Color Power

How people see color is highly scientific; photoreceptors in your retina translate light energy of various wavelengths into colors. But how people process colors is intricately connected to emotions. Figuring out how color influences mood and behavior aids psychologists, market researchers, designers and just about everyone else, including everyday people who would like to feel better.

 

Color therapy dates back to olden times. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks used color as a tool in their healing temples. Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic practitioners integrate color into their treatments. Modern color therapy dates back to a 1933 book called “The Spectro Chrometry Encyclopedia” by Dinshah Ghadiali, an Indian scientist. Ghadiali’s contemporary, Dr. Harry Riley Spitler, experimented with the psychological and physiological effects of colored lights shining in patients’ eyes.

While scientists continue to study how color stimulates the brain and produces certain hormones, many color therapists also rely on traditional and folk practices.

Color therapy, also known as chromotherapy, is often facilitated in the healing rooms of alternative health practitioners. Color therapy is classified as a vibrational healing modality. Vibrational medicine incorporates the use of chi energies within living organisms such as plants, gemstones and crystals, water, sunlight, and sound.

Color is simply a form of visible light, of electromagnetic energy. All the primary colors reflected in the rainbow carry their own unique healing properties. The sun alone is a wonderful healer! Just imagine what life would be like without sunshine. It has been proven that lack of sunlight contributes to depression for some people.

A therapist trained in color therapy applies light and color in the form of tools, visualization, or verbal suggestion to balance energy in the areas of our bodies that are lacking vibrancy, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental.

In the business world, color is used quite often as cool colors enhance productivity with increased morale being a unexpected benefit.  Executives wear color ties to promote honesty (blue) or power/authority (red).  If you recall, when former President Clinton was interviewed and offered his famous definition of the word “is,” he was wearing a blue tie.