Chromatherapist Elizabeth Harper has conducted extensive studies on how colors affect emotional and physical health. She’s a Color Intuitive and author of Wishing: How to Fulfill Your Heart's Desires. Harper also lectures and offers workshops internationally on color, intuition, and healing.
How Colors Affect Emotional & Physical Health
Suite101's Psychology Feature Writer Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen recently interviewed Elizabeth Harper, who discussed the effects of various colors on the mind and body.
Q (LPK) - What Effect Does the Color Red Have on Physical Health and Performance?
A (EH) - Color can be an effective tool to enhance health, fitness, and performance. Researchers at two UK universities in Durham and Plymouth have discovered that sports teams wearing red have an increased chance of victory.
Separate studies demonstrate that each color of the spectrum has individual psychological, physiological, and neurological effects.
Q - What Effect Does the Color Red Have on the Body and Emotional Health?
A - Swiss psychologist Dr. Max Luscher based his Luscher Color Test, a personality assessment used by companies, on an established pattern of human response to color. American surgeon Edwin Babbitt lists healing colors for many ailments in his book, Principles of Light and Color. He stated that thermal or warm colors of red, orange and yellow are stimulating, raise blood pressure, strengthen, and tonify.
Q - How Do Colors Like Blue and Green Affect the Body?
A - Electrical or cool colors of blue, indigo and violet sedate, calm, ease inflammation, and lower blood pressure. Green in the center of the spectrum has a stabilizing effect on the human system as a whole.
Russian scientist S. V. Krakov discovered that red stimulates the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system, while blue stimulates the parasympathetic. This is not limited to seeing color: neuropsychologist Kurt Goldstein noted in his book, The Organism, that stimulation of the skin by different colors creates different effects.
Q - Why Does Color Affect Physical and Emotional Health?
A - We are made of color - this is not an esoteric statement, we are composed of light and light splits into a variety of colors.
Physiologically light/color reaches the hypothalamus, the control center of the autonomic nervous system of the body. This regulates the pituitary - the master gland of the endocrine system. Each color has a different wavelength and this initiates specific responses in the nervous system.
Color as light therapy is used in hospitals all over the world. Newborns with jaundice are placed in blue light, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD is treated with full-spectrum light, X-rays are at the extreme end of the light spectrum and we all know the effects of ultraviolet light - this is also color!
Q - Aside From Health and Well-Being, What Else Does Color Affect?
A - Controlled studies undertaken at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show in New York City in March 2006 showed that people in a room infused with red light thought that time stood still, while time lengthened for those in a blue room.
For more info on chromatherapy and color intuitive Elizabeth Harper, visit SealedWithLove.com
Related Reading on Psychology, Color and Mood
If you found How Colors Affect Emotional & Physical Health helpful, try:
- The Psychology of Color
- What Color Attracts Men?
- How Light Affects Your Mood
- Signs & Treatments of Seasonal Affective Disorder
Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen - Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen is a full-time writer and blogger in Vancouver, BC, and the creator of the Quips and Tips blog series.
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