When the grieving process begins, it hits hard. When someone close to you dies, a loved family member or friend, the loss of a family pet, your job, a relationship, or something that once belonged to you and is now gone forever, there can be overwhelming feelings of pain and grief.
If you have ever worked in the volunteer field in hospice programs or friendly visits, you know that working as a team with clients is about providing support so that patients can maintain a quality life, with some semblance of normalcy on a daily basis. In addition, it provides support to family members throughout the process in the event that a patient dies.
For some, grief can be a feeling of loneliness, isolation, and dealing with grievance can often be very personal. In a wave of emotions, your thoughts and feelings bubble up to the front of your mind. It is during these times of sorrow and pain that one can actively seek color therapy to restore balance and harmony to one’s life. Grieving through color can help shift your state of consciousness and emotion as a way to break free and break through the wall of pain by ‘letting it go’.
Find out how you can benefit from wearing color as you go through the grieving process, whether it’s for yourself or to help a friend in need. Let’s look at a three-step process that one must deal with first.
Step 1. Shock and Denial – Disbelief and a sense of numbness is what you must overcome by coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
Step 2. Experience acute grief: You must overcome crying spells, feelings of guilt and anger, depression, insomnia, and fatigue.
Step 3. Solutions to Rebuild – Accepting to move on, allowing yourself to move forward, reorganizing, coming back to yourself, being aware of the grievance and being able to think about the deceased without feeling pain tells you that you have indeed made great progress in dealing with life and life
There are countless ways to add color to your life as you go through the grieving process. Top five suggestions;
1. Color Visualizations – Restores balance to the body, mind and emotions.
2. Color Meditations: Bring the energy of the mind into a relaxed and natural state of stillness.
3. Color Crystal Healing – Allows you to cleanse, clear, ground, energize, balance, bringing peace and harmony to your body, mind and soul.
4. Plants and color: red to stimulate and energize, blue to calm, bring peace and help with communication and expression, purple to balance and calm the mind, to name a few color remedies with plants or flowers.
5. Color Essence: It can quickly restore and balance your energy.
Now let’s get specific, let’s review how the qualities of color are valuable and can be used to enhance your emotional state of awareness as you go through the grieving process.
Pink – Helps soothe your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wounds by bringing sympathy and comfort. Rose is spiritually uplifting and understanding paving the way for compassion and support with her gentle energy.
Red: A color that symbolizes what we need to survive, red brings us focus and gives us a boost of confidence when needed. Allow red to permeate your life when you lack enthusiasm and interest in living, feel insecure, fearful or anxious.
Orange – Used in times of stress or shock, it returns the body to a state of balance. When you feel unable to ‘let go’ of a situation or something, resentment, lack of interest in the environment, orange gives you the courage to face your fears.
Yellow – Improves your concentration, allowing you to be alert. If you feel confused, weak, nervous or exhausted, yellow like morning sunlight is stimulating and helps your brain’s memory function, especially for decision making.
Green – Restores your balance. Fear of the unknown or if you feel the need to let change happen, green forgives you to “let go” and move on.
Blue: In times of grief, blue helps us understand that death and loss are cycles of life. Perhaps you feel agitated, unable to express or communicate your thoughts that need peace or detachment, in the color blue you will find solitude and rest.
Indigo: has the energy from which you can draw strength to forgive, find peace and leave time for contemplation and meditation. Indigo is especially good when you are seeking relief from physical, mental, and emotional pain related to life issues.
Violet – This is a great color for insomnia and restlessness (tip: a few drops of lavender oil on your pillow at night for peaceful sleep) that encourages the flow of imagination and focuses ideas. When you lack balance in life or in your body, you are depressed, lethargic and face many obstacles that you need to ‘let go’, you will find unity in the color violet, balancing your actions and your mind.
Transitioning through grievance often requires people to provide friendly support in a time of need, acting as advisers or personal confidants. Simply letting those who have experienced the loss know that you care says a lot. Listening, as they share their pain, allows everyone to express themselves, so that they can forgive, ‘let go’ and move on with daily tasks.
Surrounding yourself with color can ease tensions for you and your family members, allowing the warmth and love to continue. Used as a tool in therapy for thousands of years and its application to your life during grief, color offers much to restore balance and harmony in your life, improving well-being.
Through the colored eyes that process your grievance, remember to acknowledge your pain, make room for change, and look to the future to live a full and happy life. Believe in the possibilities and power of color.