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Bring out the crayons and re-colour your life. Colour therapist Meena Srivastav says it may just cure that niggling backache you’ve had for ages

COLOURS affect moods and emotions. Colour therapy uses this sensitivity to colour to identify and correct any imbalances in the body’s internal energy patterns that might lead to emotional or physical ill health. Therapists believe that each organ and body system has its own characteristic vibrational energy, and disorders can be healed by applying the colour of the corresponding vibrational energy, either to the whole body or to the organ concerned.

Blue Hot — Blue Cold
For example, the red spectrum affects our physical energies. It is stimulating and warming. Blues are cooling and cleansing, affecting our spiritual energies. The yellow shades serve to bridge them, affecting our mental energies. The three colours together provide opportunities for healing our body, mind and spirit.

Colour therapy can be traced to the ancient art of using colour and light to treat disease. Practitioners believe that by altering the colours that surround us, it is possible to enhance health and well-being.

The earliest forms of therapy included the use of coloured gems and sunlight. There is now a wide range of treatment options available and many practitioners combine the use of colour with other complementary therapies such as aromatherapy, massage, reflexology, crystals and yoga.

Spell VIBGYOR
What are the principles of colour therapy? The human body absorbs light that is made up of the entire spectrum of colours. Each colour in the spectrum has a frequency, wavelength and energy associated with it.

The colours we absorb can have an effect on the nervous system, the endocrine system and subsequently on the release of hormones and other organic substances within the human body. They can also have an effect on the more subtle energies of the ‘chakra’ system. This may affect our mental, emotional, psychological and physical states of health.

The symptoms of disease are a sign that there is a shortage of, or improper utilisation of colour and light in the cells and organs of the human body. This may be due to factors such as our lifestyle, environment, stress, or too much, or too little of a particular colour frequency in our energy system. This imbalance can be corrected by the selective use of colour frequencies. The forms by which the frequencies of colour can be transmitted to the body are numerous.

Meet Your Therapist
When you meet your therapist, spend time telling her as much as possible about yourself, your medical history, and current physical health and state of mind. The therapist will identify the particular colour frequencies that you need.

There are several ways of doing this, including kinesiology to test muscle strength in relation to colour, dowsing and diagnostic charts in addition to the practitioner’s own experience.

A typical colour therapy treatment might include the use of breathing exercises, crystals, light, silk scarves or coloured (solarised) water. Coloured light might be applied to parts or to the whole body. The main colour is usually given with its complementary colour (for example blue with orange). The lights may be used constantly or rhythmically.

You may be given advice on how to make the best use of colour in your diet, the clothes you wear and your home and work environment.

A Touch Of Colour
Colour is used in orthodox medicine for the treatment of neonatal jaundice and other specific medical conditions. It is used in complementary therapy to boost the immune system and promote healing from within.

It can benefit a wide range of problems including stress-related conditions such as insomnia, anxiety, asthma, behavioural disorders and depression and many more. In particular, it can help to restore health after surgery or illness. It can also aid creativity and help learning.

Wear colours that lift your spirits!

Photograph courtesy Free Lance, Paris