What is the Astral Body?

The Astral body is the energy system for our emotional experience. But before we jump in, let’s recap.

Quick Recap

There are three energy bodies:

  1. Etheric body, tied to the physical body (if you haven’t yet read about the etheric energy system, that’s a great place to start)
  2. Astral body, the energy system for our emotional experience
  3. Mental body, divided into mental and causal subplanes or fields

Energy Density

The Etheric body is the most dense of the energy bodies, because it is the one tied to your physical body. To illustrate the difference between the density of your Etheric (physical) energy body versus Astral (emotional) energy body, think about if someone asked you to hold your elbow in your hand. You could do that. You’d have a dense, physical object in your hand. Then, think about if someone asked you to hold your joy (or your anger) in your hand. How would you do that? Your emotions are less tangible and less dense than your physical body, so they are harder to hold in your hand.

[Advanced energy practitioners actually do have a tangible experience of emotional energy in their hands, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.]

The Seven Chakras of the Astral Body

Just like the Etheric body has chakras and an aura, so does the Astral body. Luckily, the chakra system of the Astral body is not nearly as complex as that of the Etheric body. The Astral body has seven primary chakras. If you’ve studied or worked with chakras before, you’re probably aware of those chakras.

In sanskrit, the word chakra means ‘whirling ball.’ Your chakras are whirling balls of energy that deliver energy to your body to generate experiences. In the Astral (emotional) body, those chakras are delivering emotional energy. They are delivering the energy that you use for your emotions, so that you can create context and meaning out of your experiences.

Our emotions help us understand and make sense out of life experiences. And the chakras are bringing that energy into our bodies so that we have access to our emotions. Different emotions vibrate at different frequencies, and the chakras run the gamut of all of the emotions. They can vibrate a wide range of emotions, thus you are capable of having a wide range of responses to your experiences.

The chakras are located in front of the spine. They run from the root chakra (at the base of the spine in men and between the ovaries in women) to the crown chakra (at the top of the head). Each of the chakras vibrates at a different frequency from low to high. The root chakra is a lower vibration than the crown chakra. Each chakra has a specific function in the body. [For an introduction to the seven primary chakras, register for my free online class].

The Aura of your Astral Body

Surrounding your body is your aura. If you’ve ever had a Kirlian photograph taken, you have seen a picture of your head with different colors surrounding your head. Those colors are predominant energies in your aura at that moment in time. The aura extends out far beyond your body, to the fingertips of your outstretched arms in all directions, including about 2 feet above your head and 2 feed below your feet.

That’s your personal energy field!

You are sourcing energy from your aura all the time to bring energy into your chakras to help you create the context and meaning for your experience. And when you have used up that energy from your chakras (when you’ve metabolized it) you send it back out of the chakras into the aura, and that energy in the aura will be replenished with the energy of the cosmic field, migrating back into the chakras. So you can’t have the chakras without an aura, and you can’t have an aura without chakras – they’re an integrated system.

As you think about this emotional body of yours, understand that it is always talking to your physical body.

The Connection: When Emotions Affect Your Physical Body

Here’s an important point: When we don’t allow ourselves to feel certain emotions, we repress them. For example, when you feel butterflies in your stomach, you’re running an excessive current of anxiety through your Astral (emotional) body, and because it’s uncomfortable, you repress it. You push the energy down into the Etheric body, where it does not belong. Your body registers the physical sensation, (butterflies), and your emotional awareness may still be processing its experience of anxiety concurrently. Yet it’s more manageable to disperse the anxiety between the two energy systems rather than holding it and processing it as pure emotion. It’s an acceptable short-term strategy, but it’s not an effective long-term plan for emotions that you perceive as unacceptable or threatening to you. Repressed emotion is called somatizing. And over time somatizing can cause problems (stress leads to knots, anxiety leads to ulcers, and so on toward more serious illness and disease).

A quick, intensive primer on Astral energy. I’m curious to hear your thoughts, experiences and questions. Feel free to leave a comment below, and I’ll get back to you.

