The power of colour

Colours affect our moods and our minds in many different ways. Colour has both personal and universal meanings. .The colours we choose in life are said to be a deliberate and unconscious decision that we make without realising. Because colours form such a huge part of our self expression and identity, without them, the world would be lifeless. With colour we can paint our own pictures, we can decorate our homes, we can dress ourselves up and even enhance our own moods just by looking at a particular colour.

It is believed that we first experience colour in the womb where we are secured in a nurturing pink environment, so then as a child we associate with colour as part of our first learning processes. The first associations with colour then contribute to our unconscious mind. By the time we reach our adult life we have already started to fix certain memories, feelings and meaning with colour which is why we are keen on some colours and not so keen on others. We don’t even need to understand why we do this, it’s something the brain naturally absorbs and then lets us know what works for us by our first initial gut reaction as we all experience the sensations of colour in so many different ways.

The power of colour is said to have a profound affect on our spiritual side as well along with our psychological mind state and many healers and therapists work with colour in order to bring clarity and meaning into peoples’ lives. For example colour therapy is said to date back thousands of years to the ancient cultures of Egypt, China and India. It is used as a light of varying wavelengths where each colour has its own particular wavelength and energy. Healers and therapists like to use colour to balance the seven energy centres in the body (The Chakras) Each chakra represents a different meaning as it is believed that each energy field in our body works with specific feelings and emotions. When our chakra’s our blocked, we ourselves feel as if we are perhaps lacking in energy but a colour therapist will be able to unblock your chakra’s and tell you which ones are functioning in the right way. Once we understand how the chakra’s and colours work within our energy fields we can begin to unblock them ourselves by noticing feelings that we experience such as fatigue or depression. Unblocking your chakras is a bit like tuning a guitar (we all go out of tune at some point, as we take on so many different types of energies throughout the day without realising).

If you want to understand how your colour chakra system works here is a brief list:

Red relates to the base chakra – what grounds us
Orange the sacral chakra – pleasure and sensuality
Yellow the solar plexus – Emotional and digestion (where you absorb things)
Green the heart chakra – Emotions of the heart
Blue the throat chakra – Communication
Indigo the brow chakra (sometimes referred to as the third eye) – Your intuition and perception
Violet the crown chakra – Spirituality – how you receive information from spirit.

Once you have gathered a basic understanding of your colour energy fields, you’ll begin to notice things which may become of very good use. For example, if you have been finding it hard to communicate with a loved one recently then it may be because your throat chakra is blocked. Therefore, you could find a quiet space and visualise a magnificent ball of light blue energy around your throat, you could even gently circle your hand around the throat area imagining that you are turning a button round and round to get the energy circulating again. You should notice a vast difference. It would be the same if you were experiencing problems trusting your intuition. Therefore it would be important to pay attention to your Third Eye Chakra by imagining an Indigo light right at the top of your brow.

What is also good about colour is the psychological side of it, such as understanding why you associate a colour with a certain word or person. Perhaps you think of your feelings as illustrating a particular colour? Or even the days of the week? Colour can help us to organise ourselves, it can shape our views, calm us and alert us and the general psychology and meaning behind the colour can mean many different things to different types of people. For example the colour red may speak about passion and love to one person but mean anger, rage, warning and fire to another. Blue may seem exciting and exhilarating in some cases yet full of ice and vagueness in others.

A good therapy is to perhaps build a spectrum of your own colours and meanings by noticing how you feel when you dress in a particular colour. You could even write your own colour list of meanings. Do you always wear the same colour? If so, then perhaps think about changing your colour noting any changes in mood.
Sometimes when we visualise certain colours we can attract certain situations into our lives such as the colour Pink for love, Red for passion, Violet for clear seeing and Blue for communication. Simply follow your chakra system in order to achieve the right level of energy and emotion. Think of your chakra system as a set of wheels that have to align with each other in order to function. Once you have got into the swing of it, by repeating certain exercises it will become of second nature and your energy will just flow, you will feel vibrant, alert but also aware of how others are feeling without taking on any negativity. In order to shield yourself always imagine that you are breathing in a beautiful white light and then breathing out a shield of protection which stops negativity reaching into your system and disrupting your colour energy centres.

Things to try:

As you wake up each morning think about how you are feeling.
Do you feel alert? Do you feel nervous? Or do you feel like you need to be in touch with your intuition?
Use the chakra guide to work out which energy you want to work with. Perhaps you feel you need to balance all your chakras? Therefore visualise each colour opening up like a flower in the seven energy fields of your body. Then protect yourself by breathing in a beautiful bright white light. If you feel you just want to focus on one particular energy field, such as the throat chakra for communication then focus on the blue light only. See how it works. You should start to feel a strong sense of clarity.

With love and light

References
http://www.colourtherapyhealing.com/colour_therapy/what_is_colour_therapy.php