Healing Colors

(source: Graphics Fairy)

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter!

Lately, I have been studying a healing modality known as Chromotherapy to learn as much as I can about how light and color affects us - our moods and our health - whether it's basking gently in the Sun's rays or picking out what color shirt to wear; deciding what food to eat because the color is appealing; or choosing to buy or look at something simply because the color is attractive to us (jewelry, sunsets, a new car...). You get the idea!

Here's a tiny fraction of what I've discovered so far:

Chromotherapy, sometimes called color therapy, colorology or cromatherapy, is a complementary medicine method. It is said that a therapist trained in chromotherapy can use light in the form of color to balance "energy" wherever a person's body be lacking, whether on physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental levels. The practice has been labelled pseudoscientific by some of its critics.
Color therapy is unrelated to light therapy, a scientifically-proven form of medical treatment for seasonal affective disorder and a small number of other conditions, and photobiology, the scientific study of the effects of light on living organisms.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Goethe's color wheel (source: wikipedia)

A few of the people who have researched and written about light and color therapy include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Theory of Colours), Edwin D. Babbitt (The Principles of Light and Color), Charles Klotsche (Color Medicine) and Dinshah P. Ghadiali (Let There Be Light).

In Klotsche's book (based on the work of Ghadiali) there are 12 colors, each one vibrating at different frequencies: red, orange, yellow, lemon, green, turquoise, blue, indigo, violet, purple, magenta and scarlet. Some colors are warm, others are cool - green is neutral and can be used either way - and bathing in certain colors helps relieve specific problems, according to Dinshah's theory:

In 1933, Hindu scientist Dinshah P. Ghadiali published "The Spectro Chromemetry Encyclopaedia", a work on color therapy. Ghadiali claimed to have discovered the scientific principles which explain why and how the different colored rays have various therapeutic effects on organisms. He believed that colors represent chemical potencies in higher octaves of vibration, and for each organism and system of the body there is a particular color that stimulates and another that inhibits the work of that organ or system. Ghadiali also thought that by knowing the action of the different colors upon the different organs and systems of the body, one can apply the correct color that will tend to balance the action of any organ or system that has become abnormal in its functioning or condition. (Source: Wikipedia)

My chromotherapy light, featuring the color "lemon" (looks like lime!)

 

Because I find this concept fascinating and intriguing (and I am a sucker for pretty colors!), I will return to this topic again soon, once I have spent some time working with the specific color "gels" (colored plastic sheets), perhaps using the time spent basking in the light for meditating, something I really need. Also, this is a fitting companion to the "earthing" I mentioned in an earlier post - there's no harm in doing things like that!

Meanwhile, here is the Dinshah Health Society web site link:

http://www.dinshahhealth.org/

Peace ~ light ~ love