How energy actually works — and why baths and Reiki do what they do

Most people think of themselves as a physical body that sometimes has feelings. But modern science — and every energy healing tradition across human history — points to something different: you are a field of energy first, and a physical body second. Understanding this changes everything about how you understand stress, emotional weight, and why certain healing approaches work when others don't.

You are made of light

Every living cell in your body emits light. Not metaphorically — literally. These are called biophotons: ultraweak photon emissions in the visible spectrum, produced continuously by all living organisms. They were first documented by German biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp in the 1970s, and have since been confirmed by research published in peer-reviewed journals including the Indian Journal of Experimental Biology.^[1]

Popp's research found that these biophotons are not random. They appear to be coherent — meaning organised and patterned, similar to laser light — and may function as a communication system between cells, carrying biological information throughout the body.^[2] In other words, your cells are talking to each other in light.

Your body generates a measurable energy field

Beyond the light your cells emit, your body generates electromagnetic fields that extend outside the skin. The most powerful of these comes from the heart.

Research from the HeartMath Institute has confirmed that the heart generates the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field of any organ in the body. Its electrical field is approximately 60 times greater in amplitude than brain waves, and its magnetic field is more than 100 times stronger than the brain's — measurable up to three feet away from the body in all directions.^[3]

This field does not just stay inside you. HeartMath researchers found that when two people are in close proximity — or even touching — the electromagnetic signal from one person's heart can be detected in the other person's brainwaves via an electrocardiogram. We are literally registering each other's energy fields in our nervous systems.^[4]

— HeartMath Institute, The Electricity of Touch study

This is not spirituality dressed up as science. This is peer-reviewed research conducted at one of the leading bioelectromagnetic research institutes in the world. Your energy field is real, it extends beyond your skin, and it interacts with the fields of the people around you.

The aura — the energy field you were told not to believe in

Every major healing tradition across human history has described an energy field surrounding the physical body. In Indian tradition it is called the pranamayakosha. In Chinese medicine, the wei qi field. In Western esoteric tradition, the aura. What they are all describing is the same measurable reality: the biofield.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) formally defined the biofield in 1994 as the "complex dynamic electromagnetic field" generated by living systems.^[5] It is the sum of your biophotonic emissions, your heart's electromagnetic field, your brain's electromagnetic activity, and the subtler energetic activity of every cell in your body — all radiating outward.

This field is not static. It changes with your emotional state, your stress levels, your health, the people around you, and the environments you move through. It absorbs information from the outside world and transmits information about your internal state. In short: it is both a receiver and a broadcaster.

How energy attaches, influences, and disrupts

Here is where science and energy healing tradition converge most powerfully. If you are a living electromagnetic field, constantly receiving and transmitting information, then the quality and nature of what you receive matters. Not every energy you encounter is neutral.

Shamanic traditions, occult traditions, and energy healing systems across cultures describe a consistent phenomenon: external energies can attach to, influence, or drain the human energy field. These aren't the same in every case. Some energies are siphoning — they feed on your energy, drawing vitality from the field. Others are influencing — they introduce discordant information into your field, affecting how you feel, think, and respond. Others attach to specific, more vulnerable areas — an aura layer weakened by grief, exhaustion, or a period of being open and unguarded — and influence whatever that area governs.

The aura itself is layered. Different traditions map it differently, but the consistent principle is that the outer layers interact with the environment first, and disruption can move inward over time if not cleared. The chakras — the body's internal energy centres — are where this external energetic influence eventually lands.

How negative energy reaches the chakras

Think of the aura as the boundary layer of your energy system. When something disruptive attaches to or influences it — whether through prolonged stress, a draining relationship, an environment heavy with conflict, or energetic influence — it begins to feed information into the corresponding chakra.

Each chakra governs a domain of experience: the root chakra governs safety and stability, the heart governs love and grief, the throat governs expression and voice. When the aura in the region of a particular chakra carries a heavy or discordant energy, the chakra begins to receive that as information — and the corresponding emotional, physical, or psychological experience follows.

This is why people experiencing what appears to be emotional or even physical difficulty sometimes find no resolution through conventional approaches alone. If the source of disruption is energetic — sitting in the aura and feeding into the chakra — addressing only the physical or psychological layer may not reach the root of it.

Why spiritual baths work

Salt has been used for energetic and spiritual cleansing across virtually every culture on earth — in Japanese Shinto tradition, in African and Zimbabwean spiritual practice, in Islamic and Christian ritual, and in Hindu ceremony. This universality is not coincidence.

At a physical level, salt releases negative ions, which interact with and neutralise positively charged environmental pollutants and energetic debris.^[6] Water, particularly warm water, is one of the most effective conductors and carriers of energetic information — its polar molecular structure allows it to interact with and absorb charged energetic material.^[7] Together, salt and water create an environment that is actively drawing disruption away from the body's energy field.

The herbs added to a ritual bath are not decorative. In Zimbabwean tradition, specific plants have been identified over generations for their energetic properties — their capacity to protect, clear, attract, or restore specific qualities of energy. When these are combined with intention and warm water, the bath becomes a full energetic clearing ritual, not simply a physical one.

A spiritual bath works primarily on the aura — the outer layers of the energy field. It clears what has attached to or accumulated in that field. For many people, this is sufficient. The heaviness lifts, the clarity returns, and the system rebalances on its own.

Why Reiki reaches what baths don't always clear

If the aura has been carrying a heavy energy long enough, it will have fed sustained information into the corresponding chakra. The aura may then be cleared by the bath, but the chakra holds its own imprint — its own pattern of disruption that has now become somewhat self-sustaining.

This is where Reiki becomes necessary rather than optional. Reiki works inside the body's energy system, not just at the surface of the field. A practitioner directs life force energy through the chakras, clearing blockages, restoring flow, and supporting the body's natural return to balance. It reaches the internal energetic structures that a bath, however effective, does not always penetrate.

The relationship between the two is sequential rather than competing. A bath clears the field. Reiki clears the centres. For some people, one bath is enough. For others — particularly those who have been carrying something for a long time, or whose disruption has had time to settle deeply — a bath followed by one or more Reiki sessions is the more complete approach.

Somatic work and, where relevant, professional therapy, can support the integration process further — helping the body and the mind complete what the energy work has begun to loosen.

You are not imagining your heaviness. You are not being dramatic about feeling drained after certain people or certain environments. You are a living field of energy, constantly interacting with the fields around you — and sometimes what you pick up needs to be intentionally cleared. That is not a fringe belief. It is consistent with what science has been confirming, quietly, for decades.

This article is for educational purposes. Energy healing is a complementary wellness practice and is not a substitute for medical diagnosis, psychiatric care, or professional treatment.