Happy Month of Love (and chocolate and flowers!) This is a great time of year to celebrate the warmth of an open heart, and the joys of flowers and chocolate! There was a time in my life when I made all of my cards for all Holidays and Birthdays but those days are long over. Now I admit to relaxing into ecards and not too many of them either! What has happened to that young woman who was so excited about Holidays and creating special cards for everyone on her list?!!!!
Well, time has a way of molding us and shaping us as we move through it. I look back on who I used to be and wonder who was that young woman? I have all sorts of emotions about her: I am proud of her, I am mystified by her, I shake my head over some of her not so wise decisions, I applaud her audacity to live outside the box at times, and I feel sorry for some of her missteps. I wonder how much of her is still with me, and how much of her I left behind. I see sparks of her and other parts seem so foreign to me.
Perhaps it is my crone stage of life where, as my Mother used to say, all my future is behind me. I don’t quite believe it is that grim, but I HAVE reached a point where most of my years ARE behind me. I rarely think of life like that but in this moment of reaching back in the past to revisit who I used to be I am stunned by how many years through which I have to weave my way backwards!
There are a few fun facts that I bet even my children don’t know about that younger me:
I was the first person on campus to wear knee high boots at a time when everyone was still wearing ankle boots. It wasn’t long before people began to copy me, not because it was cool but because where I went to college the winters were fierce, the snow deep, and the winds unyielding. I was also the first woman to take Naval Orientation and came out with the highest grade in the class. Now to be honest, I was not in the ROTC program and was a senior about to get married to her Navy Officer fiance. The rest of the class were freshmen men and they had better things to do than sit home and study on a Saturday night while my Navy officer was off on his ship. Honestly, if I hadn’t come out with the highest grade it would have been embarrassing!
I was runner up for Freshman Carnival Princess, my highest claim to fame ever in the “beauty” game. I could claim the race was fixed but alas, the woman who won really deserved it!
So that is my early on experience in adulthood. A few outside the box experiences wedged in with one very mainstream experience. And so life has gone on like that. I am often floating in that mainstream but so often find myself swimming upstream in a current all its own. Wondering what on earth I am doing in that odd stream, doing things others never think of!
Imagine how my family reacted to me studying feng shui, color therapy, Akashic Readings when no one else they knew of was doing so. None of those things was ever spoken of at the time I delved into them, from the mid 1980’s on. People thought I had lost it. One of my family members even suggested to my husband that I be put on some sort of drug to turn me into a calm and well behaved woman!
It’s been hard to break through into a place where people trust you and don’t treat you like a pariah for being “different”. Most of my friends are used to this by now and my family certainly is, thank goodness. But it’s not easy living outside the box. I know there are some of you readers who are experiencing this exact same challenge so for you I say keep going! Your life will be a challenge but living a unique life will fill your soul. For those of you who live a more main stream safe existence I say, do what makes you feel like you. Don’t try to step outside the box if that is not who you are. We are not all meant to do life that way. And to those of you who like me step in and out of said box, I say, enjoy the variety!
The purpose of life is to enjoy the journey. And for me I also have to feel I have contributed something, have given back. Not all of us do, by the way, and that is just fine. You don’t have to in order to make an impact or live a good life. So in this month that celebrates love, I celebrate all the selves I have been, and all the selves you have been. The journey is challenging and often so dark we can’t see where it is leading. So it is indeed a good thing to stop during the month of February and celebrate the fact we have come so far and experienced so much and have learned and cried and laughed and feared and braved and experienced so much of life. And still we love. We dare to love ourselves. ALL of the versions of self. ALL the years of self. Give your self flowers or chocolate or a nice dinner or whatever makes you smile.
And celebrate Valentines as a celebration of you and ALL versions of you!
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss “Wooden Hearts”
Guest post: This month I want to introduce Julie to you. I met Julie a year ago when I embarked on a new (for me) course of study, Emotional Freedom Technique. Julie was my “buddy” and we practiced together weekly as well as with others. Julie is, in a word, extraordinary. She is a natural at EFT and her work is transformative. Briefly, EFT can help you shift your thoughts and feelings about things and change your life in a way you might never expect. For example, I originally started this program to help with weight loss but what I got was so much more encompassing than that and went ever so much more deeply that I am basically much different than I was a year ago. I attribute this shift to Julie’s expertise with EFT. And of course to my own willingness to take on the tough stuff and overcome it once and for all. Please welcome Julie to our newsletter and listen to her wisdom.
EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUE “In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Biochemist and Nobel Prize Winner.
