More than two thousand years ago, the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi wrote: "Human life is a gathering of qi. When it gathers, there is life. When it disperses, there is death." Half a world away, the Nahua peoples of ancient Mexico described tonalli, a warm, radiant energy that came from the sun and lived in the crown of the head. When it was lost, a person fell ill.
Cultures that never met described the same thing: a living energy that surrounds and moves through the body and shapes our health. Today researchers have a name for it. They call it the biofield. Here is what the biofield is, how different cultures and scientists have understood it, what research is exploring, and how a 360° visualization lets you see your own.
What is the biofield?
The biofield is the term researchers use for the energy and information fields associated with living beings. It brings together the body's measurable electrical and magnetic activity, the faint light living cells give off, and the broader idea, found in traditions worldwide, that a coordinated field of life surrounds and organizes the body.
Some parts of this picture are firmly established. The heart and brain produce electrical activity and weak magnetic fields that sensitive instruments detect. Other parts, such as how these many signals work together as one field, are an active frontier of research. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), part of the National Institutes of Health, lists the human biofield among the less well-studied aspects of the body that call for rigorous fundamental science.
Aura, energy field, biofield: three words for one living question
Aura is the familiar word, drawn from the Greek and Latin word for a breeze, and often associated with a field of light or color around a person.
Energy field is the everyday description, easy to picture and easy to talk about.
Biofield is the research term, used in scientific and integrative health literature.
On See Your Aura, all three point toward the same experience: a field of life around and through the body. Each word lets people approach it from a different starting point.
How cultures around the world have described the living field
China: life as gathered qi
In Chinese thought, qi is the vital energy that animates everything. Zhuangzi's line about life as "a gathering of qi" appears in the chapter "Knowledge Wanders North." Chinese medicine, qi gong and tai chi are all built on the idea that health depends on qi flowing smoothly and in balance.
Mexico: tonalli, teyolía and ihíyotl
The Mexican historian Alfredo López Austin of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) spent years reconstructing how the ancient Nahuas understood the body. In his landmark work Cuerpo humano e ideología (1980), he described three vital energies. Tonalli, in the head, was associated with solar heat, radiance and destiny. Teyolía, in the heart, carried vitality, memory and reason. Ihíyotl, associated with the liver, held emotion and passion. Health depended, as one Mexican scholar summarizing his work put it, on "subtle and fragile balances" among them.
France: the debate over a vital fluid
In 1778, the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris proposing that an invisible "animal magnetism" flowed through all living beings and that restoring its flow could restore health. His salons became the talk of the city. In 1784, King Louis XVI appointed a royal commission that included Benjamin Franklin and the chemist Antoine Lavoisier. After testing Mesmer's methods, they concluded that imagination played the central role in the effects people reported. Supporters continued to believe Mesmer had touched something real. Both readings exist, and the debate helped launch the scientific study of suggestion and the mind-body connection.
Russia: a living layer around the whole planet
In 1926, the Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky published The Biosphere, describing living matter as a force that shapes the entire Earth. He later developed the idea of the noosphere, a stage in which human thought itself transforms the living world. Few colleagues understood him at the time. "The kingdom of my ideas lies ahead," he wrote in 1931. Today he is widely honored as a founder of global ecology, and his vision of life as an interconnected field of activity resonates with biofield thinking.
Hungary: an information field connecting everything
The Hungarian philosopher and systems scientist Ervin László, founder of the Club of Budapest and twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, proposed in Science and the Akashic Field that an information field underlies all reality, connecting physics, biology and consciousness. He drew on both modern science and Eastern philosophy to describe it as a kind of memory of the universe. His work is a perspective to explore, and it has inspired many people working at the meeting point of science and spirituality.
What science can already measure
Several parts of the biofield are well established.
The brain produces electrical activity recorded by EEG, and extremely weak magnetic fields detected by magnetoencephalography (MEG) using highly sensitive sensors.
The heart generates rhythmic electrical activity recorded by ECG, along with a magnetic field detectable outside the chest.
Muscles and nerves produce measurable electrical signals every time they fire.
Living cells emit ultra-weak light as part of their normal metabolism, detectable with sensitive photon counters.
The science of the body's electrical life is explored in depth in our guide Is the Human Body Electromagnetic?
What researchers are exploring now
Biofield research is growing. A 2025 scoping review in the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine mapped 353 clinical studies of biofield therapies published between 1965 and 2024, including 255 randomized controlled trials. Reiki, Therapeutic Touch and Healing Touch were the most studied, often for pain, cancer care and surgical recovery. Nearly half the studies reported positive results for all the outcomes they measured, about a quarter reported mixed results, and about a fifth found no significant difference. The authors noted that research challenges and inconsistent reporting still slow the integration of these therapies into mainstream care.
Open questions remain fascinating. Is the biofield one unified field, or many interacting fields? How do electrical, magnetic, light and informational activity coordinate? How can a whole field be measured reliably? These are the questions that keep the field alive and moving.