If you’re hungry for more, this is part 1 in a 3-part series:

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14 thoughts on “What is the Astral Body?”

  1. Dear Jill. May I ask (1). Recently, during my morning meditations, I have the experience that my daughter is standing in front of me, not too close (about 9 feet away), more to my left side, staring at me, she is actually lying on her bed. So I visualize she is grounding herself, growing silver roots through the souls of her feet, and continue to visualize light on my daughter. What am I seeing? Would this be her astral body? I cannot even describe what I am seeing, it’s my daughter’s body but not her dense body.
    (2) One night I was traveling in an orb of light, then I panicked trying to touch the ground but had no legs, luckily I woke up! Was this orb my soul? I guess I needed grounding before going to bed.
    (3) During my sleep I have traveled to parallel universes and have seen ladies that look like me, younger than me; one of them actually projected herself and her invalid son in bed like in a movie, in my living room during a meditation.

    Reply
    • Hello Carolina, Thanks for getting in touch! Your experiences are interesting, but I can’t comment on them or interpret them in any kind of way without looking directly at your energy. I only do that when I’m in a 1:1 session with a client. Honestly, that’s not something I’m typically interested in doing in my client practice. You might want to look for a teacher who has grounded, well rounded experience in psychic development, because that could be a more effective place to get the answers you’re seeking. I will say, grounding before going to bed is always a good practice!

      Reply
  2. Hi Jill,

    I am curious about this astral body experience as I think that is something happening to me that I am not aware of. I seem to know things that were not told to me by someone and people became surprised when I confront them about what they said out of my presence and I also keep having this “Deja-vu” feeling whenever I go somewhere & would say “I’ve been here before.” Sometimes when I lay down I have difficulty waking up and it feels like falling from the sky shortly before I awake. It’s like falling to the ground or wetting myself but when I am awake I’m actually not on the floor but standing or lying on the bed. When I try to explain these things to my parents or siblings or friends they think I’m going crazy so I no longer talk about these experiences. Just last night I was running for my life and was being chased by something that finally caught up with me and I woke up crying & feeling pain in my side as if I was smitten but no scar is seen there. I can’t explain these things so I am seeking an answer to all this. I also get dreams of the afterlife and the past- the future seem much more scary when I see it in my dreams especially when I am sleeping. I need insights to how this astral body works and the spirit leaving the body.

    I look forward to your prompt response.

    Elisa

    Reply
    • Hi Elisa, I am sorry that you’re having these experiences. Some of them sound quite unpleasant. Unfortunately, without the container of a 1:1 session, I cannot look at your energy and give you an answer to what is occurring. I can generally say that your energy boundaries are clearly porous and your chakras have a fair amount of disregulation going on. You would conceivably benefit from taking my free class, The Present of Presence and the CLEAR course to do some energy clearing, and learn about how to manage your energy so that you’re contained and held effectively. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful than that. It would be malpractice for me to give you an answer or look at your energy without the container and boundaries of a client session.

      Reply
  3. hi, thanks for the useful information. really enjoyed them. there are no physical hints that chakras reside in the physical body. they are indeed in other bodies. right?
    and the second question is that we have other bodies. right?

    Reply
    • Hello, and thanks for your inquiry about the chakras and the Astral body. The chakras are energy, no matter which body they’re residing in, so physical hints of their presence will come through emotional awareness (Astral) or physical wellness or lack thereof (Etheric). The Astral body is integrated with your Etheric body (the energy system of the physical body), so they’re in communication. If you have butterflies in your stomach before giving a presentation, that’s an example of Astral/Etheric integration. You’re nervous (emotion), your body has butterflies (physical). I have a series of videos about the various bodies on YouTube. You can find them here: Etheric: https://youtu.be/Ar74R60hgHk Astral: https://youtu.be/Ev56E0ceIJQ Mental/Causal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veCNMMG_XJ4&t=13s

      Reply
    • I can’t answer this question in complete detail. It can be quite safe, it can be disturbing and disorienting to astral project. It depends on your ability to operate from a grounded perspective, how much you know about conscious awareness, energy and autonomy. While it can be interesting to have experiences like astral or etheric projection, it’s not the purpose for having a body, or psychic awareness. It’s all about being here, in the body, having embodied experiences that help us to learn, shift, grow, heal and evolve.