Hi, I’m Julie, and I’m an emotional freedom technique coach. I specialize in using emotional freedom technique, or EFT, to help people heal their relationship with food. EFT is also known as “tapping,” and it is practiced by tapping with your fingertips on specific acupoints along the meridians in your body, which function like an energetic distribution network.
These meridians transport energy throughout the body and are the channels through which that energy flows. Emotional trauma can cause stagnation in our energy pathways, and our overall existence is affected by this energy flow. My goal as an EFT coach is to help you identify and overcome the places you are blocked by framing past traumas in the context of self-acceptance. Combining acupoint stimulation with elements of cognitive restructuring, exposure techniques, and neuro-linguistic programming is what makes EFT effective.
Many of us have buried our past traumas, unmet needs, and suppressed emotions under a painful struggle with weight loss and emotional eating. Unprocessed events from the past that have left you feeling devalued and dismissed can cause pervasive feelings of worthlessness and rage.When we use our relationship with food as the doorway to access these past emotional traumas and heal them with EFT, self-sabotage and unhealthy eating patterns can finally fall away. Instead of using willpower to stop eating beyond fullness, you’ll be able to intuitively feel satisfied with less food. Foods you used to crave and feel compelled to eat will no longer have the same power over you once the emotional charge is gone. Because your experience with tapping is subjective, you’ll be able to feel for yourself if it’s working for you, and EFT is a self-help method that you can practice on yourself anytime.
“The most terrifying thing is accepting oneself completely.” Carl Jung
The colors of love could be any of these depending on how you use them. I recommend pink for unifying group energies and to create an atmosphere of unconditional love in a space. Red for passionate love. Green for infusing heart energy into an environment, and purple for a more spiritual type of love. Magenta is love of beauty and can be used to infuse “love from above”. http://www.lifepotentials.net/shop/
“As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”. Charlie Chaplin
This is the Table of Contents for Simply Color for Everyday Living, the latest book in the Simiply Color series. It was written by 25 professionals plus myself and covers all these ways to use color. Dr. Quaranto describes it as a “combination of self developement, feng shui,” and “tons of ideas.” The book is a great gift item, as well as a wonderful book for your own library and reference http://www.lifepotentials.net/media/books
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
Happy Valentine’s Day. Until next month….. Namaste….xo
In my very varied career from Interior Designer to Color Consultant with side trips into Body Work, Healing Touch, and Feng Shui, I have always stuck with color as the main tool in my toolbox.
The colors of the rainbow correspond to those in our chakra system and thus perfectly suited to working with our bodies and etheric bodies in order to heal, move through challenges, and to clear blockages among other miracles.
Let’s take a quick overview of these 7 main rainbow colors, all while acknowledging the thousands of colors presented to us in any paint store!
There are still only 7 main colors, and indeed only 3 primary ones from which all the others arise, but let’s not get into a theoretical discussion yet! The only theory I will bring in at this point is that it is helpful to know which color lies across the color wheel from the color we are working with. This is because the complimentaries work together. If we have an excessive amount of color in our chakra system, we need to temper it by bringing in it’s opposite. How we do that will be covered at the end of this article.
Red: (Base of the spine) One of the three primaries, red is the color that helps us ground and manifest. It is the color of our life force, the color of life itself and without it, nothing will happen. It is a color that speaks to us of our passions, of energy, of movement and action. If we have an abundance of red, we find ourselves challenged with anger issues, a quick temper, an ability to say cruel and scathing comments to others. To bring back balance, we would use the complimentary color of green to lessen those tendencies.
Orange: (Sacral Chakra) A combination of red and yellow, orange is the color of bliss and creativity, of community and sharing. I love orange for the fact that it is quite healing for anyone who has suffered abuse, trauma or assault. I challenge you to find anyone who has not suffered at least one of these, even if in a small way. So orange is everyone’s ally for overcoming these things. If we have an overabundance, it can lead to eating disorders, a propensity to lie, or being an exhibitionist. Use blue to reign it in.
Yellow: (Solar Plexus) Another primary, yellow is the color of happiness. Orange is bliss, yellow is happiness. It is the color of self esteem and ego, of assimilation of all kinds, and the color of our wisdom and ability to learn. An overabundance leads to being egotistical, stingy, controlling and argumentative. Use purple to rebalance this.
Green: (Heart) A combination of yellow and blue, green is the color of nature, of the heart, of the healer, and it helps us find our direction in life. It reminds us of nature so it is a soothing color to most people and can make us feel more at home. An overabundance can cause jealousy, a gossipy nature, and a whiny, cruel personality. Use red to rebalance.
