Colour can calm and cure. Sameera Moledina tells you how colour therapy works

Colour affects all we do through our moods and emotions. It creates mood, and affects energy. It can also have an emotional impact that can delight you or distress you. ''Most of us take colour for granted," says Aneeta Sanas, colour therapist. "The main reason I started using crystals for my healing purposes is because colours have certain properties that work for cleansing, purifying and energising our 'chakras' and have great beneficial effects on the human mind and body. Colour affects the entire human organism and each colour has a role to play.For a healthy life, a good balance of colour is necessary.'' Colours evoke both pleasant and unpleasant emotions. Your reaction to certain colours is influenced by personal experiences.

Vivid colours can stimulate people to activity. Colour has been known to increase productivity and to speed recovery time in patients. It is a property of light, which consists of many different electromagnetic waves of energy. When light falls upon the photoreceptor cells of the retina, it is converted into electric impulses, which then travel to the brain and trigger the release of hormones.

It is well established that the lack of sunlight experienced during the winter in northern climates causes depression in many people - a condition known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

How It Works

Different colours cause different reactions on the mind. Time is perceived as moving more slowly in a red room and more quickly in a blue or green one. Visually, the colour red represents nearness and warmth; blue distance and coolness. Bright red and yellow increase blood pressure and muscle tension. Research suggests that people feel warmer in a red room and cooler in a blue room of the same temperature. Blue rooms decrease blood pressure and aggressive feelings. Studies have shown an increase in fertility in blue rooms.

Different values of pink have different effects on emotions - light dull pinks cause calmness and decreased pulse while the deeper pinks have the opposite effect. The passage of time can be over or underestimated depending on the colour of a room. Colour therapy can also be incorporated by using paints or simple blocks of colour.

Back to blue and its calming effects, studies have shown that when disruptive children were placed in blue classrooms, their aggression subsided dramatically. Interestingly, when the colour of London bridges were switched from black to blue,the suicide rate fell by 50 per cent.

Diabetic patients generally have a lack of yellow in their aura. As the colour responds to the solar plexus 'chakra', which is related to the pancreas and kidneys, an influx of yellow generally helps overcome this problem. Aneeta often combines it with pink and green, even black, to ground diabetics and remove fears.