What do colours mean to you? Do you surround yourself in blue to stay relaxed and calm? Does a certain colour remind you of a time when you were younger? Perhaps a person who had an impact on your life? Alice Hall believes in your body’s ability to speak to you and convey what it needs simply through the use of colour and essential oils. She spoke to Sensa Nostra about how, as a colour therapy practitioner, she is working to spread the message of colour’s healing power.
I was born in a small town north of London, called St. Alban’s. From a very young age I loved art, colour, and everything creative and expressive. It’s not surprising to me that I ended up in a field that revolves so much around colour. I later moved to London and went to study photography at a university in Leeds. I’ve always been fascinated with colours, pictures, and art. I discovered colour therapy whilst traveling through Egypt, which was kind of a fitting place for such a thing. A woman I met there, who was also from England, told me about this type of healing and I began working with her to learn more. Surrounded by all the wondrous pyramids and other beautiful landscapes and settings, it really was perfect. The artist in me was very intrigued.
I initially just wanted to learn more about the psychology of colour because I was interested in the meaning behind colours, especially since most of what I was involved in in other parts of my life was creative. Most of the photographs I took were really abstract and I wanted to know more about what people felt when they saw two specific colours used together. Why do pink and blue have the effect that they do? Why do some colours have one meaning for a certain person and an entirely different meaning for someone else? Why does one feel a certain pull or draw to some colours and not to others?
I attended colour healing sessions as a patient myself for about a year before I got really into it. Then I knew this was something I wanted to become more involved in and to share with others. I wouldn’t be as passionate if I had not seen the benefits firsthand.
Before I began working with the colours, I had always had a really really bad relationship with my mom. It was just stress and tension all the time. After doing some sessions with my colour therapist, it changed completely. The relationship we have with each other now is pretty much the perfect mother-daughter relationship.
Also, I had been having really bad stomach pains for much of my life. I tried everything I could think of: from doctors, to going to the gym and changing my lifestyle, to seeing a nutritionist, and none of it had done anything.
Then about two years ago I began working with a colour healer. Through my colour therapy sessions, I realized that I was holding all of my tension and stress in my stomach. All of the emotions I was experiencing on a day-to-day basis were ending up concentrated in that area and causing this awful pain which nothing had been able to stop in nearly fifteen years.
As cheesy as it sounds, colour therapy really changed my entire outlook. It’s hard to put in a category because, especially here in Germany, they think of the word ‘healing’ as if it’s referring to some sort of witch-doctor. Every session is different, depending on the client and what they desire to improve or work through. A session typically begins with the client choosing colours, maybe two or three from an array placed on a white mat. Every colour means something. For example, yellow is often related to the stomach area. There are never any drugs or medicinal treatments involved. Sometimes when I’m doing a session with a client, the issue seems to be one thing at first, but as we work through it with the bottles the true source of the trouble often comes out entirely different. What a person does with the bottles or colours can tell quite a bit about them. If I ask a client to choose a bottle and place it somewhere on his or her body, that subconscious decision of placement carries a message. The underlying principle is that every energy has a counter-energy, every colour a counter-colour. The aim of colour healing is to keep those energies in balance by using the bottles.
Colour healing is not therapy in the conventionally thought-of way. As with tai chi or yoga, colour therapy is a way to work through energy blockages one is experiencing. I gained a completely new perspective on the problems I was having, and looking at my problems in this fresh, new way helped on its own.
There are obviously different issues that are helped by different colours. But your body will always know what colour it needs at the right time. One of the best aspects of this type of healing is the playful, creative side. My clients don’t come to me to be told what to do; I’m more there just to prompt them and to move the session along. It’s more you, helping yourself.
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