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Welcome to May!

Welcome to being embraced by the color GREEN! Ever think about the qualities of this color? Can we get any closer to SPRING than green!? Thanks to the collaborative effort of Yellow and Blue. Green shares common attributes with both! It’s a combination of cheerful warmth from the sun with calmness and serenity of both  sea and sky.  Green is after all the direct metaphor for nature!

This is the season to live into this compassionate color.  Within the chakra system, Green is often associated with our fourth chakra, the heart chakra. This fourth chakra governs our intuition and love. Here we feel compassion for our love and relationships. This chakra acts as the melting pot of the higher chakras and the lower chakras and is the source of our inner most desires, our dreams! As many of you may have me say that our hands are an expression of our heart. This is because our hands are the physical organ of communication and touch is the sensory system for the heart chakra.

Where did the name “Green” come from anyway? Seems it has its origins from and old English verb “Growan,” which -as it sounds, means to grow. The growth, regenerative and healthy aspects of green, represents the fertileness of nature. As a fertile color, wedding dresses used to be green!

Since colors are an expression of our emotion, there is a whole range of greens that move us. Green belongs to the soothing spectrum color group. The light energy that emits from this color radiates the soothing and calming renewal. Have you ever noticed, that the color green can evoke completely opposite emotions of each other: love vs. jealousy. How about renewal vs. envy; health vs. decay; environment vs. greed.

Depending on the saturation and the closer that the color is to the sun, it portrays varying psychological effects. So looking closer at a particular color from a healing aspect, it’s handy to group these qualities in three categories: I like to speak of a color having a free power, a stimulating strength, and a compulsive force. This is where we can sense positive and negatives impression of a hue.

This in particular is my absolute fascination of colors, and how to be purposely moved by them! I love to dive into the emotional meaning of color as a shift between light and darkness. In our physical world, we have color all around us. The dynamics between the colors play relevant roles of color perception. Therefore when we read an artwork, fashion, products and light it is both the individual color combined with the surrounding that gives us the complete impact.

Let’s look at the three categories of green. A green with inherent brilliance enhances growth. It gives us the feeling of enjoying the moment of free power. Here we can sense a deep peace and tranquility. This is a color that exudes both regeneration and rejuvenation, giving us a sense of eternity. Here I am speaking of a color that has especially a direct influence on both our physical and ethereal levels. This color is both tactile and has a practical nature that helps us get things done.

When we use a middle green, with a balanced brilliance, we are speaking of offering a sense of security, care and protection. The feeling that exudes here is one of agreeability and stability. It stimulates strength. Other words that describe this color are: passive, satisfied, useful, original, lively and young. Most of us are familiar with the term green being associated with someone who is new to something, and still lacking experience. They are said as being green. Using these fresh greens carry nutritious and refreshing health aspects for us from the inside out. We can think about all the goodness that leafy greens bring us.

When we use a low intensity/ brilliance far from the sun, this color gives the feeling of a lazy force, here we have a boring and motionless quality. We can feel a sense that we may have landed in a muddy swamp. We can smell a molded bubbling toxicity and a compulsive force. And we can hear toxicity releasing . . .you get the point. In this color we can feel totally self sufficient in a bubble and are therefore indifferent to the outside world. This disconnection from the sun leaves this quality deep in the shade. Generally, non positive qualities are often associated within this range when used on its own. A similar swampy color is used in the expression; Green with envy. This expression originally came about from “the green-eyed monster” originally quoted from Shakespeare. There are references here to the acidic, green bile used for digestion.

Having said that, we generally refer to green, as the free and balanced green. Because it is the most common color in nature, it has become quite a buzzword for environmental considerations. We are very familiar with the term “green” as a metaphor for recyclability and environmental concerns. This relation is so clear that unfortunately there are even businesses using green in PR and marketing material in order to promote misleading perceptions of the company’s environmental considerations. This is known as green washing! Can you believe there is even a name for this?

Some other fun things to observe about the color green: It is a color that tends to repeat itself and have a regular rhythm. Just look around in nature and notice how green grows. It is quite a nurturing color and plays behind the scenes as a nurturer. Look at how grass, leaves and stems grow. It acts as a life force which allows for growth, nurturing and regeneration. Characteristically it grows in numbers and of repeating patterns. It is inherently a social color and doesn’t naturally stand out, this is a color that blends among the rest of nature to form one totality.

Not only is green the color of all life, but also of seasonal renewal. It therefore symbolizes hope and immortality. Green does us also much good when it is used specifically for healing! In color therapy, it supports almost all chronic ailments in our body. Not only that, I understand that the color green can used, among other ailments, in the treatments of the lungs, like bronchitis and a cough.

Go ahead and create your own green in the tip of this month!  Discover this color for yourself!

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Our tip this month is to discover the color green for yourself!

1. Grab a sheet of paper
2. Use any materials, paints, markers, colored pencils.  . .and start from the top down with the color yellow. Continue from bottom up with blue (I like to use a cerulean blue for this exercise to get a spring green, though other blues can work)
3. Allow the yellow and blue to mix and become green. Explore all the shades of green that are created. . .
4. See what happens from there. . .use your intuition in allowing it to evolve. . .
5. After you have created your own green, see if the image reminds you of anything. If you get any associations from your painting.
6. What may seem at first as unrelated to this painting. . .go ahead and see what kind of spring cleaning you may want to do at home or work. What are you able to let go of now?

Enjoy this experience of creating your own green, and using this information to start off your spring cleaning. . .

Ps. The video series that I keep mentioning are done! I just have to post them now!

HIGHLIGHTS . . .