Learning to perceive an aura — the energy field said in many traditions to surround living beings — is described by practitioners as a trainable perceptual skill rather than a fixed psychic gift. The methods range from simple visual exercises that most people can attempt immediately to more sustained meditative practices that develop over weeks or months. This guide covers the main techniques for seeing your own aura, the physiology of what may be happening when people report success, and what the experience actually looks and feels like when it occurs.
What You're Trying to Perceive
Before attempting to see your aura, it helps to understand what the exercise involves. In aura perception practice, you're not trying to see a physical glow visible under normal conditions — if auras were that obvious, no practice would be required. You're working to perceive a subtle visual quality at or near the edges of the physical body: colour impressions, variations in luminosity, or a quality of field or presence that extends slightly beyond the skin.
What you perceive, if you perceive anything, is likely operating at or near the limits of normal peripheral vision and attentional sensitivity. The visual system's peripheral processing is specialised for detecting contrast, motion, and subtle brightness variation — which may be why relaxed, soft focus (rather than direct intense staring) is consistently recommended in aura perception practices. Whether what people perceive constitutes evidence of a bioenergetic field or is better explained by visual system properties is a question practitioners and sceptics interpret differently, but the exercises themselves are a form of perceptual training either way.
The Mirror Method
The mirror method is the most commonly recommended starting point for self-aura work, because it allows you to observe yourself without the contortion of trying to see your own periphery directly.
The standard approach: stand or sit in front of a large mirror in a dimly lit room with a plain, neutral background (white, off-white, or grey) behind you. Avoid patterned walls, busy artwork, or direct light sources behind you. Soft, indirect natural light from the side works well. Look at your reflection, but shift your gaze so you're not staring directly at your face — focus at the hairline, the top of the head, or the area just around the shoulders. Let your gaze become soft rather than searching and intense. After a minute or two of soft focus, many people begin to notice a subtle quality of light, colour tinge, or luminosity around the edges of their reflected body.
Common first experiences include a pale, slightly luminous white or pale-yellow quality close to the body's edge; a shifting quality that's not quite colour but is visually distinct from the plain background; or fleeting impressions of colour that appear and disappear quickly. Trying to look directly at the colour impression typically makes it disappear — it tends to be most perceptible in peripheral awareness.
The Hand and Background Method
The hand method is accessible and requires no special setup. Hold one hand up against a plain light-coloured background — the wall, a white sheet of paper, or a plain sheet. Relax your hand completely (tension changes what you perceive) and focus your gaze just beyond the fingers rather than directly on them. Spread your fingers slightly. After softening your focus for a minute or two, notice the area just beyond the fingertips and alongside each finger.
Many people notice a pale glow extending slightly beyond the skin, or a subtle darkening or brightening at the finger edges. Kirlian photography, which photographs the electrical discharge patterns around living tissue, produces images that look similar to what people describe seeing with this method — though the relationship between Kirlian discharge and aura perception remains contested.
Meditative Approaches to Aura Perception
Many aura practitioners argue that the visual exercises above are most effective as a complement to meditative awareness development rather than as standalone techniques. The reasoning: aura perception requires a particular quality of relaxed, non-grasping attention that's easier to access when you've established some baseline in meditation practice.
A simple preparatory practice: spend 10–15 minutes before any aura work in quiet sitting with eyes closed, settling the mind and letting ordinary thinking slow. Then approach the mirror or hand exercise from that quieter state. Many practitioners report that the soft-focus perception becomes noticeably easier after even a few weeks of regular meditation practice — not because meditation grants special psychic powers, but because the quality of attention available becomes more stable and less reactive.
Photographing Your Aura
Aura photography using Kirlian-type technology (or the more elaborate modern systems using biofeedback cameras) is an alternative to direct perception. Commercial aura photography sessions (available at many wellness festivals and some holistic health centres) use sensors that capture physiological data from the hands and translate it into colour fields displayed around a photo of the subject. The colour assignments are algorithmic rather than directly perceived — the technology maps physiological readings to colour meanings according to the system the camera software uses.
Kirlian photography, by contrast, captures actual electromagnetic discharge patterns around objects placed on a photographic plate. It's a real photographic technique, though what it's capturing — and whether it relates to anything traditionally described as an aura — is a separate question. Both methods can be interesting starting points for exploring aura colour associations even if you're not sure whether direct visual perception of your own aura is achievable.
Developing the Practice Over Time
Consistent practice matters more than perfect conditions. Most experienced practitioners describe aura perception as a skill that developed gradually rather than arrived suddenly. Practical recommendations for development:
- Practice regularly in short sessions (10–15 minutes) rather than occasional long attempts
- Experiment with different lighting conditions — overcast natural light often works better than artificial light
- Practise with other people as well as in the mirror: with their permission, observe people in conversation using soft focus, particularly around the head and shoulders
- Note what colours or qualities you perceive and what emotional or energetic state you were in when you perceived them — the journal practice helps calibrate perception against other inputs
- Approach the practice with curiosity rather than grasping expectation — the quality of effort that helps is relaxed and open, not effortful and straining
Our free aura colour quiz helps identify your dominant and secondary aura colours through structured questions about your energy patterns, personality, and natural inclinations — useful as a reference point when you begin visual perception practice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can some people see auras easily and others can't?
Natural variation in visual system sensitivity, peripheral attention, and the ease of achieving relaxed non-grasping focus likely all contribute. People with naturally better peripheral visual sensitivity, those who've practiced meditation or related disciplines, and those who grew up in environments where aura awareness was discussed as normal tend to report easier access. The difference appears to be trainability rather than fixed psychic ability — most people who practice consistently report some development over time.
What does a healthy aura look like?
Aura practitioners describe a healthy field as clear, vibrant in colour (whatever the dominant colour), and extending evenly around the body without patches of dimness or muddiness. The brightness and extension of the perceived field is considered a rough indicator of energy and vitality. Muddy, contracted, or unevenly distributed fields are associated with physical illness, emotional distress, or energetic depletion. This framework is traditional rather than empirically established.
Can you see auras in photographs?
Some people report being able to detect subtle impressions in photographs using soft focus techniques similar to those used with live subjects. This is generally considered less reliable than direct perception, partly because the relevant subtle visual cues may not be captured well by standard photography, and partly because the meditative quality of attention is harder to maintain looking at a static image. Kirlian and biofeedback aura photography are the established technological methods for capturing aura-related phenomena photographically.
Is seeing auras related to synesthesia?
Colour-grapheme synesthesia (in which letters, numbers, or people automatically elicit colour impressions) and aura perception share some phenomenological similarities — both involve perceiving colour associations with non-colour stimuli. Some researchers have suggested that people who report seeing auras may have a form of emotion-colour synesthesia where perceived emotional states or personality qualities automatically generate colour impressions. If this is the mechanism, aura perception would be a genuine perceptual experience without necessarily constituting evidence of an external bioenergetic field.
What if I see nothing after several weeks of practice?
Some people don't develop visual aura perception despite genuine effort, and this doesn't indicate any deficiency. Aura awareness can be developed through non-visual channels — some practitioners describe sensing auras kinaesthetically (as sensations of warmth, pressure, or magnetic quality around people) or through direct intuitive impression rather than visual colour perception. The underlying goal — greater sensitivity to the energetic and emotional qualities of self and others — can be developed through multiple pathways. Visual perception is one method, not the only valid one.