What Is Energetic Awareness?

Energetic awareness is understanding that everything is energy, that your energy carries a vibration that shapes how you feel, think and act, and that this vibration spreads to the people around you. That understanding gives you two things: agency over what you consume, and responsibility for the energy you share.

It is the foundation of the Eco-Verse®, and it comes down to one premise: everything is energy, and energy follows awareness.

What does it mean that everything is energy?

At its most basic level, everything that exists is energy. Einstein showed this in 1905 with E = mc²: matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. You are energy, moving through a world of energy.

You don't need physics to recognize it, though. You've felt a room shift the moment a certain person walked in. You've had a song stop you in the middle of a thought. You've stood somewhere in nature and felt something in you settle without even trying. All of that is energy.

How does your energy affect how you feel, think and act?

All energy has a vibration, and yours is no exception. I use the word vibration to describe the felt quality of your energy at any given moment: higher when you feel open, steady and alive, lower when you feel heavy, anxious or drained.

That state shapes far more than your mood. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson's research on positive emotion (American Psychologist, 2001) found that positive emotions broaden what we notice and the range of actions we can imagine, while negative emotions narrow our focus. Harvard researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert (Science, 2010) sampled thousands of people throughout their days and found they were less happy when their minds wandered than when they were present with what they were doing.

In other words, your energy shapes what you see, what you believe is possible and how you show up in your lived experience.

Is energy contagious?

Yes. Your energy doesn't stop with you.

Think about how someone can say a few words to you over the phone and completely shift how you feel. They could be miles away and still change your energy. The same is true in the other direction.

The research backs this up. In 1993, psychologists Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson described emotional contagion: we automatically mirror the expressions, voices and postures of the people around us, and our feelings shift to match theirs. A study of a large social network by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis (BMJ, 2008) found that happiness spreads through networks of friends, neighbors and family, reaching people up to three degrees of separation away.

The energy you carry moves. It reaches the people you live with, work with and pass on the street.

What does energetic awareness give you?

Once you understand that energy works this way, you're left with two things.

Agency in what you consume. When most of us hear the word consume, we think of food. But we consume all day long: what we watch, what we read, what we listen to, the conversations we have and the places we spend time. A two week study of young adults by Ethan Kross and colleagues (PLOS ONE, 2013) found that the more people used Facebook, the worse they felt over time. A study of nearly 20,000 people by Mathew White and colleagues (Scientific Reports, 2019) found that those who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature were significantly more likely to report good health and high wellbeing. None of these inputs is good or bad on its own. Once you can see what elevates you and what drains you, you get to choose.

Responsibility for the energy you share. This is responsibility without shame or blame. Low energy is part of being human, and hard emotions are real and deserve space. The responsibility I mean is the responsibility of being aware: noticing the energy you bring into a room, a conversation or a family, and caring about what you share. When you know your energy affects others, tending to it becomes an act of care, for the people around you and for the world we share.

What does energetic awareness look like in real life?

For me, it often looks like five o'clock in the morning, loading Daisy into the car in the dark and driving to Rodeo Beach before the rest of the world has started. On the mornings when the practice feels alive, something in me settles before I've done anything deliberate. On the mornings when it feels like going through the motions, I still go. The consistency is the point.

For you, it might look like catching yourself an hour into scrolling and asking how you actually feel. Or noticing that one conversation leaves you lighter and another leaves you drained. Or pausing before you walk through the door at the end of a hard day to notice what you're about to bring home.

I am far from perfect at this. There are days when old reactions run the whole show. Those days are part of the practice too, because the returning is the whole practice.

How do you start practicing energetic awareness?

Start by noticing. Don't try to fix or control anything yet. For one week, ask yourself a single question throughout the day: how does this make me feel?

• Notice how you feel when you first wake up, and what shifts when you reach for your phone.

• Notice your energy after specific conversations, meals, shows and places.

• Notice what reliably lifts you: a person, a song, time outside.

• Notice the energy you bring into a room, and how the people there respond to it.

• At the end of the day, write down what you noticed, without judging it.

Awareness creates choice, and choice is where real change begins. In Solving for X, I share how that awareness becomes agency.

Frequently asked questions

Is energetic awareness spiritual or scientific?

Energetic awareness, as Eco-Verse teaches it, is grounded in research from psychology, neuroscience and public health, including studies on emotion, attention, emotional contagion and time in nature. You don't need to hold any particular belief to practice it. You only need to notice your own experience.

Does being responsible for my energy mean it's my fault when I feel low?

No. Low energy is a human experience, and difficult emotions deserve space. Responsibility in energetic awareness carries no shame or blame. It means being aware of the energy you carry and share, so you can choose how you respond.

What is the difference between energetic awareness and conscious consumption?

Energetic awareness is understanding how energy affects you and the people around you. Conscious consumption is acting on that awareness by choosing your food, media, relationships and environments on purpose. As we say at Eco-Verse, what we consume eventually consumes us.

Where can I learn more about energetic awareness?

Eco-Verse's Energetic Awareness Program walks through the practice step by step, and the book Agency: Reclaiming Your Power Through Energetic Awareness explores it in depth, along with the research behind it.

Sources

• Einstein, A. (1905). Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content? Annalen der Physik.

• Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden and build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226.

• Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932.

• Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1993). Emotional contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(3), 96–99.

• Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2008). Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network. BMJ, 337, a2338.

• Kross, E., et al. (2013). Facebook use predicts declines in subjective well-being in young adults. PLOS ONE, 8(8), e69841.

• White, M. P., et al. (2019). Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Scientific Reports, 9, 7730.

About the author: Emily Hagopian is the founder of Eco-Verse and author of Agency: Reclaiming Your Power Through Energetic Awareness. She is also a nationally award-winning architectural and interiors photographer (APA 1st Place National Winner, Venice Biennale exhibitor) based in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose work explores how the images and stories we create shape collective experience.