The Mystical Power of Color: Exploring their Healing Potential.
An Ayurvedic approach to Empower your Mindset, Energy, and Creativity.
Ever since Sir Isaac Newton conducted his prism experiments in 1665, we have been delving into the intricate relationship between humans and color, exploring how we perceive and receive them. From the persuasive minds of advertisers to the wisdom of ancient healers, the profound impact of color on our lives has been widely explored. We have assigned meaning and metaphor upon each hue, while conducting countless experiments in color psychology to shed light on their influence over our moods and emotions.
It takes nothing more than the glimmer of a rainbow to forge a momentary connection with the mystical. In an instant, we find ourselves immersed in a sense of awe and magic in these refracted wavelengths of light arching across the sky. These vibrant bands of color have inspired songs, poems, paintings, and good omens. We find ourselves moved, shaped, and influenced by the kaleidoscope that surround us every day.
The elemental theory of color healing
Ayurveda, as a sister science to yoga, encompasses various modalities for sensory self-care. By engaging in healing practices that purify and strengthen our sensory organs, we can profoundly shift our perception of the world around us. One such practice is the use of color therapy, which involves the simple act of observing and visualizing colors to restore our current state. Color therapy nurtures our subtle nature, influencing our mood, enhancing emotional fluency, and instilling a sense of tranquility in our psyche. Brighter colors have been observed to energize and stimulate our mood and creativity, while darker hues can suppress emotions and deplete our vitality.
From an Ayurvedic perspective, color interacts with Tejas, our mental fire. The fire element necessitates careful attention—excessive fire can lead to burnout, while insufficient fire leaves us smoldering, devoid of creative power, energy, and focus. Vibrant colors amplify our mental fire, whereas clashing colors disrupt its harmony. To utilize color as a means of shifting our current energetic state, we can consider colors as either warming or cooling, activating or calming. By discerning our temperament and identifying the color that elicits a balancing effect, we can foster healing in accordance with Ayurvedic principles. In Ayurveda, cultivating the opposite quality serves as a pathway to restoration.
Warm stimulating colors include red, yellow, orange, and neon, which tend to evoke heightened emotions such as anger, frustration, jealousy, and hostility when in excess.
Cool calming colors encompass blue, magenta, violet, and turquoise, known to soothe and pacify. In excess, these colors can dampen our mood and lead to depression, confusion, lethargy, and attachment.
Colors and Qualities: Vibrational Energies for Balance and Well-being.
What do you need in this moment? What colors would ground you? What colors would activate you? What colors would calm you? Restore your balance.
Ways to work with Color:
Colors, as vibrational energies, primarily enter our being through our eyes, and to a lesser extent, our skin. Seeing, surrounding, and engaging with color can bring us back into equilibrium. Here are just a few ways to play with color:
Curate color into your décor.
Dress and adorn in color according to your mood.
Choose a healing color palette and paint.
Choose color light bulbs or color shades.
Zen out with a coloring book.
Try meditating on a color or color breathing.
Color Breathing
Begin by selecting a color that calls to you. What color from the chart below resonates with your mood and energy? This might be a warm or cool color as it relates to your dosha. You may instead opt for the ease of a clarifying white.
Take note of the color's qualities and effects on mind and body, and also remember its complementary shade.
Find a comfortable position, either sitting or lying down, ensuring you are attentive, but relaxed. Take a deep breath in through your nose, visualizing yourself inhaling the chosen color as a stream of light.
Allow the color inhalation to descend from your nostrils, flowing down through your spine.
As you exhale through your nose, imagine yourself breathing out the complementary color, letting it gracefully stream out.
With each new breath, envision the color becoming more vibrant within you. As you exhale the complementary shade, feel the air empty.
After several breath cycles, once you imagine your spine is infused with the chosen color, let it filter throughout your entire body.
Direct your awareness to ensure that every part of your being in need of healing is filled with this energy.
Let it flow and revitalize throughout. Fill the heart center. Bathe in the color’s essence.
As you conclude the practice, visualize sealing the color, along with its unique qualities and effects, within your whole being.
To end the meditation, gently open your eyes and reflect on the after effects of the practice. You can journal your discoveries or give a few moments to feel into completion.
In the heat of summer, it’s the perfect time to tend to our Tejas, to cool and calm our temperament with a little exploration in color therapy. It’s most important that you discover how specific colors affect you. Everyone is different, we each gravitate towards different shades, hues, and tones. We have aversions to some and infuse some into everything around us. As children, one of the top three most important questions was “what’s your favorite color?” Back then it captured a commonality between friends and helped claim a bit of our unique identity. As with anything, it is most important to reflect on how certain colors make you feel. Then explore, playfully, how color can influence and alter your mindset, energy, and creativity.
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Set some goals and get out your colored pencils. 🌈👇
