Make a Colour Shift
When you energy sags and you need a quick up-me-up, think red. Deep saturated red, to be precise. Although the colour symbolizes different things in different cultures, studies have consistently shown that it has a stimulating effect.
How’s that, you ask? Let me explain.
Colour is energy. It actually has temperature, measured in what’s called degrees Kelvin. (Examples: The temperature of direct sunlight is 5,000K, the temperature of a match flame 1,700K). This all started in the late 1800s, when a British physicist named William Kelvin discovered that if you heated a block of carbon it would glow in the heat, producing a range of different colours at different temperatures.
But I digress.
REV UP WITH RED (OR ORANGE OR YELLOW)
Our experience of color basically happens because light waves of various frequencies are processed through photoreceptors in the retina, then sent as nerve impulses to the cortex, where, voila, they’re translated by the brain into our experience of color. Truth be told, we can only detect three of them: red, blue, and green. Our fabulous in-house computer called the brain ten does the color mixing to create the exact hue.
Because it affects our brain, colour can be much more than a visual treat. It can be an experience, one that evokes emotion. Colour can excite or calm, it can convey a sense of coolness or warmth, it can symbolize strength or purity or romance. The famous psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim used to insist on having his clinics painted yellow, precisely because of the effect that colour had on the energy of his young subjects.
For thousand of years color has been used as a healing therapy. Today, most colour therapists believe it’s the different energy frequencies of color that affect us physically and emotionally. Those frequencies stimulate the pituitary and pineal glands ,triggering certain hormonal responses. Modern conventional medicine employs some version of colour therapy. For instance, infants who are jaundiced are treated with blue light.
Some research indicates that a person’s mood and personality are reflected in the colours they choose. Several studies, for instance, found that people who wear dark colours to the exclusion of any other colored clothes tend to be depressed (which, if it’s true, would mean there are an awful lot of depressed people living in Manhattan, where black is the new black). You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out that spending your days in a drab-colored room will sour your mood.
Generally, colors with loner wavelengths – reds oranges, and yellows – are thought to be more stimulating than those at the other end of the spectrum, where the greens, blues, and purples reside. (That’s why guests on television shows wait in “the green room” – it’s calming!)
One commonly held explanation is that we associate warm colors with the energy of the sun and daylight. But thee are many variables as to how we perceive and respond to color, including its hue and saturation, the material used, what other colors surround it, and how it’s used (a yellow dress may evoke a very different feeling than a room of the same shade). Deeply saturated colors – whether warm or cool – have been shown to be stimulating in some studies. Our reaction to any color may also be its association with memories, and the emotion those memories provoke.
COLOR YOUR WORLD
If you want to give you energy a real boost, experiment with color. If you closet is filled with a sea of black, go wild and try some red. Our maybe a brilliant turquoise will get you going. If you have to ease into color, start with a brightly colored shirt or scarf and see how that makes you feel.
We all have colors that seem to brighten our faces and bring out the color of our eyes (the color your mother always said you looked good in). The mere act of making an effort to brighten your wardrobe is energizing.
Adding some color to your life will boost your energy, but don’t overlook the effect a color change can have on others around you. Even if you’re not feeling it at first (which I’m sure you will), those brighter, warmer, more energetic colors may make others respond to you in a warmer, more energetic way. If energy is anything, it’s contagious!
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