Color for All Reasons II

Color for All Reasons II

The “meaning” of color can be assessed from a number of vantage points, and it can be fascinating to view your color choices through several lenses.  In this way you can determine which colors and color combinations are most appropriate, powerful and effective for your purpose.  Each “lens” approaches color from a different discipline  and can be effective in getting you where you want to go.

From an energetic point of view, in the chakra, or energy center system, violet is associated with the vertex chakra, and influences the pituitary gland. It stands for wisdom and spiritual energy.

Yellow is associated with the solar plexus chakra, and influences the solar plexus and the adrenal body.  Representing knowledge and intellect, is also the seat for tension.

The physiological and psychological associations of color can be complex, especially in the case of a mixed color such as purple (created of blue and red), but remain remarkably consistent across cultures.

Purple encompasses the strength of red, and the integrity of blue.  It symbolizes internalization, depth of feeling, dignity, wealth, mysticism, and magic.  As we know, it is associated with royalty, and exclusivity.  Purple can be mournful, lonely, pompous, conceited, unsettling, degenerate, morbid and narcotic, and can appear strict when dark.  Closer to red, purple can  become sensual, seductive, secretive, sweet. cosmetic and intimate.

Yellow, on the other hand, reflective and luminous, has been declared the happiest of all colors. It is associated with cheerfulness, high spirits, the life-giving properties of the sun, symbolic of a bright future.  Representing hope and wisdom (remember Apollo, the sun god, and his golden hair), it expresses expansiveness, communication and activity, However, when  too strong, yellow can become glaring and egocentric.  When paired with black, it can express danger in nature.  Think bumblebees!

From a sensory perspective, colors can evoke other senses, stimulating “cross talk’ between the senses, explored in previous posts about the phenomenon of “Synesthesia“,  or the “Unity of the Senses”.

For example, the color purple associates with deep sounds, in a minor key.  Its association with touch is velvety, and its “taste” (and “smell”  is heavy and sweet. Weight-wise, it “feels” heavy, while its ‘temperature’ tends to the cool.

By contrast, yellow ‘sounds’ like fanfare, and a major key.  It’s tactile associations are smoothness and silkiness, or sandy and crumbly when more ochre, or earthy.  It’s taste and smell associations are sour, its weight light, and its temperature warm, as you might expect from the “happiest of all colors” which evokes the sun!

What associations do You have with the colors purple, violet, yellow, gold and ochre?  Have You used this set of compliments in any aspect of Your life?

Are Your yellows luminous, sour, light or cheerful?

Are Your purples velvety, magical, sweet or narcotic?

Are they both wise? (!)  What have your colors done for You, and Your life?

If You feel so inclined, please share about it with us here.

We love to hear from You.

Remember, we are all coloring our way through this thing called Life, together!

The Colors of Healing

The Colors of Healing

In November of  2011 I chatted with  Rebecca E. Parsons  on her fascinating  Artistically Speaking Talk Show , on Blog Talk Radio   where she interviews a wide range of artists, coaches, and other creatives, such as mixed media painter  Sarah Ahearn Bellemare.  As the show’s   Color Muze , it is my job to offer fun, interesting, colorFULL and salient color tips each third Sunday of the month, at the end of the interview.  The Color Muze  is then transformed into an article, and published in Rebecca’s   Cre8tive Compass Magazine , and my own blog, Artissima, the blog of ArtiFactory Studio.  We strive to make our Color Muzes both delicious AND nutritious…to keep the learning sweet!

On November 20, 2011, our Color Muze took a turn to the metaphysical, and the arena of  psychosomatic medicine. We discussed an approach to healing with color I had learned about during my studies with the  IACC , ( International Association of Colour Consultants/Designers), based on the “Chakras‘, or energy centers existing outside of the body, which, according to our teacher and color expert, Frank Mahnke , “are in communication with the automatic nervous system and the regulation of hormone secretion.  These energy centers are divided into seven chakras and each chakra corresponds to one of the seven spectral colors.”

We had so much colorFULL fun during our Muze, looking at the list of these, and their correlations, which, gratis Mr. Mahnke,  I share with you, Gentle Readers, here and now.

   The Vertex chakra corresponds to VIOLET…representing  wisdom and  spiritual energy, and influences the pituitary gland.

