Chromotherapy

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A Bioptron color therapy device with lenses
A Bioptron color therapy device with lenses
Energy therapy - edit
NCCAM classifications
  1. Alternative Medical Systems
  2. Mind-Body Intervention
  3. Biologically Based Therapy
  4. Manipulative Methods
  5. Energy Therapy
See also

Chromotherapy, sometimes called color therapy or colorology, is an alternative medicine method. It is claimed that a therapist trained in chromotherapy can use color and light to balance energy wherever a person's body be lacking, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental.

Chromotherapists claim a scientific basis for their practice,[citation needed] proposing that colors bring about emotional reactions in people, but it, along with all other energy therapies, are pseudosciences without any scientific evidence. A standard method of diagnosis is the use of "Luscher’s color test", developed by Max Luscher (*1923) in the early 1900s. When performing chromotherapy, color and light is applied to specific areas and acupoints on the body. Because colors get associated with both positive and negative effects in color therapy, specific colors and accurate amounts of color are deemed to be critical in healing. Some of the tools used for applying colors are gemstones, candles, wands, prisms, colored fabrics, bath treatments, and colored glasses or lenses. Therapeutic color can be administered in a number of ways, but is often combined with hydrotherapy and aromatherapy in an attempt to heighten the therapeutic effect. There is no scientific evidence for its efficacy.

Contents

[edit] History

Several findings indicate that color and light have been used for health treatments since the beginning of recorded time. Color therapy is possibly rooted in Ayurveda, an ancient form of medicine practiced in India for thousands of years. Other historic roots are attributed to Chinese and ancient Egyptian culture. In traditional Chinese medicine, each organ is associated with a color. Ancient Egyptians built solarium-type rooms, which could be fitted with colored panes of glass. The sun would shine through the glass and flood the patient with color. As late as the nineteenth century, European smallpox victims and their sickrooms were draped with red cloth to draw the disease away from the body.[1]

Avicenna (980-1037) viewed color to be of vital importance in diagnosis and treatment in The Canon of Medicine. He wrote that "Color is an observable symptom of disease" and also developed a chart that related colour to the temperature and physical condition of the body. He further discussed the properties of colors for healing and was "the first to establish that the wrong color suggested for therapy would elicit no response in specific diseases."[2]

Today, some therapists have a box with a mechanism that flickers light into the eyes. Some therapists recommend the wearing of eyeglasses with colored lenses. Specialized shops also sell baths equipped with lamps that emit the wanted color to induce the desired effect. Chromotherapy is not bound to medicine: practitioners of Feng Shui bring specific colors into homes and workplaces, trying to achieve optimum balance of spiritual energy.

In Europe, Peter Mandel, a German acupuncturist, developed a system to apply color and light to acupuncture points on the body (colorpuncture).[citation needed]

[edit] Meaning and use of colors

Chakras and their corresponding positions in the human body
Chakras and their corresponding positions in the human body
See also: Color symbolism and psychology

Health is contingent upon balancing not only our physical needs, but our emotional needs as well. In India, a group of healers known as Ayurvedic healers associate colors with the seven main chakras, which are spiritual centers in our bodies located along the spine.[3]

There are seven of these chakras and each is associated with a particular organ or system in the body. Each chakra has a dominant color, but these colors may become imbalanced. If this happens it can cause disease and other physical ramifications.[3] By introducing the appropriate color, these maladies can be fixed. Below is a description of each chakra and its corresponding color.

  • Red: First Chakra: Located at the base of the spine.
  • Orange: Second Chakra: pelvis area
  • Yellow: Third Chakra: solar plexus
  • Green: Fourth Chakra: heart
  • Blue: Fifth Chakra: throat
  • Indigo: Sixth Chakra: lower part of the forehead
  • Violet: Seventh Chakra: top of the head

[edit] Criticism

Chromotherapy is pseudoscience since the falsifiability and verifiability conditions necessary to deem an experiment valid are not being met, and therefore it has not been shown that introducing colors is the key element in the healing process which is healing its patients. Chromotherapy has also been criticized for selection bias in statistics of success for the treatment. It has also been suggested that the placebo effect may be a key factor in the healing of some patients, which could be tested for by a chromotherapy control group.[4]

[edit] Gallery

A look inside a color therapy device.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Smallpox: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?
  2. ^ Samina T. Yousuf Azeemi and S. Mohsin Raza (2005), "A Critical Analysis of Chromotherapy and Its Scientific Evolution", Evidence-Based Complementary Alternative Medicine 2 (4): 481–488.
  3. ^ a b Parker, Dorothy.(2001) Color Decoder.
  4. ^ Carey, Stephen S. (2004). Scientific Method

[edit] See also

[edit] Books

  • Edwin D. Babitt: “The Principles of Light and Colour”, 1878
  • Max Lüscher: “Heilkräfte der Farben”

[edit] External links