Colour Therapy

Are you felling off-colour? Do you see red, feel blue or go green? Are you yellow-bellied or having a purple patch? Colour is an integral part of all our lives, affecting our emotions and according to some therapists, our health too.

Although our sensitivity to colour is usually unconscious, it has long been recognised that different colours can affect our moods and have a profound effect on us. Some can energise us while others are more calming. Research has backed this up and shown that exposure to certain colours may even change the chemical balance in the blood. Colour Therapy uses these ideas and goes even further, employing colour to heal both mental and physical ailments and also to keep you healthy in the first place.

Colour Therapy is based on the fact that, because colours originate from light, a form of energy, they have their own wavelengths and frequencies. Colour Therapists believe that all matter within our bodies, from individual cells to entire organs, also has vibrational frequencies. If a part of the body isn't functioning well, its vibration and therefore colour will either drop or increase, so creating an imbalance. These imbalances can be corrected by using a colour with a corresponding frequency. Our bodies need a balance of colour, all vibrating at different frequencies in order to make us feel healthy in mind, body and spirit.

What happens at a consultation? As with many alternative therapies, the practitioner will look at the patient's lifestyle and general state of health before anything else.

Many therapists then make their diagnosis using the aura, our own individual electromagnetic energy field that is made up of colours that change according to our physical and mental well-being. As each organ has a different vibrational frequency and therefore radiates different colours, by looking at the colour vibrations in the aura, they can see where problems might lie.

Another method of diagnosis is through psychological testing with a Colour Reflection Reading, a system developed in 1985 by Dorothy and Howard Sun. Each of the eight colours was given its own shape. The patient chooses three of the eight shapes and from this, the therapist can assess their needs.

What forms can the treatment take?

Colour Therapists maintain that colour is not only something that enters the body through the eyes, it can also be absorbed into the skin through the nerve endings, through what we eat and the air we breathe. As such, there are a number of different treatment methods.

Lights
Normal white light is shone through colour filters and either directed onto the relevant part of the body or the whole body is bathed in a particular colour.

Colour Puncture
Developed by German naturo path Peter Mendel, Colour puncture is where a small 'torch' with a coloured beam is pointed onto the relevant acupuncture and other points to energise healing impulses.

Solarised Water
A coloured container is filled with water and left in the sun for a couple of hours. The patient can then either drink the water or bathe in it.

Visualisation
The patient must imagine certain colours being directed onto their problem areas.

Diet/clothes
This is to do with introducing more of a certain colour into your lifestyle. A therapist may recommend certain coloured foods and a patient will be given advice on which coloured clothes to wear and have in the home.

The find the benefits of different colours click here