Once you’ve listened, let us know in the comments below — what colors do you like or dislike? How will you explore your relationship to color?
Color Therapy: Telling the Story of the Body
In this episode of The Natural Healing Podcast, we converse with Hemla Makan-Dullabh about exploring personal relationships to color, the importance of being intentional with color choices, and the many connections between Classical Chinese Medicine and color therapy.
Hemla Makan-Dullabh is a Transformation Catalyst based in Los Altos, California. She founded 7 Rays Holistic Center in Los Altos, Calfornia. Her work helps people to engage with their own inner healer. As a Transformation Catalyst, Hemla guides using the 3 centered approach, we have 3 centers of intelligence and our journey with ourselves is to engage with all 3 centers connecting with our body, mind, and heart. Hemla believes that this can bring wholeness and wellness to our human "Being."
Hemla’s spiritual journey started at the age of 16, when she saved her pocket money to buy crystals. When she was 21, she met her first mentor and learned how to meditate and use Aura-Soma color therapy. Her passion and interest in color also stems from her artistic practice.
Her work weaves together color therapy, chakra healing, Emotional Freedom Technique, crystals, and quantum energetics to help people release what is blocked or repressed in their chakra system.
First, Hemla uses dowsing rods to explore a person’s chakras, checking whether they are opened, closed, or blocked. Then she asks people to choose five colors from a range of 66 bottles of color. Depending on what colors resonate with them, the five selected bottles can be indicative of a person’s emotional, mental, and spiritual being.
The colors that a person gravitates toward can reveal the nuanced layers of a body’s story: for example, if someone has experienced abuse, shock, or trauma, they might gravitate toward the color orange. Or, if someone chooses the colors red and green, it may represent a conflict, separation, or divorce. People’s relationship to color illuminates stories about their past and present lives, as well as indicating what needs to be released from the body.
Hemla emphasizes the importance of being intentional and deliberate with color. It can be incorporated into your life in simple ways to create balance, such as wearing colored underwear or socks. Color is a conscious choice, bringing the power of intention into your life and creating shifts in consciousness.
One practice that Hemla recommends is to think about why you’re choosing or gravitating toward a particular color. What colors do you like or dislike? Through journaling and becoming aware of your relationship to color, you can explore its deeper meanings and implications.
For example, when Hemla began journaling about her dislike of pink during a particular period in her life, she was able to connect with the meaning of pink, which represents unconditional love for the self. She realized that she’d lacked love for herself during that particular time period, and gaining awareness was an important step toward healing.
The Relationship between Colors and Chakras
Each of the body’s chakras has a relationship to a particular color, and can therefore be unblocked or balanced through color therapy.
Red is the color that represents the Root Chakra. It evokes passion, anger, frustration, and all of the qualities that make us human. An aversion to the color red, or a sense that you can’t get enough of it, might indicate an imbalance. For people who are experiencing bodily inflammation, using red can help the circulation of blood throughout the body. If a person is experiencing an inflammation of emotions, using the opposite color as an antidote (in this case, green) can help explore and unlock the source of emotional stuckness.
Orange is the color that represents the Sacral Chakra, which is related to sensuality, sexuality, creativity, and self-esteem. Orange is also the color of brightness, joy, and bliss. When people have an aversion to orange, Hemla encourages curiosity and questioning. It may be important to explore what experiences or memories might have caused that aversion.
Yellow is the color that represents the Solar Plexus Chakra. It is the seat of willpower, but it also holds fear and anxiety. Along with the Heart Chakra, it is part of the central space of our being. Repression and persecution for one’s beliefs is felt and held in the Solar Plexus Chakra.
The Solar Plexus Chakra is also related to the gastrointestinal system. When we don’t listen to our gut feelings, overriding them with our minds, societal pressure, and the opinions of others, we suppress our intuition. By coming back into contact with the color yellow, such as in the form of amber, it becomes possible to open up the Solar Plexus Chakra.
