Therapy Definitions

Colour Therapy (Chromotherapy)

Colour Therapy, also known as Chromotherapy, the practice of healing with colour, emerged in the nineteenth century as the object of scientific speculation and research, out of which various practitioners created new forms of alternative healing. Modern colour healing combined occult thought about colour with scientific investigations of the physical properties of light and behavioural psychologists' studies of human reactions to various colours.

Contemporary colour therapy is grounded in scientific re-search on light and psychological findings on the beneficial effects of colour. Such research has, for example, been widely utilized in the design of public institutions, possibly the most famous instance being the banishing of black boards in schools in favour of green boards. It is also widely known that sunlight, in moderate doses, stimulates the production of vitamin D by the body, that coloured rooms can assist the healing of some psychological disorders, and the rights colours in offices can stimulate employees.

Physicists have explained light as part of a spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Each part of the spectrum manifests as radiation that vibrates at a specific rate. Visible light appears somewhere toward the centre of the spectrum. On one side of the spectrum are cosmic rays, gamma rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet, and on the other side are infrared, electricity, radio, and television. Light is thus a form of radiant energy, and human beings can be seen as living systems that absorb and radiate energy. Many psychics and occultists claim that the body radiates energy just outside of the visible light spectrum, which surrounds the body as an aura. Some people claim the ability to see this radiation, or aura, and interpret its meaning.

While many advocate the beneficial effects of sunbaths, chromotherapists go far beyond to a sophisticated analysis of the application and use of very specific colours on specific parts of the body. Such colour may be received by sitting in a spotlight shining a coloured beam on the body. Alternatively, through meditation, a particular colour can be imagined either to shine upon the body or be taken into the body through breaths. Colour therapy has also been associated with crystals, which also come in a variety of colours, and some have hypothesized that crystals of varying colours radiate different healing energies. The most common explanation of the healing power of colour relates to stimulating the glandular system is some way.

It should be noted that a variety of attempts to verify the healing effects of colour as hypothesized by colour therapists has proved unsuccessful. Thus, the sale of machines that can radiate specific beams of colour for healing purposes is against the law and can lead to an arrest for fraud. To date, most of the effects with colour healing can be attributed to other causes.
 


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