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Chromotherapy

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, proposing that colors bring about emotional reactions in people, but is labelled pseudoscience by its critics. 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.

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.

Avicenna (980-1037), who viewed color to be of vital importance in diagnosis and treatment, made significant contributions to chromotherapy 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. His view was that red moved the blood, blue or white cooled it, and yellow reduced muscular pain and inflammation. 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." As an 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.

In the United States, color and light therapy is beginning to be recognized as a complementary system to other treatments. In Europe, Dr. Peter Mandel, a German acupuncturist, developed a system to apply color and light to acupuncture points on the body. This so called colorpuncture is now being taught in many countries.

Meaning and use of colors

Health is contingent upon balancing not only our physical needs, but our emotional needs as well. In India, a group of healers versed in Ayurvedic medicine describe colors associated with the seven main chakras, which are, according to their system, spiritual centers in our bodies located along the spine.

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. 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'''

Criticism

Chromotherapy has been deemed pseudoscience by its critics, who state that the falsifiability and verifiability conditions necessary to deem an experiment valid are not being met, and therefore that it has not been proven 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.