Color Therapy for your House and Workplace. “Color is light, light is life”
By Tavishi Kanoria:
Stressed? Depressed? Easily annoyed/irritated? Feel fatigued or excessively tired lately?
Throw away those anxiety and depression meds and embrace color therapy instead. Color therapy is an enjoyable, low-risk form of complementary and alternative medicine that is based on the chakras found in our bodies. Its benefits are sometimes remarkably obvious: we feel calmed by our favorite cool colors and stimulated by bright, warm hues. However, there are other benefits of color therapy that people are less aware of.
The colors you surround yourself with will affect you deeply. Applying the carefully considered principles and psychology of Color Therapy to your home or office, can benefit you and your loved ones in the long-term.
Take a few minutes to wander around the rooms in your home. Look at the colors you live with. Look up and down as well as all around you – at the ceiling above your head and the floor beneath your feet. Remember to take in all the furnishings and pictures.
Color Circle; Color Therapy- cloversunshine.com
- What is the main color of the room you are in?
- How do you feel in this room?
- How do family members feel and behave in this room? e.g. are they restless or relaxed? Do they sleep well? Do they suffer with headaches?
- Is the room decorated in a color you like? If not, what color would you change it to?
Color Therapy can be applied to any room in the home. For example, in a kitchen or dining room you may want to stimulate appetite, aid digestion or create a sociable and warm family atmosphere. Shades and hues of reds, yellows and orange are perfect for doing so. For a cozy atmosphere in a living room, you would use harmonious warm colors (bright hues) but if you wanted a peaceful relaxed atmosphere, then cool colors may be more suitable. You don’t need to paint walls to create the appropriate atmosphere; you can introduce colors with accessories, soft furnishings, cushions, art works, plants and flowers. You can easily create an oasis of calm, or a stimulating environment for play, study and creative pursuits by choosing the right colors to decorate and furnish our homes. You will find that outgoing personalities with an abundance of energy will love the bright primary colors of red, yellow and blue, while a gentle, quieter individual will prefer to surround themselves in softer light colors and shades. If you experience difficulty in sleeping, make sure that this is not because the room’s color scheme is too bright and over-stimulating.
For a work area that involves thinking, reading, writing, and coming up with ideas –using a soft warm color based on yellow would be a wonderful color for stimulating the mind and increasing productivity. As yellow is the color closest to the natural sun light, it will also help keep your spirits up and stay motivated as you work. However, too much yellow encourages hyperactivity so it should be balanced with shades of blue. Yellow is a great welcoming color to use in entryways, living rooms or other social areas.
Color Therapy for your Home- squidoo.com
Alternatively, if your work is of an artistic nature involving drawing, painting or sewing, then you might want to place purple tones (the violets and indigos) around you. This is the color of creative inspiration and it also helps keep the distractions of the outside world at bay.
Blue is the trust-me color, allowing one to focus on the task in hand, bringing us peace and serenity and giving us confidence to communicate. It sends messages of sincerity, truth and loyalty which is great if you deal with clients regularly. An over-abundant exposure to blue can cause tiredness or depression. Balance this with the color orange, which is blue’s compliment color. Green will help with concentration and aid in restful times when stressed. Green is a great color for bedrooms, but is so beneficial that every room in the house should have at least a splash of green. Adding green houseplants is an easy way to achieve that effect. Magenta is green’s compliment color.
According to ayurveda, the 5,000 year old traditional medicine of India, every color has certain healing energies. Today, many offices (blues which relax in high-pressure environments), schools (yellows and oranges which lift spirits and stimulate creative ideas and learning), restaurants (reds which increase appetites and boosts energy), care homes, hospitals and even prisons (pinks to sedate, relax the muscle and reduce aggression and violence) use Color Therapy to bring healing energies into space and enhance or diminish certain qualities.
Tavishi Kanoria, Class of 2014 at Babson College