How See Your Aura visualizes your biofield
See Your Aura uses specialized technology to create a 360° visualization of your biofield from a recent full-length photograph and your intake information. The visualization shows your energy field as a blue grid surrounding the body, with areas of reduced field strength displayed in pink.
Your scan includes:
- a complete rotating 360° visualization;
- front, right, left and back views;
- a remote energizing stage;
- a second visualization after energizing, so you can compare;
- a personal written interpretation by Yvette Farkas.
The visualization is generated through technology. It is not a psychic reading or an aura-color personality quiz. Yvette brings over thirty years of holistic health experience to her interpretation, looking at where the pink areas sit, how far they reach, how the field changes after energizing and how the pattern relates to what you shared in your intake.
What a biofield visualization can offer you
A picture of something usually invisible. The energy field becomes something you can see, rotate and return to.
A before-and-after comparison. You can see how your displayed field shifts after the energizing stage.
Questions for reflection. A pink area invites you to consider what may be drawing on your energy in that region of your body and life, such as long-held stress, a workload that keeps growing or a grief not yet fully felt.
A record over time. A later visualization gives you another point of comparison as your life and habits change.
A whole-person perspective. Many people value seeing their energy field alongside their medical care, as another way of understanding themselves.
Openness and curiosity belong together
You do not have to choose between believing everything and dismissing everything. Accept what has been measured. Stay curious about what is still being explored. Learn how a particular technology works. Notice what feels meaningful to you, and keep good medical care in the picture. Biofield science is exciting precisely because so many of its questions are still open.
Frequently asked questions
Is the biofield scientifically recognized?
Parts of it are firmly established, including the electrical and magnetic activity of the heart and brain and the faint light emitted by living cells. The broader idea of a unified field of life is an active area of research that the US National Institutes of Health describes as calling for rigorous fundamental science.
Is the biofield the same as an aura?
The words overlap. Aura is the familiar cultural and spiritual term, and biofield is the research term. Both point toward the living energy field around and through the body.
Can I see my biofield with my eyes?
Most people cannot. A visualization translates information about your field into an image you can see, rotate and compare.
What do the pink areas in my visualization mean?
Pink shows areas of reduced field strength within the visualization. Yvette interprets them in context, alongside your intake and the before-and-after comparison. Our guide What Do the Pink Areas Mean? explores this in detail.
Is See Your Aura a medical test?
No. It is a technology-assisted wellness visualization for personal reflection, offered alongside your medical care.
Is See Your Aura a psychic reading?
No. The visualization is generated using specialized technology, and Yvette personally interprets the pattern it shows.
Where this leaves us
Zhuangzi's gathering of qi, the Nahua tonalli glowing in the crown of the head, Mesmer's contested vital fluid, Vernadsky's living biosphere and László's information field all describe, in their own language, the same intuition: life is more than the sum of its parts, and it radiates.
Modern science has already confirmed that the body is electrical, magnetic and even faintly luminous, and researchers continue to explore how these signals work together as a living field. A 360° biofield visualization gives that field a form you can see, compare and reflect on, with Yvette's interpretation to help you understand what it may be showing.
If you could see the energy that surrounds you right now, what do you think it would reveal about how you have been living?
Sources and further reading
These references cover traditional understandings of the living field across cultures, current biofield research and the science of the body's measurable activity. Some areas are established science, and others are perspectives and active research.
Traditions of the living field
- Zhuangzi, "Knowledge Wanders North" (《庄子·知北游》): "人之生，气之聚也。聚则为生，散则为死。" Full text and commentary. kekeshici.com
- López Austin A. (1980). Cuerpo humano e ideología: las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas. editorialiia.unam.mx
- Adame Cerón MA. (2021). Alfredo López Austin, cuerpo humano y salud en la cosmovisión nahua. La Jornada Semanal, 14 November 2021. jornada.com.mx
- Franklin B, Lavoisier A, et al. (1784). Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal. English translation by I.M.L. Donaldson, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. rcpe.ac.uk
- Ноосфера в прошлом и будущем (The noosphere in the past and future). Nauka i Zhizn. On Vernadsky's Biosphere (1926) and the noosphere. nkj.ru
- László E. (2007). Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything (2nd ed.). Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. simonandschuster.com
Biofield research
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. NCCIH Strategic Plan FY 2021–2025, Objective 1: Advance fundamental science and methods development. nccih.nih.gov
- Sprengel ML, Teo L, Allen S, Ijssennagger N, Hammerschlag R, Dyer NL, Crawford C. (2025). Biofield therapies clinical research landscape: a scoping review and interactive evidence map. Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine. doi.org/10.1089/jicm.2024.0773
The body's measurable activity
- Wikswo JP and colleagues. Biomagnetism: The First Sixty Years (review of MEG and magnetocardiography). ncbi.nlm.nih.gov