The color yellow is also representative of the intellect. The head, heart, and stomach are all centers of the intellect, though we have often been taught to forget that the stomach and gut are intellectual centers. Yellow can lift confusion and release other people’s power over us.
Furthermore, colors can be refined into other forms or shades: Yellow becomes refined into gold, which has a higher frequency. People’s past lives, and especially their memories of power being taken away, are connected to the color gold and its relationship to the ancient Egyptians, the Maya, and the Inca.
Similarly, when practicing the Daoist Macrocosmic and Microcosmic Orbit Meditations, the meditator is taught to imagine a white light running through all of the body’s chakras. Over time, that white light becomes golden, and golden nectar develops in the mouth during meditation, lubricating and nourishing the internal organs within the body.
Green is the color that represents the Heart Chakra, which is related to personal relationships. This Chakra holds open-heartedness, love, acceptance, and forgiveness, as well as shame and guilt.
Blue is the color of the Throat Chakra, which is the center of communication. It is also the place where a person might push down and repress emotions and feelings. This repression can lead to neck, throat, thyroid, shoulder issues, and it is important to find balance through opening communication.
Indigo is the color that represents the Third Eye Chakra, which relates to psychic insight and our own intuition and empathic abilities. A person with a blocked Third Eye Chakra may experience headaches, sinus issues, and eye problems.
Violet is the color of the Crown Chakra, which is connected to the spiritual and angelic realm, as well as to our higher selves. During meditation, incorporating a piece of violet clothing or an amethyst stone can help make the process of meditation deeper and more connected.
Grief and sadness is also related to the color violet, meaning that a person who is drawn to this color may have a memory from childhood or an experience of grief that is unresolved. The antidote to violet is yellow, which has grounding and balancing qualities. In Chinese Medicine, the color yellow is similarly related to the element of Earth, which also represents groundedness and nurturing.
The Balance of Black and White
Black is an absorption of all the colors, incorporating everything. It is also a color that indicates an unconscious concealment of something. For those who are drawn to the color black, Hemla encourages further inquiry: Is there an emotion that is difficult for you to look at or face? What can be drawn out of the blackness?
In Chinese Medicine, the color black is associated with the Water Element, which is connected to a person’s unconscious fears. Therefore, black can help a person look within themselves to understand their fears and explore concealed emotions.
To balance out the color black, white can help release what has been concealed. White is a fraction of the colors and can indicate a need to pursue purity and spirituality. However, this need to show that one is spiritually pure can also be tied to the ego.
Therefore, it is important to remain inquisitive about a person’s attraction to the color white, exploring whether it is a desire to show off one’s purity, or whether it stems from a desire to be neutral. In Chinese Medicine, White is the color associated with the Metal element, which is also related to clarity, purity, and refinement.
The Uses of Color Therapy
Color therapy is gentle, meaning that it doesn’t invade anything that the body isn’t ready to release. It helps people listen to their intuition and be attuned to their body’s systems, and can be useful for a broad range of people, such as those who are at a crossroads, embarking on a spiritual journey, or experiencing health issues.
In Hemla’s experience, those who have red-green colorblindness can still engage in color therapy and choose the colors that they need, because colors contain vibrational frequencies that can be sensed by the body.
Color is the original medicine, shifting our consciousness, and catalyzing transformation. They invite you in, allowing us to confront chaos and shake up your world. Practitioners of color therapy can help guide you through that world-shaking journey.
As you become curious about your relationship to color, Hemla encourages journaling and intentionally observing what colors you gravitate toward in your life and in nature. Notice the fruits and vegetables that you are drawn to at the grocery store, or which colors you reach for in your wardrobe. Journaling about your relationship to colors can help bring awareness and serve as a first step toward healing and catalyzing transformation.
The Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Orbit Meditations help to circulate energy throughout your body through the primary source channels of Yin and Yang, known as the Du and Ren Meridians, which are also the Fire and Water pathways of the body. In this way, these meditations also connect the Fire and Water energies, cultivating Heart-Kidney communication, which helps you realize and live out your life purpose. To purchase access to these meditations, click the button below:
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