Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-25857155-20150213020036/@comment-26018514-20150228105930

JayHart wrote: I'm not 100% certain that I'm correct, but I believe Aura is always active - or, rather, that it auto-activates in combat. Of course, this is somewhat contradicted by Pyrrha's question to Jaune when the met during initiation: "Why didn't you activate your Aura?" Again, not really sure if Aura is an automatic thing or not, but in combat the chains would always be there. you are at least somewhat correct, I believe Jaunes "activation" was just that he had never "used" it before, the Aura's natural state being something centered closer to the core of the body, not protecting much, just basically acting as life support in case of serious injury, hunters learning to mold it to sharpen weapons and sit on the skin to act as a "force field".

people like Wiess & Pyrrha take it a step further by either taking parts of or stretching the field for use with offensive semblances, which should drastically weaken their own defenses at the moment of use, while Ren was shown to actually use his "force field" itself as a bludgeon, (because of this I still wonder if Glyndas "telekinesis" might not be her semblance at all but rather ultimate aura control garnered through immense experience and some other kind of semblance we have yet to see)

long story short, "activating" is just "re-tasking".