Colour light therapy
What's your favourite colour? Now ask yourself why you love it so much. Perhaps there's no definite answer -- the colour makes you feel good and you simply enjoy surrounding yourself with it. Now consider this: What if you surround yourself with this shade (or group of colours) because on some level, it makes you feel healthy?
Colour light therapy is a practice that taps into the healing powers of colour and light by using shades of coloured light to treat virtually any ailment, from physical pain and disease to emotional issues and learning disorders. The practice is simple -- a coloured light either shines on your ailing body part or bathes your entire body to treat deeper physical or emotional problems, all while you lie peacefully still and relaxed.
Before dismissing the idea that lights can heal, consider that colour light therapy -- or phototherapy -- is commonly used to treat newborn infants with jaundice. The babies are bathed in a blue light and this wavelength is proven to fight bilirubin, the brownish-yellow substance that builds up in the body. The Canadian Paediatric Society supports phototherapy as "an effective therapeutic intervention that decreases bilirubin concentrations." They also note that "the infant receiving phototherapy should have as much skin as possible exposed to the lights." (www.cps.ca)
What does colour light therapy treat?
Cathy Gordichuk is a certified colour therapist and educator based in Alberta. She says people who come to her for colour light therapy "seek other ways of healing when traditional medicine has not helped." Many of her clients suffer with chronic pain such as migraines, rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia.
Michel Green, a self-described workaholic from Alberta, seeks colour light therapy when she feels overworked and run down. She says the different shades prescribed by Gordichuk help her to manage her driven personality. "Coral or orange helps energize and bring me vitality; blue or violet helps me relax enough to ease my buzzing mind," she explains.
Gordichuk also cautions there are negative effects of coloured light. "Red is not for people with anger issues and blue is not for people with depression -- orange or peach is more suited for the depressed," she explains.
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