Science and spirit are saying the same thing in different ways. Here’s what they both may mean.

You’ve heard it your whole life. “She has great energy.” “That place has a weird vibe.” “I just don’t have the energy for that today.”

We say stuff like this constantly. But we rarely stop to ask what we actually mean.

I’ve spent nearly thirty years working with energy. My own, other people’s, the kind that moves through bodies and the kind that saturates rooms.

And what I’ve found, over and over again, is that the ancient intuitions and the modern science are telling the same story. We just use different words.

Let’s talk about both.

First: What is energy, physically?

Let’s get basic for a minute.

So, everything is matter. And all matter vibrates.

Your body is made of atoms. Atoms are mostly empty space, and within that space, electrons are in constant motion.

That motion generates an electromagnetic field. It’s measurable and real, extending beyond the surface of your skin.

Your heart alone produces the largest electromagnetic field in your body, detectable several feet away. (Want to go deeper here? Check out the Heartmath Institute, some great stuff there.)

This isn’t metaphor. What that means, practically: You’re not a solid, contained object walking through neutral space.

In fact, you’re a dynamic field of energy in constant relationship with the fields around you.

With me so far? (Already, you can see where this is going.)

Many spiritual traditions understood this intuitively.

Traditional Chinese medicine calls it qi. The Japanese call it ki. Ayurvedic medicine calls it prana. And Polynesian traditions call it mana.

Every major healing tradition on earth has a name for this life force…the animating current that runs through living things. They mapped it, worked with it, and built entire systems of medicine around it.

They didn’t have MRI machines or electrocardiographs. But they were watching a lot of the same stuff that we can now measure.

Why some people drain you and others fill you up

Here’s where nervous system science gets interesting. Humans are wired for what researchers call co-regulation.

Your nervous system doesn’t operate in isolation. It continuously reads cues from the nervous systems around it. Tone of voice. Micro-expressions. Breathing rate. Posture.

Your body is scanning the room before your conscious mind has formed a single thought about it. Let that really sink in.

So, when you spend time with someone who’s calm, grounded, and regulated, your nervous system tends to settle.

And when you spend time with someone who’s anxious, hypervigilant, or dysregulated, yours often picks up that signal and starts to match it.

This is why you can walk into a meeting where everyone’s smiling and still leave feeling like something was off.

Your body knew.

It’s also why certain people leave you feeling lighter after an hour together, while others leave you feeling like you ran a marathon without moving.

You didn’t imagine that. You experienced an actual physiological event. Your nervous system spent that time either resourcing or compensating, depending on what the other person’s field was broadcasting.

Different spiritual traditions call this things like energy exchange, resonance, vibrational attunement.

Neuroscience calls it co-regulation and polyvagal response.

In a lot of ways, they’re describing the same phenomenon. Ancient people just didn’t have the vocabulary we have now. But they weren’t wrong.

What’s actually happening when you “feel” a room

We’ve all walked into a space and felt something before anyone said a word.

A house that feels heavy. A party that feels electric. A hospital room that feels peaceful despite everything happening in it.

Your rational mind wants to explain this away. Lighting. Temperature. Confirmation bias. And sure, those things are real factors. But they don’t account for the full picture.

Here’s what does. Think of your nervous system as a sophisticated environmental scanner.

Researchers studying what’s called the “social baseline theory” suggest that human beings evolved to be in constant relationship with their environment. Not just the people in it, but the energetic quality of spaces themselves.

We assess safety and threat through channels that go well beneath conscious awareness. That means smell. Sound frequencies below the threshold of hearing. Subtle electromagnetic variation. The residue of emotional events.

That last one sounds the most woo. It’s also the most interesting.

There’s emerging research on what some scientists call “emotional contagion.” That means the way mood, stress, and emotional states transfer between people and, some argue, linger in spaces.

Think of walking into a room right after a couple has had a fight. Nobody tells you. You just know. That’s not magic. That’s your nervous system doing its job.

I’ve walked into homes where I could feel decades of grief embedded in the walls. I’ve also walked into humble, unremarkable spaces that felt like exhaling.

The physical environment doesn’t fully explain either. Something else is at play.

What 30 years in this work has taught me

I came to energy work the way a lot of people do…through personal crisis and reflection, not through a philosophy class.

I’ve sat with people in the hardest moments of their lives. I’ve worked through my own.

I’ve learned to feel where energy is blocked in a body before the person has told me what’s wrong. I’ve watched people shift (visibly, measurably) when their energy field changes.

Not because I have magical powers. But because the body is always communicating, and most of us were never taught to listen.

Earlier this year, I nearly died from severe anemia. (Long story that I’ll tell more fully sometime. But suffice it to say that I very legitimately nearly croaked.)

What followed was weeks of near complete dependence on Western medicine…hospitals, transfusions, clinical interventions. Not exactly the shamanic practitioner’s preferred terrain, right. (A few of you walked through this time with me and know how hard it was…and still is on a certain level.)

But here’s what I noticed: Energy was everywhere in that experience.

The energy of the space mattered. The energy of the people caring for me mattered enormously. Certain nurses brought calm with them when they walked in the door. Others brought chaos. And my body couldn’t ignore either.

When your reserves are stripped away and your system is fighting to stabilize, what you’re sensitive to often becomes very, very clear.

That experience didn’t shake my holistic framework. It actually deepened it.

Because I watched science and spirit converge at my bedside, doing their work simultaneously.

Western medicine saved my life. Energetic awareness helped me navigate the experience without losing myself in it.

Both were real. And wow, both were so, so necessary.

If you know me in real life, this is what I mean when I talk about looking at health on all levels: Physical, energetic, spiritual.

They’re not competing frameworks. They’re simply different lenses on the same reality.

So, what does this mean for you?

On a very real level, it means the way you feel people and places is data.

Not flakiness. Not oversensitivity. It’s data.

It means that when you leave certain conversations feeling lighter, and others feeling like you’ve been wrung out, something very real happened. Energy moved. It was exchanged, absorbed, depleted, or restored.

It means that the friend who always seems to need something, the colleague whose anxiety fills every room before they do, the family member whose voice alone makes your shoulders climb toward your ears…you’re very likely not being dramatic about any of them.

Your system is responding to real input.

And it means that learning to work with your own energy (to understand it, protect it, replenish it) isn’t a luxury or a spiritual affectation.

It’s practical. It’s self-preservation. And, I would say that it’s genuinely pretty smart.

You don’t have to identify as spiritual to benefit from this approach to life. You don’t have to burn sage or own a single crystal (or, you know, hundreds, lol).

You just have to be willing to pay attention and take seriously what your body has been telling you all along.

The science backs you up. And so do the traditions.

You’ve always been able to feel energy. You just may not have given yourself permission to trust it.

Disclaimer
Heads up: I’m a medicine woman and shamanic practitioner with nearly 30 years of experience — not a doctor, therapist, or licensed healthcare provider. Everything here is for educational, informational, and inspirational purposes only. Nothing in this post is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent anything. Your body, your call — always consult a qualified professional for your specific situation. If you’re having a medical emergency, call 911.