Color therapy
23/08/09
Color therapy A therapeutic method that originated in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Babylonia, and China after the recognition that sunlight therapy relieved skin disorders. Therapy evolved into the use of colored light (red and infrared) for lesions caused by smallpox and German measles. Dr. Peter Mandel, a German naturopathic physician, developed Colorpuncture, which combines the use of acupoints and meridians of acupuncture with wavelengths of colored light, according to an individual’s needs. For example, he believes in color therapy reds, oranges, and yellows strengthen or stimulate acupoints, and greens, blues, and violets subdue them. Mandel also theorizes that the flow of qi (ch’i) throughout the body along the meridians, or channels, works with color and light in/ the same way a fiberoptic network operates.
In Ayurvedic medicine, each chakra, or energy circle, of the body along the vertical midline has attributed to it a specific color, a concept that embraces the link between the body’s electromagnetic vibrations and wavelengths of color. In the practice of feng shui, or the Chinese art of placement, color plays a major role in the way an environment and the people in it are affected by colors. There are various techniques involving the use of color as therapy for both physical and emotional problems.
Because color emanates from daylight, a combination of the eight colors of the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, turquoise, and magenta) and the radiation inherent in sunlight, many color therapists believe that certain colors correspond with mental, emotional, and physical problems, such as insomnia, depression, behavioral problems, pain, anxiety, asthma, and stress-related ailments. Each color also has its own vibrational frequency and therefore can affect the body’s sense of well-being and balance. A therapist for color therapy may administer light treatments, during which a patient is given a white robe to wear under a light machine with stained-glass filters for about 20 minutes. This may also include the therapist’s use of draping colored materials around the patient or using a quartz crystal torch through which light filters. The colors of one’s clothing, foods, and personal environments play important roles in color therapy, and the therapist may suggest variations from current choices. Excessive use of one color in color therapy is said to affect one’s health adversely. Red, for example, is reported to lower resistance to pain, raise blood pressure, and affect embryonic cell structure during pregnancy. When blue light, on the other hand, was focused on the hands of 60 middle-aged women at the San Diego State University School of Nursing in 1982, the women experienced a certain amount of pain relief from their rheumatoid arthritis. Other studies, such as one concerning sufferers of migraines, have also been conducted using colored light in color therapy.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL