Thursday, January 12, 2012

Feeling the Rainbow: What is Color Therapy?

Believe it or not, colors affect the way we think, act, and feel more than most people would like to admit. Scientists have proven that various colors bring out different emotions in a person, affecting mental and biological processes in ways that we are only beginning to understand. In fact, some practitioners of alternative medicine have turned to colors as an answer to the health problems affecting some people. Color therapy, or chromotherapy as it is called in scientific circles, is the use of colors to affect and change moods and both physical and mental conditions.

Those who practice color therapy are few and far between, but there has been a long history of the use of colors in medical practices. Dating back to ancient Egypt, people have turned to colors to help them balance themselves and make them feel happier in their lives. In fact, the whole scheme of color therapy revolves around balance. Practitioners of color therapy use different colors to help move the energy of a person to wherever it is needed so that there is balance, allowing the person to feel at peace with him or herself. This involves all aspects of a person, whether it is mental, emotional, or even physical.

The way color therapy works is based on vibrations. Every cell in the body is composed of energy which gives off a certain vibration. It's when these vibrations are imbalanced that negative reactions begin to take place within the body. Scientists have found that colors give off vibrations as well. In fact, every color gives off a different and specific vibration. When a body is put into contact with the vibrations of a certain color, its own vibrations are then shifted. A skilled color therapist can use these vibrations to bring balance in a body, thus healing it.

How do you find out what vibrations are necessary to bring about balance? The reaction of a person to a certain color can indicate where the problem lies and what color could then help bring this balance. One way to test this is by using Luscher's Color Test. In this test, you pick colors on a screen at random, then after a couple minutes, you do the same thing, choosing first colors that appeal to you the most and moving on from there, ending with the color that appeals to you least. It's this test that gauges a person's emotional and physical state, giving the color therapist a place to start.

Although it is often viewed with skepticism, color therapy has definitive scientific information backing it up. Since we are still only beginning to understand how color affects us, color therapy is bound to grow and expand and possibly become used more often in society. Already, color is taken into account when designing rooms in a hospital, for example. Only colors that have been known to soothe people are used in decorations there. It is applications such as these where color therapy begins to break new grounds in alterative medicine.

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