When you start talking about things like vibration and frequency, skeptics start rolling their eyes. But you don’t have to be “new-agey” to recognize that emotions impact health and wellness. It’s time to rē•spin conventional notions of wellness to prioritize mental health. Learning to intentionally cultivate what makes you feel stable, happy, and functional, is an important way to tend to your emotions.

“Being human means we experience an entire spectrum of emotions, which is totally ok. It’s how we handle these emotions that contribute to our vibrational states,” explains Alyse Bacine, spiritual mentor, breathwork practitioner, and CEO of Alyse Breathes. Fear and love are thought of as two poles, with ranging emotions falling along the spectrum in between. “Enlightened” states vibrate at higher frequencies, while more stagnant, shadow-dominated emotions vibrate more slowly. If you’re ready to tend to your vibrational frequency by tuning-into your emotions, experts explain how and why to do so below.

What is a High Vibe State?

In high school chemistry, we learned that everything is made up of energy whose vibrating components determine its physical states. This is true of us, too, but the vibrations of our ethereal bodies also refer to states of being. “Vibration is associated with consciousness and living beings,” says Anna Toonk, tarot card reader and co-founder of The SoulUnity.

Spiritual wellness expert Michelle Roques-O’Neill, the founder of Therapie Roques O’Neill, says, “A high vibrational state relates to your energy frequency being at an optimum level — the higher it is, the lighter you feel.” She explains that a healthy frequency for the human body falls between 67-75 M Hz, experienced as feelings of peace, clarity, love, and joy. “Living at a higher vibration means being in [states of gratitude, harmony, connectedness, and understanding] more often,” Bacine adds.

Lower vibrational states correspond to feelings stemming from fear, like scarcity, lack, disconnectedness, jealousy, judgment, and separation. We all fall victim to these states occasionally, and as Roques-O’Neill explains, the spiritual (or energetic) body is the first to be knocked off-kilter. She says stress, emotional toxicity, and physical toxicity all lower your vibration, resulting in physical feelings of lethargy and the depletion of vital energy. “When we are vibrating at a low level, we are [also] more susceptible to inflammation, lowered immunity, physical dis-ease, and eventually, disease.”

The Shift Into High Vibe Living

Tending to your vibration requires self-awareness — recognizing moments when you shift out of alignment, and then consciously recalibrating. You can also raise your frequency with regular inner-work. “Living a high vibration isn’t something you just decide to do and it happens overnight. It takes a willingness to look at yourself and see where you may be lying to yourself or living out of integrity,” Bacine continues. “It takes a willingness to acknowledge and feel your emotions, and live from a place of higher than [typical] self-awareness.”

When you begin to explore your emotions — understanding their roots and influences, and the people, activities, and environments that impact them in your life — you become connected to yourself on a deeper level. This allows you to proactively concoct a pro-wellness lifestyle complete with emotional boundaries. “When you start to see and acknowledge yourself for who you really are, then you start to feel that from others. Then you begin to feel gratitude and connection, which leads to a high vibe state,” Bacine notes.

Choosing Consciousness and Inner-Work

In each moment, consider whether you are acting from the soul’s authenticity or the ego’s constructed hierarchy of “shoulds” based on past fears, or what your family of origin or society favors. Bacine says to ask yourself, “Am I making a decision based on a reaction to something past? Or am I making a decision that is deeply aligned with what my soul desires in the present time?”

Inner-work helps make these new behaviors and decisions possible through a process of emotional clearing — releasing the suppressed emotions, somatic traumas, and limiting beliefs that kept you unconsciously living at your former baseline. “The best and only way to shift your life in a high vibe direction is by clearing [these] old patterns and limiting beliefs. Until we clear these old traumas that tie us to the past, we continue to play them out and will continue to choose these lower-vibe situations,” Bacine says. “As you [do so], you become a higher vibration as you release these [low vibrational] energies from your body.” It can feel temporarily uncomfortable as the emotions arise, but the after-effects are worth it as you are freed from past patterns and your brain creates new neural pathways thanks to neuroplasticity.

High Vibrational Practices to Anchor Your New Reality

The Sufi poet Rumi once wrote that “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground,” and so it is with high vibe living. Roques-O’Neill points out that even deep sleep, or yoga or Qi Gong practices, can build the vital energy (i.e., prana or qi) that hones your vibration, also noting that meditation, acupuncture, aromatherapy, and sound therapy are also wonderful complements to consider. There are even high vibrational diets emphasizing raw, organic, and plant-based foods! The pathways, practices, and modalities that resonate with you can be different from even your best friend’s — and this is totally normal.

Finding your ideal balance is a fun part of the journey, but our experts unanimously referenced breathwork and energy work as two of their favorite vibration-raising practices. Along the way, Roques-O’Neill’s product line (like her Himalayan Detox Salts, Energy Drops, and Restore Aura Spray), which is designed to maintain and shift your state of energetic alignment, uses multiple modalities therapeutically from reiki energy to crystal essences, to aromatherapy, and even numerology. Of numerology’s significance, Toonk says, “[Across] thousands of years, numbers have had meanings assigned to them [ranging from wholeness to manifestation, to balance, and more]. We see these associations in multiple modalities and practices.”

Lindsey Royal Wayland is a Symbologist, breathwork teacher, and reiki healer who also utilizes numerology — namely, the number three — to herald in new consciousness with her clients. “Ultimately, the number three symbolizes the birth of a new consciousness,” Wayland says. “In frequencies and vibrations, three is always present: past, present, future; morning, noon, night; active, passive, synthesis; body, mind, spirit… As a counselor of spiritual wellness, I tend to the highest vibrations of my body, mind, and spirit using the number three to invite clients into their highest self every step of the way, including the pricing of my services.”

Does High-Vibe Living Make Manifesting Easier?

One final, compelling reason to tend to your vibration is that your alignment with your higher self is said to make you a manifestation powerhouse. “The reason why living in a high vibe state allows you to manifest more easily is because you’re already living in alignment without too many “blocks” or limiting beliefs [hindering] your ability to receive what you’re calling in,” Bacine says. “As you move into higher states of consciousness, you automatically start living your calling or purpose, because anything else would feel wrong or inorganic to you. The more you align with your higher self — the high vibe part of you that already exists — you begin to experience synchronicities where everything aligns better than you could have imagined.”

But the journey is as important as the outcome, if not more so. Ardent practitioners and spiritual seekers believe that this inner-work is healing and evolving the spirit, and raising your vibration is the side-effect of this process. As you rē•spin your path to personal wellness, finding what works for you, and awakening your authentic health, you are already doing the work to uplevel your vibration. “We are working on integrating the new and the old,” Wayland says. “This is transformation, liberation, this is the birth of a new vibrational frequency of being.”