Color Therapy Can Help You With Your Sleep
"How chromatherapy, color therapy, and light therapy treatments are used to help emotional and physical sleep disturbances."
Chromatherapy also known as color therapy uses color to encourage general health as well as to care for specific difficulties. These problems include sleep-oriented issues, but are not limited just to them.
This is not a new method as color has been used for centuries for dealing with a large range of disorders. Emotional and physical sleep disturbances can be treated using Chromatherapy.
Chromatherapy Color Light Therapy And Sleep
These treatments can include exposure to colored lights, massages using color-saturated oils and salves, meditation and visualization of certain colors, or wearing certain colors of clothing.
In India, practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine assumed that particular colors work with each of the seven chakras. These are vortices of energy in the body that symbolize organs, emotions, and characteristics of the soul or life force.
As far back as ancient Egypt, practitioners would construct solariums that had explicitly designed glasses and lenses that were used to break up the sun's rays into the colors of the spectrum.
Modern color theory was introduced late in the 17th century when English mathematician and philosopher Sir Isaac Newton carried out his prism experiments illustrated that light is in fact a mixture of colors from the visible spectrum.
It was during the late 1800s, when Dr. Edwin D. Babbitt published his book Principles of Light and Color that Chromatherapy as we know it was today was outlined.
Dr. Babbitt proposes in his work that the use of color as a cure for a variety of ailments, those of which includes sleep and anxiety disorders can be beneficial.
Experiments were done in the late 1940s, by a Russian researcher S.V. Krakov where he separated the diverse wavelengths in the light spectrum attempting to demonstrate the effect that color has on our nervous system.
During his experiments, he noted that red light stirred the adrenal glands, which in turn reacted by raising blood pressure and pulse rate.
Blue and white light were found to have a soothing, comforting effect. The results of Krakov's experiments are utilized even today, and his method of color therapy is frequently suggested for stress and for stress-related pain.
Public consciousness of color therapy has amplified in recent years. This is due to studies that have shown the positive effects of full-spectrum light on seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and other forms of depression.
These days, a great number of conventional researchers are turning to chromatherapy for an assortment of ailments as well, predominantly sleep disorders.
Color is a property of light, which is composed of a large amount of different waves of energy. When light falls upon the photoreceptor cells of the retina, it is converted into electrical impulses.
In turn, these impulses travel to the brain where they then activate the release of hormones.
The discharge of these hormones in restricted bursts can be used to treat the body and mind for a number of the medical conditions that deter sleep. It can also encourage conditions that contribute to sleep and rest.
There are certain forms of chromatherapy that should ultimately only be practiced by licensed practitioners and/or medical doctors.
However, some forms of color therapy are straightforward and secure enough to be practiced by someone right in their own home.
The forms you can practice yourself include wearing clothing of particular shades, surrounding yourself with a suggested color, eating foods of a particular color, and concentrating on the visualization of a specific color.
Chromatherapy Color Light Therapy And Sleep
Some Cautions:
If you have an acute or serious sleep problem, do not use color therapy as an alternative to seeking conventional care.
Individuals with epilepsy should always be very cautious when they are looking at flashing lights.
Do not look directly into the light source while you are receiving colored light therapy. Instead, gaze at an item that is being illuminated by the colored lights.
Know the side effects of any prescription drugs that you are taking. Read all warning labels on your medication to make sure that no harm will come to you if your skin is exposed to bright light.
Natural Sleep Aids
Color Therapy - Light Therapy - Chromatherapy
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Color Therapy Light Therapy
Tanna Mayer 17/10/2007
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