People have long known that seeing certain colours can bring about different emotions. Wearing your favorite colour can help you feel more confident and attractive, while wearing a colour you don't care for can make you feel more self-conscious. Similarly, spending time in a room with a bright and cheery colour can help you feel more cheerful yourself, while spending time in a room that is dark and gloomy can lead to a feelings of sadness or anger. Yet, the concept of colour therapy, which is more formally known as chromotherapy, did not start to receive much recognition until fairly recently.



What is Chromotherapy?

Chromotherapy is a specific type of alternative medicine therapy that involves using different colours and light to help balance the energy of a patient. By using certain colours, a colour therapy professional can help bring balance to the patient's emotional, physical, mental or spiritual state.

In order to bring balance to a patient, the chromotherapy expert must be able to identify the colour that the patient is missing. This is most commonly accomplished with the Luscher colour test, which was developed by Max Luscher in the early 1900s. Once the diagnosis has been made, the therapist then applies colour and light to acupoints on the patient's body. These colours and lights can be applied in a number of ways. These can include using:

?Bath treatments

?Candles

?Coloured fabrics

?Coloured glasses or lenses

?Gemstones

?Prisms

?Wands

When applying therapeutic colours, the therapist may also combine aromatherapy and hydrotherapy techniques with the colour therapy session.

Understanding the Colours Used in Chromotherapy

After completing a colour therapy course, a chromotherapy specialist learns more about how to use the various colours in order to achieve the desired results. Each colour is associated with both a negative and a positive effect, which the therapist must understand fully in order to know which colours to use and how much of each colour should be used at a time. There are seven colours used in colour therapy, with each colour serving a specific purpose and being associated with a certain part of the body These include:

?Red ? the base of the spine

?Orange ? area around the pelvis

?Yellow ? the solar plexus

?Green ? heart

?Blue ? throat

?Indigo ? lower forehead area

?Violet ? top of the head

By keeping these colours in balance, the body systems can also remain in balance and maintain proper health.

After successfully completing a , a , can provide balance to the body by implementing colour therapy techniques.