If you’ve ever visited a Purna Yoga class/studio you probably noticed that Purna Yoga teachers always wear colourful clothing. Why do we do that? One reason because we like to enhance our own well-being while having you to look at something up-lifting.
How to colour your life and it's meaning in Purna Yoga
In one random class I once asked my students to imagine the colour which makes them most happy. “Really visualise and see that colour.” I asked them to remember it. A little later at the end of the class I checked for their answers, and their responds was all from pink to yellow to bright and colourful. So, my question was, why do you choose to wear black clothing? Everyone was looking down just nodding and baffled about their choice of what they were wearing that day. Only the ones with the colourful shirt had a smile on their face.
You maybe remember an occasion where you see someone with a bright yellow or orange coat and can’t but comment on it, even if you would not wear that colour yourself, it always makes you react in a positive way.
Colours invoke feelings of beauty
According to Savitri co-founder of Purna Yoga, meditation master and creator of Heartfull™ Meditation, colours invoke feelings of beauty, order and self-expression, and most of all colours can promote healing. They make there wearer more awake and aware.
Dark colours deplete our energy
Whereas black, brown and other dark colours, deplete us of energy, by absorbing light and positive feelings. Even when I was young I remember widows would wear black for one year in sign of their mourning.
It was Coco Chanel which made the little black party dress popular. She may have made little black dresses into haute couture, but she was almost certainly inspired by poverty when she designed the first one. Chanel was raised by Catholic nuns in an orphanage after her unwed mother died.
Vogue's experiment
Fashion magazine vogue wrote an article a few years back and a journalist did an experiment to wear colours for one week to see how she feels. Mostly it was about clothes branding, but what she said about her changes of mood was truly compelling. By now this article was taken down, sadly.
The science
The following section comes from a book by Dietrich Klinghardt. MD, PHD, a neurobiologist and colour therapist who was invited to Aadil and Savitri’s radio show to talk about light and the effects on our health.
“Maybe the most exciting way in which colour finds its way inside the body, i.e. the subconscious mind, the immune system, the limbic system, the nervous system etc - has only recently been discovered. There are more and more scientific hints that light can charge particles that travel in the lymph and blood as well as inside the nerves.
Researchers at the University of Vienna, Austria, found that albumin is one of the proteins able to be charged by coloured light – and able to deliver this charge to tissues far away from the site of exposure.
Through the outer layer of the skin light also affects pigments, fluorescent particles in the body fluids and inside the cells which travel in the blood and lymph. After being energised - in a colour-wavelength and frequency specific way - they are transported to their target sites where the light-energy is discharged. These light-discharges have an organising and activating effect on cellular organelles and the cell metabolism in the target tissue (such as the brain or inner organs).
This mechanism explains partially the effects of colour-treatment via the skin - including the Dinshah Method, Peter Mandel’s Colour Puncture and the effect which colours of clothing have on mood and the immune system.
A study showed that wearing black clothing immediately depresses the NK-cell activity and several other parameters used to judge the activity of the immune system. The conclusion, the colour black is carcinogenic.
The opposite is also true: wearing rainbow colours stimulates the immune system and the mood.”
And this is exactly why we encourage you to throw out your black clothing and start a new trend, by colouring your life with bright and happy colours, not only for your mood, but also for your health.
Blue – activates the parasympathetic nervous system, calms – often used for hyperactive children
Red – activates the sympathetic nervous system
Blue-Green – heals post-traumatic tissue-injuries
Yellow – anti-depressive
Yellow/Green – liver detox
Magenta – brings deeply held conflicts and emotions to the surface