Most of us take the role of color in our lives for granted; we shouldn't.
We are realizing that targeting and channeling color light energy using advanced techniques and technology can be an effective, noninvasive healing modality. D.D. Palmer spoke of innate forces that influence the body - the energy of the spirit that makes modern chiropractic a spiritual healing modality. Whereas allopathic medicine adjusts the chemistry of the body, chiropractic healing adjusts energy patterns, enabling the body to rebalance and commence self-healing.
In our chromatic world, color is refracted light energy in its most basic form in nature - basic to all life on Earth. Even if you've never thought of color as energy, you know color has the capacity to stimulate, calm, provoke and reassure. Sunlight is therapeutic, and the absence of it for lengthy periods can be depressing. You wouldn't know it from conventional medicine and its focus on invasive treatments, but primitive healing modalities have employed color light energy for thousands of years with some success. The ancient Greeks found it beneficial in treating tuberculosis, creating, in effect, the solarium as a place of peace and healing (in use to this day).
Recent dramatic breakthroughs in quantum physics are altering our understanding of how life functions. A human body is a virtual electromagnetic field, affected by the energy around us. All intercellular communications are based on light energy. Negative energy signatures - imbalances and blockages from emotional and physical trauma and stress - build up in our electromagnetic field, where they can trigger emotional and physical disease. Modern color light therapy seeks to right the imbalances and unblock the blockages through the targeted application of specific colors.
Today, the field of modern energy medicine includes different light treatments, such as color irradiation and low-intensity laser. The use of noninvasive color light energy has made important inroads among naturopaths in Europe and is gaining acceptance in North America. It is proving beneficial for patients suffering from jetlag and eating and mood disorders. In psychiatry, research has validated light therapy through the eyes as the most effective treatment for seasonal affective disorder. Color therapy is being investigated for its potential in helping people with nonseasonal depression, persistent insomnia and difficulties adapting to shift work. Even some conventional medical practitioners are using it as a complementary healing strategy, just as they have embraced acupuncture without necessarily understanding why it helps relieve pain and symptoms.
Several decades ago, German researchers discovered that light energy, taken in visually, could reduce the frequency and severity of migraine headaches and reduce pain levels associated with some lung diseases. Breakthrough research by Nobel Prize nominee Fritz-Albert Popp in the 1970s proved that all natural organisms emit light energy at the cellular level and all organic life absorbs, processes and transmits it coherently. Faint, color-coded broadcasts of light energy, emitted by cells, are how information is communicated within all living organisms.
Dr. Valerie Hunt, UCLA physiologist and professor emeritus, subsequently demonstrated how the body's energetic emissions display chaotic changes before pathological conditions in the tissue are detected. This helped develop the main postulate of color light therapy: Ailments begin outside the physical organs as energetic imbalances that, if detected in time, can be corrected through external, noninvasive means. It was a German naturopath, Dr. Peter Mandel, who transformed that knowledge into the practice of modern color light therapy. He discovered that when specific acupuncture points, reflex zones and other established grid systems in the body are irradiated with focused light beams of color, pain from some symptoms was alleviated within minutes. His findings were followed by Russian research, which concluded that our bodies have channels of light paralleling the body's 12 meridians, as they are known in Chinese medicine. Modern color light therapy uses these natural pathways - the physiological equivalent of "information superhighways" - to open blocked energy channels and dispel imbalances.
Applications of specific color light travel the meridian system with information-specific particles to replenish the natural energy and restore cellular balance. Each color has a different frequency or energy vibration pattern and different therapeutic uses. Blue is cool and sedating; red is hot and stimulating; orange is warm and encouraging; and green is balancing and calming. A trained therapist applies the cool colors to inflammations and the hot ones to stimulate circulation.
Color light therapy also can be used proactively to diffuse energy blockages before they lead to health problems. In essence, color light treatment regimes can be used by chiropractors as part of a maintenance strategy for people in good health. Our internal organs do not live independent lives. They coexist, linked by the language of energy communications. Rather than treating individual organs, color light therapy addresses the integrated body, mind and spirit through its energy field to re-establish balance and harmony in our existence.
Julianne Bien
Toronto, Ontario
Canada