Blue: (Throat) The third and last primary color, blue is the color of peace, truth, spaciousness, and integrity. We trust people who wear blue, and blue can make one appear to possess more authority than others. But is you have too much of it, it can cause stubbornness, arrogance, isolation, and a critical nature. To rebalance it bring in orange.
Indigo: (Third Eye) The only tertiary color in the chakra system and rainbow, indigo resides at the third eye and is the color of intuition, higher mind functions, being able to channel or be psychic and looking within. This is a wonderful color to use for meditation and a spiritual Yoga/Chi Gong/Tai Chi practice. If you have an excessive amount, you will feel isolated, depressed, or be detached from reality. Bring in the color gold to rebalance.
Purple: (Crown) A combination of red and blue, purple is the final color of the rainbow. It is the color of spirituality, and since it resides in the crown of our heads, it connects us most certainly to our Divine guidance. It is the color to use when we have suffered great loss, when we want to transform or transmute something, or when we are healing. Too much purple makes us suicidal, eccentric, elite. Use yellow to rebalance.
So how do we USE color?
This is why I love using color as a tool for healing and support for my clients, my friends, my family and my self: It is with us always.
We need only close our eyes and imagine the color in our mind’s eye.
We can use color breathing where we imagine the color around us and begin to breathe it in and out, filling our lungs and then our bodies with the color we need.
We can use clothing, jewelry and other accessories, flowers, flower essences, essential oils, foods, music…
There are endless ways to bring color into our lives.
Generally, when I recommend a color to someone they already have something in their possession in that color. And if you need a color that you don’t like, you can wear it where you don’t see it: underwear or socks perhaps.
Or you can use Simply Color Sprays which I created and make just for that purpose of serving people with their color needs. They are made from charged water, essential oils, gem elixirs, and/or flower essences and so are all natural and so simple to use.
And best of all, with color breathing, you can do that anywhere at any time and no one will even know, which makes it a perfect tool to use as you stand in a line to check out of a store, or going through airport security lines…anywhere you are, color can be there also!
I hope you enjoy the power and blessing of colors each and every day of your life. Color is such a gift we have been given, easily accessible, very powerful, lovingly gentle, and transformative.
“Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.” – Oscar Wilde
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Diantha Harris has worked with, studied, written about and played with color her entire life. She is currently living in Vero Beach, Florida and Big Bay, Michigan where she works with clients and continues to write, teach, and speak about color. The author of two best-selling books on color, Diantha is also the creator of her own line of color sprays made from essential oils. You can peruse a whole wealth of information on color, listen to free meditations, read her blog, or take a free color quiz at www.lifepotentials.net.
(Originally written for the Interior Alignment Newsletter)
Hi. My name is Diantha, like the flower Dianthus, and I love color. Always have, always will. I’ve studied it, worked with it, played with it, wondered about it, dreamed about it, and developed a business around it. My goal was to change the world through color, and although a lofty and probably unachievable goal, my vision will always be one in which all people learn the value and power of color and how it can support us and transform us as we move through our challenges.
To that end I developed a full line of color sprays which I named after my first book: Simply Color (available now at your Kindle store). The 15 Simply Color sprays were developed during the time I was doing a lot of teaching about color and I wanted something simple and easy that my students and clients could use to bring in the color they most needed. You see, the colors of the rainbow spectrum relate to our chakras, organs, glands, emotional, physical, mental and spiritual planes. When something is out of alignment, we get sick, or have issues arise in our lives. Being human beings, this happens frequently as we are here to learn, to develop our souls and to raise our consciousness.
So I learned how to use color to our advantage and have taught countless others how to do that as well. For example, the color of red relates to our ability to ground and manifest. It is extremely helpful to use when we lack energy, or want to start a business, or when we desire to manifest something. Or the color of blue relates to peace, calming and communication. When I was learning to speak up for myself, blue was the color that supported me in learning and then doing that, with grace and ease.
Each color also relates to an organ and gland. So on the physical level it can have an impact as well as emotionally, mentally or spiritually. When we have a challenge in life, we use up the color in our energy body that relates to that color and we need to replenish it. These color sprays are like liquid light, carrying the vibrational qualities of each color so that using the spray will help replenish the colors that have been diminished or lost.
I developed 15 Simply Color Sprays, 10 Simply Color Children’s Sprays, 17 Simply Feng Shui sprays, and have 3 Healing Sprays. I also make custom sprays that target an individual’s needs.
One of my favorites in the Simply Color collection is Rainbow. It is a great general spray for elevating one’s spirits and bathing the energy body in the rainbow spectrum. It smells lovely even though the formulas are not created for scent but for effectiveness.
