The body is an outward expression of that which is taking place within the mind, the soul (subconscious), and the spirit (super conscious) of the individual. Thus, any healing technique which deals only with the physical body and the energy field of the individual tends to accomplish one thing keeping this in mind, the authors look at how color can help jumpstart the tired or diseased body. Color healing, known as Chromo therapy, can be implemented in a number of ways. The ancients built great halls of color healing, where the individuals entered and were bathed in light, that was filtered through various colored glass panels or windows. Chromo therapy or color therapy involves the use of color to achieve overall good health and to treat some diseases. Useful in treating emotional and physical problems related to sleep, chromo may involve exposure to colored lights, massage oils or ointments colored, meditation and visualization of certain colors or wearing certain clothing colors. Color channels were used for healing in ancient Egypt, China and India. Energy (spiritual) healers often supplement their healing work with color healing. As they lay their hands on the patient, they mentally direct specific color rays into the patient's aura and body.
Colors are known to influence behavior and brain of the people. Color therapy has been used in Egypt, India and China for centuries. Colors can heal disorders generated out of stress. Every color has a different effect on the human mind (Azeemi, S. T., Raza, S. M, 2005). Color therapy, or Chromo therapy, is an age-old practice that aims to aid bodily healing on all levels (mental, spiritual, and physical). Chromo therapy is a unique way to further create harmony in the body, integrating what nature has to offer. Unlike expensive treatments, however, the great thing about utilizing Chromo therapy is that, it is abundantly accessible in everyday life (Color Therapy Benefits, 2015).
Color is an integral part of our lives and reflects its beauty from the clothes we wear to the food that we eat. Even our thoughts and emotions are tinged with color, each having its own perceived attributes and qualities. Why do we feel blue, green with envy, in the pink? It is a forgotten language that has been around since the beginning of time.
A chromo therapist uses colors and light for curing various disorders by applying these at acupoints and other parts of the body. The most common tools used for color application are candles, wands, colored fabrics, colored glasses, lenses and gemstones. Colors have positive as well as negative effects on the body, therefore before using colors for their positive effects, one must ascertain the right amount used. Color Therapy or Color Healing is the use of color in various forms for the purpose of creating balance and health in the human system. The human system includes not only the physical body, but also the emotional, mental and spiritual aspects (PEMS). Working with the PEMS is referred to as a holistic medicine.
During ancient Egypt, practitioners built solariums in specially designed windows and sun lenses that broke the color spectrum. Ancient observation chromotherapy is a century-old concept. The history of color medicine is as old as that of any other medicine. Phototherapy (light therapy) was practiced in ancient Egypt, Greece, China and India. The Egyptians utilized sunlight as well as color for healing (Coclivo A, 1999).
By 1940, Russian scientist SV Krakow has conducted a series of experiments in which, separate different wavelengths of the light spectrum show how color affects the nervous system. In his experiments, he noticed that, red light stimulates the adrenal gland, increasing blood pressure and pulse and the light blue and white have a calming, relaxing, effect.
Avicenna (980-1037), seeing color as of vital importance both in diagnosis and in treatment, discussed chromo therapy in ‘The Canon of Medicine’. He wrote that "color is an observable symptom of disease" and also developed a chart that related color to the temperature and physical condition of the body Azeemi, S. T, Raza S. M, 2005).
American Civil War General Augustus Pleasonton (1801- 1894) conducted his own experiments and in 1876 published his book ‘The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Color of the Sky’ about how the color blue can improve the growth of crops and livestock and can help heal diseases in humans (Pancoast, Seth, 1877).
In 1933, Dinshah P. Ghadiali published ‘The Spectro Chromometry Encyclopedia’, a work on color therapy. He believed that, colors represent chemical potencies in higher octaves of vibration, and for each organism and system of the body, there is a particular color that stimulates and another that inhibits the work of that organ or system. Ghadiali also thought that, by knowing the action of the different colors upon different organs and systems of the body, one can apply the correct color that will tend to balance the action of any organ or system that has become abnormal in its functioning or th condition. Throughout the 19 century "color healers" claimed colored glass filters could treat many diseases, including constipation and meningitis (Chromotherapy, 2014).
Chromo therapy, sometimes called color therapy, colorology or chromo therapy, is a complementary medicine method. Chromo therapy or Color Therapy healing is the science that uses 7 colors of the spectrum to improve our mental well-being and the health of our bodies. The 7 colors have the ability to affect the vibrations of the body in the frequencies that affect health, welfare and harmony (Coclivo A, 1999).
Each of the 7 colors relate to one of the 7 main chakras. Chromo therapy works to adjust or re-align the energy balance in each of the chakras. To do this, the authors use a specific color that connects to the chakra that needs to be adjusted. This application of light can be made by the use of crystals, colored lenses or colored light bulbs. Today's electronics allow the use of a group of LEDs in infrared sauna rooms for chromo therapy.
Seven colors of the rainbow are related to the seven chakras of the body, these chakras are energy centers of the body. The energy of all chakras of the body must be balanced for smooth functioning of the body. Colors help in creating this balance of chakras thereby, providing a good health and healing effect. A New Age conceptualization of the chakras of Indian body culture and their positions in the human body were discussed. Practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine believe the body has seven "chakras," which some claim as the 'spiritual centers', and which are held to be located along the spine. New Age thought of associating each of the chakras with a single color of the visible light spectrum, along with a function and organ or bodily system (Colour therapy healing, 2015).
