The Powerful Healing Effects of Color

In this post you will learn about what color therapy is, what is the therapeutic effect of primary colors, and how I’m using this knowledge to help my clients and myself.

Join the Wellbeing Tribe! Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more free content on Psychology, Food, Fitness, Work Design & Spirituality!

I guess it all started when ‘color therapy’ started to come to my head almost every day. Then I also started to follow someone on YouTube whose work is partly related to the use of colors as a healing method. Next I bumped into someone in my department who was wearing a beautiful and colorful headband. It was yellow, orange, pink, and a little bit of blue and green here and there – it definitely caught my eye and, more importantly, it made me smile! And while I was telling my colleague how beautiful her headband was, my mind also whirled around with thoughts:

Isn’t that interesting, the power of colors? I should explore that. It’s such a beautiful way to even positively influence other people’s mood. If that headband made me smile and feel playful, I wonder what other effects colors could have.

So I started doing research. There’s a lot of things on about the psychology of colors, which has been used in Marketing to elicit a specific action from you. I was more interested however on how color could influence our mood and psychological states. Here are some of the things I discovered, for instances, about primary colors:

• yellow – helps with memory, encourages communication, boosts confidence, and stimulates the nervous system. It is associated with happiness, energy, and optimism;
• red – elevates blood pressure, stimulates the libido, boosts metabolism, and increases your level of enthusiasm, energy, and confidence;
• blue – helps you relax and deal with stressful situations, boosts open-heart communication, and enhances your intelligence and intuition

From here I began studying other colors and different tones of color, and I decided to apply this knowledge first in myself, because based on my research I realised I had been unconsciously picking clothes whose colors clearly mirrored and reinforced my low mood. For instances, some of the colors I was wearing everyday included black, dark grey, and dark olive green which are associated with less positive feelings and sensations such as depression and fogginess. Hence, my outside window was a clear reflection of what was going on inside. So I thought I should find a way to reverse this by changing the colors I was choosing to put on myself.

Buying new clothes at this point in time, however, was out of question. Instead I decided to recycle some t-shirts, transform them into fashionable scarfs, and color them based on what I studied about colors and their therapeutic effect. I first created a scarf in blue tones, because I needed to relax and reduce my anxiety levels. Guess what, it worked! Then I decided to create another scarf to induce some calmness allied with some playfulness as well. And guess what, it worked just as I intended, and now I can’t stop making experiments!

I’m super excited about this creative spur because I believe other people might feel empowered too through connecting with the magic properties of color. The next batch of scarfs will be in pink tones. As October is fast approaching I feel impelled to create some pinkish scarfs not only to raise awareness of breast cancer but also to invite women to accept and re-acknowledge their feminine divine energy. In the meantime, and if you are curious, you can have a look on the scarves that are available so far by clicking here.