What is Our 'Energy', Really?

Most of us know what it's like to walk into a room and feel the mood without anyone saying a word. We may comment on a place having weird vibes or that someone we know has a warm presence.

For some of us, that isn't just something we say. We are discussing something deeply felt - an unseen but unmistakable way that we feel, connect and even attract experience into our lives.

That is human energy in the spiritual sense: the life force, vibrations, and resonance that flows around us and within us.

It is unexplainable, meaning it's not measurable by science today. That labels it a "belief system".

Science uses the same terms with different meanings, and while there could be some entwinement, there has been a significant amount of conflation in the spiritual community between the two.

It's important to understand both.

We Are Made of Energy, Scientifically

We tend to think of ourselves as solid skin and bone - solid, real, tangible.

But here's the thing: what we call "solid" isn't fixed at all. We are made of measurable, scientific energy units - or atoms. Atoms are mostly space. The "space" isn't empty though it's full of electromagnetic forces (energy) that holds everything together.

So energy literally gives matter its form and structure. Energy is what creates our observable physical presence which is why we can see, touch, and interact with other humans as physical objects.

The body is not just skin and systems. It's an electromagnetic network of our hearts, brains, and nerves that operate through measurable electrical signals that flow, sense and respond.

This isn't a metaphor. It's biology.

Forms of Measurable Human Energy

• Electrical activity - brain waves, nerve impulses, heartbeats

• Magnetic field - generated by electrical activity, like the heart

• Heat - constantly radiated by the body, which can be detected outside of the body

• Mechanical and chemical energy - movement, voice vibrations, and metabolic energy from food.

The Heart's Magnetic Field

Every time our heart beats, it sends out an electrical signal. It is measurable with sensitive equipment in a lab, and they've found that under the right conditions, it creates a magnetic field strong enough to be detected several feet outside your body. In fact, the electromagnetic field of the heart is the strongest of any organ - up to 60 times stronger than the brain's electrical output.

How Emotions Change Our Energy

Emotions are powerful forces that, as we know, guide our well-being through our feelings and actions. But they aren’t abstract. They are tangible biochemical events - changes in our hormones, breath, blood flow, posture, and expression. And those events are measurable and objective.

But they are also deeply felt. We don't have to name them to know they are present. This is how energy moves through relationships, rooms and culture. We feel each other, even when we don't speak.

Yet emotions remain subjectively observed because they require humans to self-report while measuring the event outputs. Sometimes widely different emotions have similar physical reactions. For example, excitement records a physical reaction that is very similar to anxiety.

Causation is difficult too. Sometimes our physiological reactions come from our emotions, and other times they come first and are what create our emotions.

At this point, there is enough data to draw conclusions between certain emotions eliciting physiological responses, but emotions themselves are still not technically measurable.

Human Energy in the Spiritual View

Spiritual belief systems use the same terms.

Here, the energy isn't referring to volts or magnetic fields that are measurable but describing how life feels, flows, and interacts on an unseen level. Many believe they operate similarly to the energy that is measurable.

But until we can measure this, it remains a belief.

Our spiritual energy is believed to made up of:

• Life Force (prana, qi, chi) - the vital energy animating every living thing

• Vibrations and frequency - the idea that our emotions and mental states have measurable-like qualities, where the energy vibrates, which creates your frequency (high vibrations versus low vibrational energy)

• Resonance - matching frequencies that amplify each other

This is believed to be built from our:

• Emotional Patterns - persistent feelings and moods

• Thoughts and Beliefs - mental atmosphere

• Physical Vitality - health, rest, nutrition

• Spiritual Alignment - connection to values, purpose, or higher self

• Unresolved Experiences - what resides in our subconscious or repressed or stuck and blocked energy

From this perspective, our energy is both what we carry inside and project outward - affecting not only how we feel or others feel about us but actually affecting what we draw into our own lives.

Where Spiritual Energy and Science Meet

Science and spirituality describe different layers of the same human experience. Science measures and spirituality describes what’s felt. And unfortunately, people have stretched, misused, and commercialized the term “energy” without accurately describing the difference between the two. Without drawing the lines clearly to show what is science (meaning measurable) and what is spiritual belief.

How to Tune Into Your Energy

Learning to feel our own energy, which is a combination of both scientific energy and spiritual energy, isn’t just a nice idea - it’s how we start living in alignment with what is real for us.

When we start to pay attention to our inner state - our breath, body and signals - we begin to notice the spiritual energy as well - what lifts us, drains us, and of course, our current state.

That awareness then becomes a compass.

Whether we are speaking in volts or vibrations, we all respond to energy. Understanding both perspectives helps us work with it consciously, which can help us to:

• Stay steady when emotions rise. We can catch the shift in our systems before the overwhelm takes over. Breath. Soften. Respond instead of react.

• Sense when something is off. Even if you can't explain it, we feel the push and pull. Trusting that signal and pausing to ask questions or shift directions.

• Feel the truth in our relationships. We notice then who helps us to feel open and at ease.

• Recognize when the energy is ours versus when it's not. We begin to notice a difference between our internal energy and our environment or others in front of us.

• Protecting our energy with clarity. We begin to define how we protect our own energy to maintain our inner states.

• Shift our inner state without needing the world to change. Instead of waiting for someone else to calm us down or fix how we feel, we can ground inside of ourselves to change how we feel regardless of the circumstances. That's freedom!

• Create self-trust from the inside out with repetition. The more we understand our energy, the more we feel our own power. That clarity builds agency. That agency builds peace - the kind we carry with us.

A Note for the Skeptical:

If the word "energy" brings up hesitation, that's understandable.

But our physical energy doesn't require belief. It's our nervous systems. Our attention, breath, and our presence.

We don't have to believe in anything invisible. We feel it when our chest tightens, our stomach sinks, or something just feels off.

This is simply about noticing what our bodies are telling us and learning how to work with it.

The Takeaway

We don't have to be experts to tune into our own energy - we just have to slow down and pay attention.

When we do, we have the ability to make choices that support our well-being better instead of constantly being influenced from the outside.

Over time, we hold our energy with more clarity and care. Not just for our own sake - but because we deeply understand that how we carry ourselves affects everything around us and within us.