The Forehead  chakra  corresponds to INDIGO…representing intuition, ( the third eye), and  influences the pineal gland.

The Larynx chakra corresponds to BLUE… representing religious inspiration, creativity, language, and communication, and influences the thyroid gland.

The Heart chakra corresponds to GREEN and PINK… representing  love, sympathy, harmony, and influences heart and thymus glands.

The  Solar Plexus chakra corresponds to YELLOW…representing  knowledge and intellect, and is the seat for tension, and influences solar plexus and adrenal body.

The Spleen chakra corresponds to ORANGE… representing energy, and  influences the  spleen and pancreas.

The Basis chakra corresponds to RED… representing life and reproduction, and influences sex glands and sexual organs. (Can’t help thinking about VALENTINE’S DAY here!)

And, what happens when colors such as complimentary BLUE and ORANGE are placed next to each other?

We invite you to  listen to our Color Muze from November 20th, along with the wonderFULL interview with Sarah Ahearn Bellemare, and find out!

What experiences have YOU had with Color Healing?

If You feel so inclined, please share them with us here…Muze with us!

We love to hear from YOU!

Remember, we are all healing through this thing called Life, together.

Wishing YOU Health, Peace, and Color in Your Life.

A a liner note, the above pictures were taken at the magical and marvelous San Francisco event, “Bouquets to Art”, held each MARCH, at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, (FAMSF).  Follow the link, and check it out if you are in the Bay Area at that time (it is coming up next month!)  You won’t be disappointed…”Bouquets” is bound to add sweetness, AND color to your life and senses!

The Embodiment of Color

The Embodiment of Color

When recently discussing Frank Mahnke‘s “schemata, the “Color Experience” Pyramid, I found myself sliding uncomfortably, yet seamlessly, from one “level” of the Pyramid to the other.

I say  uncomfortably, because I felt that some of the levels were so interconnected, as to be nearly inter-changeable. The Pyramid describes six levels upon which we experience the phenomenon of color.  I  decided to take a closer look at each, starting with its base: “biological reactions to a color stimulus“, IE: our own biology.

Our sensations are generated, and thus emanate, from our senses, our five senses, to be exact, which are experienced through our own bodies.  You might say it’s a physical thing.  We must then, embody color,  just as we experience it.  If color is light is energy, I reasoned, in a sense, in a very real sense, we must be made of it.  If we are made of energy, made of light, we must be made of color.  Are we then walking, talking rainbows? Flowers? Sunsets?

We cannot control our biological reactions to color, as they show,  in the words of English psychologist Nicholas Humphry, “….traces of our evolutionary heritage.”  From the green pigment of chlorophyll and its role in the necessary process of photosynthesis, to the huge red pouches developed by the male frigate bird during mating season,  in nature, and thus in  ourselves, color is and always has been a signal between life forms and species that is crucial to our survival. Camouflage, protection, sustenance, warning, sexuality, fertility, all of these and more are signified and communicated through color, which underneath it all still seem to be running us today, both psychologically and biologically.

A neural pathway, aptly called the “energetic portion” of the optic pathway transports light and color stimulation to the master glands which control the production and release of hormones. Whoa!  Talk about the Mother lode!  We see that color affects our biology, and biological activity, whether we wish it, will it, want it, or not. Blue light, for example, has been used to cure infant jaundice.

Humans have “total color vision“, meaning that we need the total color spectrum for our biological and psychological survival.
Color has always been a significant factor in our evolution and survival as humans, teaching us what is safe and nutritious to eat,  how to interpret and adapt to our natural environment, and how to understand and respond to the changing seasons, as our earth rotates around the sun.

Here we come full circle, a full rotation  if you will.  Light is color, and from the energy of light we see, sense, and  take what is needed for our survival, preservation and protection as a species.   On this most basic level, the level of our biology, our response to color has nothing to do with what we might term as preference.  Our perception of  the light-giving radiant energy of the sun, which is color, is fundamentally linked to our survival, and thus deeper than any conscious experience, control, effort or emotion could dictate.

Are YOU conscious of experiencing color on a biological level?? How does color support YOUR survival?

If you are so moved, please share your experience with us here.  We love to hear from You.

Remember, we are all experiencing this colorFULL thing called Life, together.

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