In the healing sprays, my favorite is Angel’s Song which was originally made for a young male who was in crisis. His Grandmother contacted me and told me what was going on and the result wass this amazingly powerful but gentle spray. Opalescence is another in this series developed to bring joy, creativity and inspiration to creative endeavors. Originally made for an artist, most people who order this are using it for it’s effervescent, magical energy.
Once I created the color sprays, I also developed a full line of Feng Shui sprays. My favorite in this collection is the Wellbeing one which brings in the vibration of wholeness and wellbeing based in the core of our being. This one targets the middle gua of the 9 in the bagua, which is known as Health. And without health, we have nothing.
The sprays contain a propietary blend of essential oils, flower essences, solarized and charged water, gem elixirs and energetic infusions. Each one is infused with the essence of love because I believe that the vibration of love can elevate the consciousness of the planet to its next level of development. So perhaps my original dream of changing the world CAN come true. With many of us working towards that end, I think it will!
I’m not sure but I would bet that anyone you ask might believe that the world seems to be upside down, things are not what they seem, and chaotic might be a word they would use to describe the current state of the world.
Indeed, these are “interesting times” from the ancient “Chinese curse” we have all heard about for years. (In case you are not familiar with that old saw, the ancient “Chinese curse” is “May you live in interesting times.”)
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the colors might help sort things out for us, how they might supporus, and how they might lead us through these challenging times. Color for our time is an amazing support for us, colors are always with us, and color can ultimately help us negotiate troubled waters and get to a place of smoother sailing.
Let’s examine all the chakra colors to see how they become “colors for our time”:
RED: This color is so necessary for us to use to remain grounded and to fuel our energy. If you are one of the way-showers, a person who is here to bring more light to the planet, then it is imperative to remain grounded in the earth in order to manifest your destiny. It is necessary to be grounded in order to manifest anything at all, and necessary to keep our center strong, and full of energy. Red is also a fuel for our energy and a color we can use to activate our intentions.
ORANGE: We also need a strong container to hold our energy and intentions. Without a container, the energy leaks away and has no focus, much like water without a pipe or hose or container of some sort. It will just ebb away. Orange helps us with creating and maintaining boundaries. Those boundaries are imperative if we are to manifest our destiny at this time.
YELLOW: A color that radiates, happiness, yellow helps bolster our spirits. More than that, though, yellow helps us focus, helps us remember, and helps us “digest” all that is going on. IT helps with assimilation of all sorts and right now we must be nimble and cogent around each situation.
GREEN: The color of the heart, green helps us remain seted in our heart center. the more we can act from this place, the better the world will be. We must rid ourselves of the hate, the disrespect of others who think differently than we do, the anger and righteous indignation that reigns supreme so often in our lives. Coming back to the heart center we will be better able to listen to others, to listen to our own wisdom, and to discern where the truth lies.
BLUE: More than any other color, blue is the color of peace and trust. We need both very much right now. Most of us yearn deeply for peace. We yearn for leaders whom we can trust. We yearn for a world where love can prevail over hate, where discernment is used before judgment, where peace is the goal rather than greed and power. These qualities all lie within the domain of blue.
INDIGO: We can use indigo to help us with the inward focus on ourselves, clearing us to more acceptance, more understanding and forgiveness, more spiritually based thoughts and actions. It also helps with dream work and many believe that in today’s world we are being guided through our dreams, and understanding them is of utmost importance. (Note to readers: I would personally add yellow when using indigo for dream work as yellow helps with both clarity and assimilation.)
PURPLE: The color for transitions and transformations, we can use purple to help us move forward to a world we only dream of today. This is where the magic lies and we can employ purple to create the changes for a more stable, heart centered, peace loving world.
HOW DO WE USE THE COLORS? There are so many ways to bring color into your daily life easily and most are without cost. You can wear it, breathe it, create bubbles of color protection with your intention and visualization, use essential oils/flower essences/gem elixirs, use accessories in clothing/jewelry/home and office, vases of flowers, pots of flowers and plants, gems and stones, and many other ways. In addition I have created a full line of color sprays that are a very easy and inexpensive way to use color eliminating all guesswork on your part. Click here to read more….
And to find out what each color can do, click here and then click on each color to read about its own qualities and how to work with each complementary color.
Turning to the Rainbow Chakra colors as the Colors of Our Time will bring you support, guidance, and help with transitions and changes. It is using the gift of the Rainbow that nature has given us in order to make the transitions that are occuring on the planet at this moment in time.
Enjoy the colors. Namaste.