Figure 1 shows the benefits of chromo therapy colors (Color Therapy, 1998-2007; Benefits of chromo therapy, 2014). Figure 2 shows the Healing Power of Colors (Healing Power of Colors, 2014).
Figure 1. Benefits of Chromo Therapy Colors
Figure 2. Healing Power of Colors (Healing Power of Colors, 2014)
According to the American Cancer Society, "available scientific evidence does not support claims that any other type of colored light therapy is effective in treating cancer or other illnesses". Chromo therapy has deemed pseudoscience by its critics, who state that, the falsifiability and verifiability conditions necessary to deem an experiment valid are not being met, and therefore that it has not been proven that, introducing colors are the key element in the healing process which is healing its patients. Chromo therapy has also been criticized for selection bias in statistics for success of the treatment. It has also been suggested that, the placebo effect may be a key factor in the healing of some patients, which could be tested for by a chromo therapy control group.
Photobiology, the term for the contemporary scientific study of the effects of light on humans, has replaced the term chromo therapy in an effort to separate it from its roots in Victorian mysticism and to strip it of its associations with symbolism and magic. Light therapy is a specific treatment approach using high intensity light to treat specific sleep, skin and mood disorders (Gruson, Lindsey,1982).
Just one of the avenues of guidance available in this area is the charity New Approaches to Cancer. Started over 30 years ago by two doctors and two healers, it provides a nationwide information service free of charge to cancer patients and their families. Working in co-operation with conventional cancer treatment, it can recommend experienced holistic and complementary practitioners, support groups and local clinics in any area. At New Approaches to Cancer, the energy of color and light is one of the many self-help techniques being used on a daily basis, not only to support patients and their families through the rigors of treatment but also to provide tools for careers to keep themselves balanced and well? How can color therapy benefit a cancer patient? The most calming colors are colors that occur most often in nature. Color therapy involving blues, greens, and violets can help soothe the body as well as the mind. If you have cancer, you know what a toll it can take on your mental state. Color can fill me with energy or seem to zap it. Color can even make a person hungry which is great if you don't have much of an appetite. Give color therapy a shot and you may be surprised at the effect it has on you.
Julie was a single mother in her early thirties. She came to me after she had found a lump in her breast which had been diagnosed as malignant. She had agreed to surgery, which was to take place the following week, but felt she also wanted to try a complementary treatment to aid her recuperation after the general anesthetic.
On the first session, this was prior to her operation, administered turquoise light, using a color therapy torch, the whole chest area and particularly the thymus gland and heart. In the chakra system, the turquoise wavelength is linked to the immune system. It has also been found to stimulate the thymus gland to produce T-helper cells, which play an active role in the body's defense system.
After her operation, it was concentrated on working with blue light over the wound, in order to encourage healing and the formation of scar tissue. A few weeks later, Julie reported that her medical consultant had been amazed with the speed at which her wound healed, and with so little scarring.
He had compared Julie's case with another patient who had a similar sized lump removed during the same week. Three years later, Julie has been given a clean bill of health and says she is positive that her illness will not reoccur (Suzy Chiazzari et al, 2013).
Mary, another patient came to suzy in a very distressed state, during the advanced stages of ovarian cancer. She had undergone radiation therapy, with little effect. The size of the cancerous cyst was too large to remove, and the prognosis was poor. It was clear that, Mary's cancer was life- threatening.
The best way to proceed was to teach her some color breathing techniques using the color blue, in order to calm her down and help with pain control. She was instructed how to use this technique at times when she was fearful and in pain. Once Mary was calm, her religious faith and the power of prayer, the spiritual nature of color and the ways that divine light can bring comfort and peace were discussed. On her second visit, Mary was taken through a colour visualization, because there have been many documented cases of spontaneous recovery from cancer. In the visualization, Mary focused her attention on the diseased cells and the color she intuitively related to her illness. She was then asked to focus on the color of health (in her case deep pink). She was led to imagine the color of the cancerous cells changing to the color of health, until she felt that her whole body was glowing clear bright pink.
During this session, Mary told me that she had used color breathing, and that this had allowed her to come to terms with her illness, and that she was taking comfort from her spiritual beliefs. Mary was taken into hospital several days later, but Suzy was unable to visit her. Later, Suzy was contacted by her friend, Tara, to say that she had passed away. Tara was convinced that the color breathing had eased the pain and that the visualizations had aided the dying process (Suzy Chiazzari et al., 2013).
Color Therapy, or Color Healing, is the therapeutic use of various forms of color and light of physical, emotional, and spiritual benefit to the human body. Color and light therapy involve the application color in a variety of ways: colored gels with light to penetrate and stimulate the body's meridians which corresponds to the traditional Asian acupuncture systems as well as accessing and incorporating the axiational lines.
Many aspects of human kind's explorations are ignored, neglected or discarded. Color medicine is one of these neglected items. The common feature of every remedial and curative system of treatment, whether it is Ayurveda, Allopathy, Acupuncture, Unani, Homeopathy, Biochemic, Magnetotherapy, Physiotherapy, Radiotherapy, Aromatherapy, Reflexology or Chromotherapy, is to somehow apply vibrations of one kind or another in such a manner that the body can put back on the health track. Most systems induce vibrations indirectly, but there are a few in which the vibrations are used directly upon the body, and chromotherapy is one of them.
