You realize you are part of the hologram of life, surrounded by an aura or energy field that radiates distinct colour and vibrations. The aura fingertips your soul and reflects your goodness, wellness, mental stability, maturity, emotional/inner turmoil or peaceful fulfilment. More of each of these qualities, peace, wellness, stability, maturity and fulfilment may become your ever present precious possession by the application of colour's power in our daily living ... M. Walker,  Power of Colours

Excerpt from: A Critical Analysis of Chromotherapy and Its Scientific Evolution - Physical View

Authors: Samina T. Yousuf Azeemi, S. Mohsin Raza

Ancient observation chromotherapy is a centuries-old concept. The history of color medicine is as old as that of any other medicine. Phototherapy (light therapy) was practiced in ancient Egypt, Greece, China and India. The Egyptians utilized sunlight as well as color for healing (4). Color has been investigated as medicine since 2000 BC (5). People of that era were certainly unaware of the scientific facts of colors as medicine, but they certainly had faith in healing with colors. They used primary colors (i.e. red, blue and yellow) for healing as they were unaware of the mixing up of two colors. The science seems to have been silent at those times.

According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the art of chromotherapy was discovered by the god Thoth. In the hermetic traditions, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks used colored minerals, stones, crystals, salves and dyes as remedies and painted treatment sanctuaries in various shades of colors (6). The ancient Ayurvedic physician Charaka, who lived in the sixth century BC, recommended sunlight to treat a variety of diseases (7). In ancient Greece the physical nature of color was dominant. Color was intrinsic to healing, which involved restoring balance. Garments, oils, plasters, ointments and salves were used to treat disease. The Greeks were unaware of biological changes in the body as a result of color treatment; nevertheless, they had blind faith in the healing properties of colors. It is also interesting to know that they used both forms of treatment with colors: direct exposure to sunlight and indirect healing. In the indirect method, they used such materials as stones, dyes, ointments and plasters as the medium. What was missing in their medicinal use of color was water as a medium for the absorption of color, which later proved to be the best remedy for removing toxins from the body. This concept is common among all researchers working on hydrochromopathy (3).

Avicenna (AD 980) advanced the art of healing using colors. He made clear the vital importance of color in both diagnosis and treatment. According to Avicenna, ‘Color is an observable symptom of disease.’ He also developed a chart that related color to temperature and physical condition of the body. He used color treatment with the view that red moved the blood, blue or white cooled it and yellow reduced muscular pain and inflammation (6). Avicenna's work undoubtedly advanced the use of chromotherapy in those times. He discussed the properties of colors for healing and was the first to establish that the wrong color suggested for therapy would certainly elicit no response in specific diseases. For example, he observed that a person with a nosebleed should not gaze at things of a brilliant red color and should not be exposed to red light because this would stimulate the sanguineous humor, whereas blue would soothe it and reduce blood flow. This seems to be the practical understanding at the time, but we do not find discrete values of frequencies or energies associated with these colors.

19th Century Ideas and Practices Pleasanton (1876) used only blue and stated that blue was the first remedy in case of injuries, burns or aches. He reported his findings on the effects of color in plants, animals and humans. He claimed that ‘the quality yield and the size of grapes could significantly increase if they were grown in a greenhouse made with alternating blue and transparent panes of glass’ (8). He also cured certain diseases and increased fertility as well as the rate of physical maturation in animals by exposing them to blue light. The same methodology employing the color blue was adopted by Hassan (1999), who found it to be very useful as a first-line treatment for injuries as well as for burns. Since, Pleasanton's work lacked scientific proof and evidence, no established rules were presented before the scientific societies, leading to a great gap between his work and the development of color/vibrational healing on scientific grounds. If work could be carried out even now on his great ideas, especially in agricultural development and in animals, researchers could make new discoveries.

