Colour my life
The way certain colours make us feel or react are mostly subject to personal, cultural and situational factors.
It can be the happy yellow of a sunflower, the deep purple of an aubergine, the redof your favourite dress or the pink of a dawn. In some way colour has a way of
making us feel a certain way. Colour therapy, also known as chromotherapy, is a
form of therapy that uses colour and light to treat certain mental and physical
conditions. It can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians who used sun-filled
rooms with coloured glasses for therapeutic purposes, while Indian ayurvedic
medicine claims that the application of certain colours can correct imbalance in our
body’s chakras.
Although the practice of colour therapy is still mainly frowned upon by Western
medicine, many believe that different colours are indeed able to impact the body in
different ways.
· Red: Red is used to energise or invigorate a person who might be feeling
tired or down. If you are however already tense and stressed, it just also
be the red flag that triggers the bull.
· Blue: Chromatherapists use blue to try and influence depression and pain.
Darker shades of blue are also thought to have sedative properties and
may be tried for people who experience insomnia or other sleeping
disorders.
· Green: Green is the colour of nature, and according to chromatherapists,
it can help relieve stress and relax a person.
· Yellow: Yellow can be used to improve your mood and make you more
happy and optimistic.
· Orange: Orange, much like yellow, can be used to elicit happy emotions
from people. The bright warm colour is also thought to be able to stimulate
appetite and mental activity.
The most obvious technique of using colour therapy is through sight by letting the
person look at a particular colour in the hope that it elicits the desired response in
the body. The other is to directly reflect specific colours on certain parts of the body.
Colour therapists believe that colour can enter our bodies either through our eyes or
skin. Each colour we can see has its wavelength and unique frequency. Each unique
frequency has a different effect on people and is used for different purposes. Warm
colours are typically used for stimulating effects, while cool colours are used for
calming effects. Considered a type of alternative medicine treatment it claims to
help with a variety of conditions ranging from stress, sleep disorders, anxiety and
aggression to skin disorders. No significant evidence or research currently exists to
support that colour therapy can be used solely as an effective treatment for any of
these conditions.
Every person on the planet has a unique way of looking at and experiencing life
which means it isn’t always the case that certain colours elicit specific emotions
from people. Because human beings are unique, the effects of certain colours may
differ from person to person. For one person red may symbolise passion and love,
for another rage and anger. What you might find calming or soothing, might just be
the colour of another person’s anxiety or sadness. While colour can have an
influence on how we feel and act, experts found that these effects are subject to
personal, cultural and situational factors.