura.
Emotional: Your current feelings (like joy, stress, or grief) heavily influence your energetic field. For example, a calm, centered emotional state often radiates a balanced, wide aura, while anxiousness can create a jagged or tight field close to the body.
Spiritual: Your personal growth, inner peace, and connection to your purpose can expand your aura and bring out bright luminous colours.
7 layers of the aura
The 7 Layers of the Aura
1. The Etheric Body
Location: Closest to the physical body, extending about 0.5 to 2 inches outward.
Function: This is the most dense layer and serves as the direct blueprint or scaffolding for the physical body. It stores information regarding physical vitality, overall health, and daily sensation.
2. The Emotional Body
Location: Extends about 1 to 3 inches beyond the etheric layer.
Function: This layer is the seat of your feelings, moods, and emotions (both positive and negative). It is highly fluid and constantly changes colors depending on your immediate emotional state.
3. The Mental Body
Location: Extends 3 to 8 inches outward from the body.
Function: This layer governs cognitive processes, reasoning, beliefs, and logic. It represents your mind, thought forms, and the way you process ideas.
4. The Astral Body (The Bridge)
Location: Extends about 0.5 to 1 foot from the physical body.
Function: Serves as the bridge between the physical and spiritual realms. Associated with the heart chakra, it is the centre for love, relationships and connections to others.
Focus: Love, relationships, and social connections.
Details: Extends about 0.5 to 1 foot outwards. It marks the transition between the physical, 3D world and the spiritual realms.
5. Etheric Template Layer
Location: Extends roughly 1.5 to 2 feet from the physical form.
Function: Acts as the perfect, non-physical blueprint or template for the physical body, serving on a higher, spiritual plane. It is associated with divine will, higher creativity, and finding one's true purpose.
6. Celestial Body
Location: Extends about 2 to 2.5 feet outward.
Function: This is the emotional level of the spiritual plane. It governs spiritual ecstasy, unconditional love, and our intuition, connecting us to the universe and all living beings.
7. Ketheric Template Layer (or Causal Body)
Location: The outermost layer, extending up to 3.5 feet from the body.
Function: The highest vibrating layer that acts as a protective shield. It integrates the physical and spiritual self, connecting the individual to universal consciousness, cosmic energy, and ultimate spiritual enlightenment.
You aura functions as your first line of defense
The aura is more than you think. It’s almost like it contains its own intelligence and can automatically do things like filter out negative vibrations, set healthy interpersonal boundaries, and radiate your personal well-being. The key though is to be in conscious connection with it, through intent and focus, this is where your power lies as a sovereign soul. And once you are in conscious connection with it, there are things you can do to support it like, for example, just as you wash your physical skin, you must clear away stagnant energy. Smudging with sage or palo santo and using meditation can help to scrub your auric field of other people's stress that you may have picked up. Declaring your space energetically can maintain strong emotional boundaries and grounding whereby you connect your etheric body layer with the earth can act both as a transmuter and a dense because you’re ‘thickening’ your field, so things bounce off more easily.
Your environment is everything!
Because your aura naturally absorbs and interacts with environmental energies, spending time in high-vibration spaces—or wearing lighter-colored clothing—can help reflect external influences and insulate your own vitality. This is something we can easily miss or forget about. Even by creating a sacred or safe space within your home, it doesn’t need to be a big area, but a dedicated space full of things that naturally lift you, can make a big difference. For example you can fill it with crystals, oracle cards, books, flowers, meaningful objects that naturally make you smile and feel like you are in your own ‘sanctuary’.
Your energetic skin can tell the story of you
The aura holds your inner energy bodies and physical body together as a cohesive system as we’ve previously explored. This luminous field typically appears as layers of coloured light to those trained to perceive it, see above where we’ve discussed the 7 layers. It can act as a mirror, not one that just reflects out what’s going on, on the inside, but one that can also reflect the external inwards. It’s worth noting that the aura's appearance—its colours, density, brightness, and patterns—reflect your:
Current emotional state
Mental activity and thought patterns
Physical health condition
Spiritual awareness and development
When you experience strong emotions like love, anger, or sadness, your aura responds immediately, changing its vibrational frequency and often its colour. These shifts can be perceived by sensitive individuals and, in some cases, captured through specialised photography techniques such as Kirlian photography. It’s highly sophisticated and can adapt to external environments, the level of which will depend on the person’s sensitivity and awareness. When we communicate with other people, our aura’s are also communicating, this is why we can sometimes ‘pick up’ stuff psychically. This too can be an ability that comes more naturally to some than others.