      I’m not telling you not to astral project. Nor am I telling you to pursue it. I’m simply validating the importance of having a grounded, self-aware energy state from which to have these type of experiences. Since I don’t know you at all, I can’t answer whether or not you’d have a safe or unsafe experience.

      Reply
  4. So in what case do we have an unclear or blocked aura? Is that a thing? I hear you saying that he chakras take in the emotional energy of our life experiences to create meaning, and then when that energy is used up it goes back to the aura. In what case does that process get stunted? Or how can one keep their astral body/aura clear and healthy?

    Reply
    • Hi Moss (or is it Michele?), We ALL have unclear or blocked auras. In other words, we generate experiences, some of which we’ll have and fully complete, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. But other experiences will get hung up because of our patterns, emotions, belief systems, etc.

      The more we clear our energy, the more rapidly we’ll evolve through the patterns, emotions, belief systems that have us stuck, blocked or operating through inauthentic behaviors and actions. If you’re really interested in clearing your energy, I recommend two of EHI’s online courses.

      The first is The Present of Presence, free, live, online, 1-hour. I share two fundamental practices for working with your chakras to set them for authentic thriving and embodying your life.

      The second is CLEAR: Energy Clearing and Self-care. This self-paced course offers 15 skills for clearing the chakras and aura. The curriculum drips out over 3 weeks, and offers you a complete suite of skills for energy clearing and self-care.

      Yesterday I had a conversation with a client who told me that the free, 1-hour course changed her life. She learned that she is the master of her experience, and that she can engage and interact without being flooded by other people’s emotions and story. The reason I’m telling you this story, is to let you know how powerful the tools can be when they’re internalized and applied as part of an intentional self-care and healing practice.

      Thanks so much for your question! I appreciate the opportunity to connect with you.

      Reply
  5. Dear Jill,
    I just got an experience of talking to an aura, different source points communication.
    Do you have these experiences and details of points.
    Thanks
    Teddy

    Reply
    • Hi Teddy, The aura is an aspect of our conscious awareness. If we’re connected in psychically to our energy body, we can have an ongoing dialogue with it to understand how our energy is manifesting our experience. I’m not sure I’d describe the experience using the same terms as you, but I can definitely say that we can dialogue our energy in the same way we can converse with one another. We simply access a different state of consciousness to do so.

      Reply
  6. Dear Jill,
    Thank you for the extremely interesting introduction to astral bodies! I’m wondering, in the case of extreme emotional trauma- especially psychosis- what is happening between the different bodies? In other words how can intense experience such as psychosis be explained by the interactions of the different bodies.

    Reply
    • Hi Pavithra,

      I’m glad you found the Astral body information helpful. There are two other posts/videos that speak to the Etheric and Mental/Causal body as well that may be worth reading or viewing. The Etheric post can be found here: https://energyhealinginstitute.org/etheric-body/ and the Mental/Causal body post can be found here: https://energyhealinginstitute.org/causal-body/

      Anything that goes on in the Astral body, such as emotional and/or physical trauma, generates repercussions in both the Etheric and Mental/Causal body. In the Etheric body, there can be significant physical implications, including somatized anger, depression, anxiety and fear as well as other difficult emotions. The somatized emotion ends up inhibiting and diminishing energy flows to organs, glands and other body systems.

      In the Mental/Causal body, there’s implications to the concrete intellect, a world view can be drastically impacted by trauma, rendering the world an unsafe, unsupportive place. In the Causal, belief systems are skewed by the traumatic experience as well. The concrete intellect is profoundly influenced by the beliefs formed in the Causal, and the belief systems are also actualized through the Astral sixth chakra.

      Of course, this can all be evolved through a combination of effective psychotherapy, medications (as needed), and energy clearing.

      I hope this response is helpful to you!

      Reply

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