Vital Energy occupies a remarkably contested and plurally configured position within the depth-psychology corpus. Rather than a single concept, it functions as a family of related constructs — prana, pranic force, rlung (subtle wind), qi, libido, adaptation energy — each embedded in distinct cosmological and clinical frameworks yet converging on a shared intuition: that living beings are animated by a non-mechanical force that is simultaneously physiological, psychological, and spiritual. Sri Aurobindo develops the most elaborate philosophical architecture, distinguishing the pranic shakti as the ‘steed and conveyance’ of mind and will, subject to excess, dissipation, and supravitalisation through yogic transformation. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition, as represented by Coleman’s edition of the Bardo Thödol, maps vital energy through the nadī system — 72,000 channels carrying rlung — and treats its directed concentration as the very mechanism of enlightenment. Hakuin Ekaku, writing from a Zen-Taoist horizon, identifies primal energy concentrated in the lower body as the foundation for sustained spiritual practice. Rudhyar imports the concept into analytical psychology, proposing that psychic repression redirects vital energy into the unconscious, where it seeds neurosis. Easwaran bridges Eastern and Western medicine through Selye’s ‘adaptation energy,’ equating it with prana as the determinant of life span and resilience. The central tension across these voices concerns whether vital energy is ultimately spiritual in nature or a biological substrate — a tension that remains productively unresolved.