Most areas that seem to have been ignored in the past were emphasized by Edwin Babbitt. Babbitt presented a comprehensive theory of healing with color. He identified the color red as a stimulant, notably of blood and to a lesser extent the nerves; yellow and orange as nerve stimulants; blue and violet as soothing to all systems and as having anti-inflammatory properties. Accordingly, Babbitt prescribed red for paralysis, physical exhaustion and chronic rheumatism; yellow as a laxative, emetic and purgative and for bronchial difficulties; blue for inflammatory conditions, sciatica, meningitis, nervous instability, headache, irritability and sunstroke. He also stated that ‘all vital organs have direct connection with the skin through arteries, blood vessels and capillaries, and colour rays can affect the entire blood stream through circulation and elimination of toxins’ (9). Babbitt also developed various devices, including a special cabinet called a thermolume, in which colored glass and natural light were used to produce colored light and a chrome disk—a funnel-shaped device fitted with a special color filter—was used to focalize light onto various parts of the body. He discussed in detail the effects of the reflection, absorption, transmission and polarization of light. Different patients were presented in his book who had been treated using color healing devices created by him. Babbitt also established the relationship between color and minerals, which he used as an addition to treatment with colored light, and he developed elixirs by irradiating water with sunlight filtered through colored lenses. He claimed that this ‘potentized water’ retained the energy of the vital element within the particular color filter used and had remarkable healing power (7).

Babbitt was in fact among the pioneers of modern chromotherapy. He used both direct and indirect methods of color treatment. He seemed to be well aware of the techniques and methodologies used in chromotherapy. His invention of different devices such as a special cabinet that used natural light to produce colored light by splitting it into seven colors, used for the focalization of light onto some particular area, worked quite effectively for healing wounds and stopping bleeding, headaches, etc. The actual energy to which he referred in potentized water was not calculated by any means. He did not explain the energy change in water, its quantum states and how different kinds of vibrations affect water in different manners. He did not explain about the potency of potentized water, but incredible for that time was is his correlation of magnetism with chromotherapy. His work on color healing, for the first time in history, proved to be comprehensive in taking both a physiological and a psychological approach. Any chromotherapist even nowadays can benefit from his work as he discussed appropriate colors for diseases in detail that in a way does not contradict to the facts newly established under the influence of science.

20th Century Scientific Emergence Ghadiali (1927) discovered the scientific principles that explain why and how different color rays have various therapeutic effects on the body. His Spectro-Chrome Encyclopaedia, is considered to be the first published book to explain the complete doctrine of chromotherapy. The rules explained in this book could be proved using any kind of modern techniques. Most chromopaths have used his technique (1,10). He discovered that there is a unique color or energy vibration that either sedates or stimulates the stream of energy through a specific organ, causing a natural biochemical reaction. By knowing the action of different colors upon the different organs and systems of the body, one can apply the appropriate color that will balance the action of any organ or system that has become abnormal in its functioning or condition. When this balance is disturbed, mental and physical problems occur. The aim of the science of color healing is to cure disease by restoring normal balance of color energies of the body (11). Ghadiali established that particular areas of the body respond to particular colors; these areas are similar to what the ancients called ‘chakras’. According to Klotsche, ‘the chakras are areas of highly concentrated energy that are connected to various locations mainly along the spinal cord. These energy fields are related to the major organs in the body’ (1). The concept of chakras is essentially an east Indian concept, which Ghadiali presented as the source of energies.

The work of Ghadiali actually demystified the theory of chromotherapy. Ghadiali's research stated: ‘The colour bands of spectrograms are produced when a chemical element undergoes a process of combustion or vaporization that accelerates the motion of its atoms. The specific band of colours and dark lines emitted when a certain element is heated, are known as Fraunhauafer lines.’ This procedure is commonly used to identify the chemical composition of a substance (with a photospectrometer) (11).

Contrary to accepted scientific theory, which assumes that each element is a unit, Ghadiali concluded that ‘the chemical elements are colour compounds’. His results can be proved by any of the sophisticated equipment of modern science. ‘A specific disease thus constitutes a specific imbalance of colour waves and by implication, chemical imbalance.’ Ghadiali found that by treating the body with a particular color vibration, one could effectively reintroduce the appropriate biochemical elements into the body; he referred to this as color chemistry, certainly a new field of study. His results as published in the first decade of the twentieth century were advocated by Klotsche (1) in Colour Medicine: color medicine not only can heal the diseased frequency of the body but also can introduce actual chemical elements/vibration into the body in a non-toxic form.

During the nineteenth century the emphasis in science was exclusively on matter rather than on energy. As medicine came under the umbrella of science, it focused too much on the material physical body, ignoring the mind. With the advances in physical medicine and treatments such as surgery and antiseptic, interest in healing with colors declined.

© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Source and read more at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297510/