Diantha has studied color intensely for over 30 years from several different aspects including art, art history, religions, philosophies, energy work, feng shui, healing systems using color, interior design, flower essences, gem elixirs, essential oils, gems and stones. She continues to learn as she teaches, writes and speaks about her beloved world of color. Believing that color is both subtle and powerful, gentle and effective, Diantha also believes color is a gift from the Divine, another gift given us from the nature kingdom for us to use for support, change, and the unfoldment of conscious living. The author of 3 books, you can peruse her new book, Simply Color for Everyday Living on her website and receive many free offerings. www.lifepotentials.net
Luann Cibik! One of the contributors to the book, Simply Color for Everyday Living!
Luann is an amazing teacher, practitioner and Intentional Jewelry Designer. You will want to hear this interview with Luann!
Luann is so talented and talks to us about her Intentional Jewelry and how she uses color to enhance all her work whether in her jewelry business or when teaching and practicing Interior Alignment. Be sure you hear this interview!
Since Simply Color for Everyday Living was published in September, I have been on many radio shows talking about color. It has been so much fun and the thing that seems to grab most people’s attention is the fact that orange can help support us as we heal from traumas and shocks.
I personally am so grateful to know this as life seems to serve up plenty of these occasions where we get flattened from out of nowhere. It could be a careless remark from someone we love, or it could be a fender bender or worse. It could be a physical whammy or the loss of a friend or family member. Whatever the trauma or shock, it affects our chakra system, particularly the sacral or second chakra.
The color of that chakra is orange and when we are dealing with these life issues, we deplete our system of orange and we need to replenish it, just as much as we need to replenish nutrients when our bodies are deficient in them.
Orange is a very juicy color that we need over and over to keep our sacral chakra happy. Keep supplying orange to your body so that this important chakra never slips into a depleted and weakened state. Like everything else, maintaining is a lot easier than getting into a state of emergency.
Any questions, feel free to ask. Be well!
WELLBEING How to keep all the chakras in balance.
Last month we talked about what colors fuel which chakras. This month let’s address different ways we can bring the colors in:
Foods: pretty self explanatory. Just eat the foods that are the same color as the color you are needing. In our example of orange above, kumquats, oranges, yams, sweet potatoes, orange peppers are just a few examples of what to eat to replenish orange.
Accessories: either in décor or fashion. One of my personal favorite ways is with scarves. They are relatively inexpensive, store easily, and come in all the colors we know and love.
Flower essences: simply select a flower essence that is made from a flower that is the color you are needing. In this case it might be orange begonia. You can put a few drops in your drinking water or place directly under your tongue and let your body absorb it. You could also put a few drops into your body lotion and smooth it on, especially over the sacral chakra.
Essential oils: selecting an orange oil and diffusing it into your space is an easy and pleasant way to bring orange into your body. This is especially good if you do not care for the color and don’t want to wear it or see it.
Clothing: any piece of orange clothing would work including things that don’t show such as underwear or socks.
Gems and Stones: select the ones that are the color(s) you need and hold them or display near your bed or desk.
Get creative: using art supplies of various colors is a fun way to bring colors into your aura.
Sprays: using Simply color sprays is a very simple way to bring the essence of a color into your aura. You can spray it around your body, onto your pillowcase, into a bowl of water on your desk as you work, into your car, around your desk area.
Can you think of other ways to use color? See Simply Color for Everyday Living for great examples of ways to use color creatively, intuitively, and easily.
One of my favorite people has just acquired an aura imaging machine. She is as nuts about color as I am and has studied alternative healing methods as I have. So we are having fun seeing how healing methods such as reflexology (hers), color sprays (mine), and other methods change our auras and the auras of people we test.
What is so amazing is how MUCH our auras change when these methods are applied. They say that disease begins in the aura where our body blueprint is and works its way into the body. We can see with this machine how auras become more balanced, holes get filled in, and shadows disappear. So now more than ever I believe in the power of alternative healing methods. They can be used right along with the approach and wisdom of Western Medicine.
Treat yourself to a massage, a reflexology treatment, a color healing session, Reiki etc. Believe me, your body and your aura will benefit!
Self Love 
“Wooden Hearts” 
The colors of love could be any of these depending on how you use them. I recommend pink for unifying group energies and to create an atmosphere of unconditional love in a space. Red for passionate love. Green for infusing heart energy into an environment, and purple for a more spiritual type of love. Magenta is love of beauty and can be used to infuse “love from above”. http://www.lifepotentials.net/shop/ 
This is the Table of Contents for Simply Color for Everyday Living, the latest book in the Simiply Color series. It was written by 25 professionals plus myself and covers all these ways to use color. Dr. Quaranto describes it as a “combination of self developement, feng shui,” and “tons of ideas.” The book is a great gift item, as well as a wonderful book for your own library and reference http://www.lifepotentials.net/media/books 
