Wellbeing Wednesdays week 12 – All the colours of the rainbow

January 27, 2021 | by Chris Boyd

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Make yourself comfortable, look at the colours above, close your eyes and bring focus to your breathing. Visualise the colour which stood out to you in another form (green grass, blue sky, turquoise sea, bright yellow sunflowers) and keep breathing deeply in and out.

Imagine the colour flowing through your body… notice how it makes you feel? When you are ready, open your eyes and come back to your surroundings. How do you feel?

Whenever you feel your mind wandering or need to refocus, complete this exercise to realign your mind.

This week we are looking at colour and how it can affect our mental wellbeing. We will look at the colours above and their meaning.

Colour everywhere

We are surrounded by colour and, without realising it, how you react or how you are drawn to these colours can affect your mood.

As you look around, your eyes and brain work together to gather information. Picking a piece of fruit to eat, the clothes that you wear and even the shopping you pick all have colour in common.

Without noticing it, you constantly use colour to help you process information about the world around you.

Advertisers carefully select colours and colour combinations that appeal to specific desires, your gender and your age group. Decorators, clothing designers and artists all use colours to evoke emotional response.

Experts have found that whilst colour can influence how we feel and act – these colours are subject to personal, cultural and situational factors.

Colour therapy

Colour therapy, or chromotherapy, has been used dating right back to ancient Egypt, Greece and China, where halls or rooms were painted in different colours to treat different ailments. Colour therapy uses the benefits of  different colours and shades to affect your wellbeing.

As each colour has a unique light wavelength, the colour therapy principles use the energy of each shade to boost your mental health and wellbeing. These ideas can be used in your own home décor and even in the clothes you wear… think of it as the aromatherapy of colour.

What do the colours mean?

Think back to the beginning exercise and how the colour you visualised made you feel.

In her book “I Am A Rainbow”, Dolly Parton explains how colours affect our moods.

Click here to view a video on it.

You can see the table below to see what colours mean:

Listen to a short podcast to learn more about colour therapy by clicking here.

However you see colours, remember to take notice of your surroundings whilst we are in the third lockdown.

Look at the sky, the trees and the nature around us, take a breath and think about how this makes you feel in the moment.

Remember: Stay safe, be kind – and live your life in colour.

Share your ideas and experiences

We want you to share your ideas and stories with us too. Please email your stories, ideas, videos and photos to boxinmind@englandboxing.org, or share on your social media using the hash tag #EBWellbeingWednesdays

Find out more

You can discover more by going to the England Boxing Mental Health website page and also find ideas to keep fit physically on our Stay Active page.