Spirituality • 07/22/2025
Energy Reading: How To Read Your Aura – Updated for 2025

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The energy people give off can draw you to them or repel you from them. If you’ve ever met someone and instantly clicked — or instantly felt wary — you’ve already read energy without knowing it. If you’ve ever walked into a room and sensed an atmosphere — yep, that’s energy reading too. Call it vibes, if you like. But what vibes are you giving off? How can you read your own or someone else’s energy?
What Is an Energy Reading?
An energy reading is a way to detect a person’s aura. Your aura is your personal energy field surrounding your body for a few inches up to a few feet — every living thing has one. An energy reading decodes and interprets this energy, giving the reader a lot of insight into who you are.
Explanations for how we perceive energy and auras vary from metaphysical and spiritual to scientific. Ultimately, it’s something we just do not yet fully understand — but it’s a fascinating concept that can help you understand yourself and others better.
How to Read Auras and Energy
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to read your own aura — or someone else’s.
- Choose a quiet space with minimal distractions and either natural lighting or dim lighting.
- Relax your mind and body with deep breathing exercises or quiet meditation for a few moments.
- Rub your hands together for 20-30 seconds.
- Slowly move your palms apart, and then back together and then apart again. Can you feel resistance between your palms? That’s your energy field!
- Hold your hand at arm’s length in front of a plain, neutral colored background.
- Relax your eyes — as if you were doing a magic eye puzzle — and focus on the space around your hand, as though you were looking through it.
- You might start to see a faint white or gray outline. That’s your aura! Keep your eyes relaxed and move them around the space. After a while, colors may start to emerge.
What Color Is Your Aura?
Your aura can include multiple colors, but the main color that determines your primary aura should shine through.
Red
A red aura can exude confidence, passion, ambition, and energy. On the other hand, red can represent aggression and a fiery attitude. A red aura can mean that your root chakra is unblocked.
Orange
An orange chakra represents creative and sexual energy, intelligence and perfectionism. Orange auras relate to the sacral chakra and indicate learning through experience.
Yellow
Yellow in your aura indicates a sunny and inviting disposition. Yellow relates to the solar plexus chakra that deals with identity and empowerment.
Green
Green represents the heart chakra. If you have a green aura, you’re likely compassionate, loving and forgiving. People with a green aura can sometimes be easily influenced since they have such an open heart.
Pink
A pink aura is also associated with the heart chakra, meaning this aura represents love, kindness and caring. You are typically receptive, compassionate, romantic and peaceful.
Blue
A blue aura represents sensitivity, devotion, calmness and sincerity. Blue auras often mean free thinkers with their heads in the clouds. They’re often intuitive, insightful, and spiritual, from the throat chakra representing expression and truth.
Purple
Purple represents strong intuition and spiritual purpose. This color is associated with the third eye chakra and can indicate psychic abilities or a strong sense of empathy. Purple can also mean independent and wise.
Indigo
Indigo in your aura is associated with curiosity and gentle sensitivity. Indigo auras are highly empathic and often spiritually connected — but also easily misunderstood.
The Benefits of Energy Reading
Energy reading is a secret superpower! Being able to read auras or vibes has many benefits, such as:
- Insight into your own personality and emotional state
- Advance warning of an unfolding situation
- Being able to tell when someone is lying or untrustworthy
- Better self-understanding
- Improved empathy for others
- Clarity over your chakra health and blocks
- Understanding which areas of your psyche need healing
- Improved relationship dynamics
- Opportunities for spiritual growth
- A greater connection to your higher self
Other Ways to Read Energy
Reading auras isn’t the only way to pick up on energy. You can also read energy through eye contact, physical contact or psychometry.
Start With the Eyes
Eyes are said to be the window to the soul, emitting powerful energy that can tell you a lot about a person’s vibe. How does a glance from someone make you feel? If you feel comfortable, it’s likely that their aura vibes with yours, meaning your auras are compatible.
If you feel irritated by a glance from someone, it’s likely that you will clash with each other’s energies. Eyes project such powerful energy that you can often sense when you’re being stared at. One of the benefits of energy reading is that it alerts you to this potential threat. Harness that power by reading into it as much as possible. Try to detect the emotions and storytelling behind someone’s eyes.
Observe Physical Contact
Physical contact can help you feel another person’s vibrational energy. A hug or a handshake can often elicit strong emotions. If you’re particularly good at reading energy, you might be able to detect a person’s energy from a few feet away.
How does their presence make you feel? Does it feel warm and inviting, or do you want to run in the other direction? Notice how others’ emotions can vibe or clash with your own, and use that to read their energy.
Try Psychometry
Objects carry vibrations too, just as we do. Psychometry is the art of reading the energy given off by an object — often something personal, like a piece of jewelry, but it could be literally anything.
Trying this out with a friend is a fun activity. Have them bring something small that belongs to someone they know but you don’t. Hold it gently, close your eyes and breathe. Pay attention to the thoughts and sensations and images that start to float through your mind. What impressions do you pick up from this object? Talk it through with your friend — you may be amazed at how accurate you are.
FAQs About Auras and Energy Reading
The benefits of energy reading are far-reaching, but it can feel a bit woolly and abstract when you first get started. Here are some answers to common questions people have about auras and energy reading:
Does your aura change?
Yes, it changes with your emotions in the short term, and with your spiritual growth over the long term.
Can you cleanse your aura?
Yes, you can cleanse and repair your aura with meditation, positive affirmations, smudging and energy balance healing. Smudging uses sage to eliminate negative energy and neutralize vibes in your space or your aura.
What does the shape of the aura mean?
Most people see auras as oval or circular around the body, but they can sometimes appear as squares, indicating a highly disciplined person, or triangles, suggesting a high level of creativity and artistic talent.
Are auras real?
The existence of auras has never been scientifically proven. Many scientists believed that people seeing auras were actually experiencing synaesthesia — seeing colors triggered by another of their own senses. However, research has disproven this, so the mystery of the human aura endures!
What if I can’t see or sense the aura?
You’re not alone! Aura reading takes practice and openness. The best way to proceed if you want to learn is to develop your intuition. You can do this through meditation, which can quiet your mind, enabling you to sense more subtle clues. Mindfulness can also increase your ability to notice sensations and emotions. Ensure that you are in a good place, emotionally and physically, because intuition starts with self-care — you cannot sense someone else’s energy if your own needs drastic attention first. With patience, your energy sensing skills will grow.
Next Steps With Energy Reading — Energy Healing
If you are drawn to aura reading and energy sensing, you might want to explore energy healing, either as a practitioner/healer or as a patient. There are many different types of energy healing, but they all share the same foundation as aura reading — the concept that our bodies carry vibrations and energy fields that can be interpreted and healed. Reiki and sound healing are both forms of energy healing, with sound healing using specific frequencies to align and heal the vibrations in your cells.
Reading Energy for a Vibrant Life
Reading energy can be very helpful in understanding yourself or someone else’s vibe. Not to mention it’s a lot of fun! One of the many benefits of energy reading is that it will offer you a fresh perspective on life, because picking up on vibes will help you better interpret or react to what is going on around you. Get started with energy reading today and see what a difference it can make to your life!
Originally published 04/03/2023 – Updated 07/22/2205
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