Since very early times, people have postulated that living things have a "spirit" separate from the physical body and that an "aura" resulting from this could be observed. Many complementary medicine practitioners base their entire healing processes on detecting and manipulating this aura, from therapeutic touch to Reiki therapy to the orgone therapies of Wilhelm Reich to numerous others, some which might have clinical usefulness (via the placebo effect if through no other effect) and some of which don't. There have been many efforts to demonstrate the presence of the aura scientifically over the years, one of the most prominent being Kirlian photography, which does produce stunning pictures.

The Kirlian method involves running a high-voltage low-current electrical charge through the object to be imaged while it rests on some sort of photographic film. Theoretically, the current amplifies and interacts with the electrical "life force" of the object and produces a visible aura on the photographic medium. The effect was investigated by various people in the late 1800s, but was most extensively explored by Semyon and Valentina Kirlian and their students in the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union. When their work was popularized in the West in the early 1970s, several researchers began looking into the phenomenon, most notably Thelma Moss at UCLA and a team at Drexel University. Claims have been made that the auras seen in Kirlian photography indicate emotional or spiritual states, or disease.

However, the Drexel group, after examining the effect in depth, published a paper, Image Modulation in Corona Discharge Photography," in Science in 1976 finding that the primary variable in the images obtained was the amount of moisture present on the object being photographed. This might indeed vary with assorted bodily states, but doesn't reveal anything about any prospective "aura" or spirituality. Kirlian photography has remained fairly popular nevertheless.