…the natural world. A deep breath of fresh air, the sight of a sunset, a sunrise, an expanse of open land, mountains, deserts, canyons and valleys, a walk amongst the trees, the sound of wind and rain, the smell of herbs, the taste of fruits…..the warmth of the sun on your skin….the touch of a lover…..
Talk therapy doesn’t hold a candle to the healing power of consciousness using the senses to experience and appreciate the natural world.
If therapy is, at least in part, about creating change, either in behavior, mood, thought or even physiology, then color has a role to play in helping bring about changes. Colors are generally categorized as hot or cold, warm or cool….Red, orange and yellow are consider hot and warm colors whereas purple, blue and green are are the cold and cool colors. Advertising and design professionals spend a great deal of time considering color for it really does affect the psyche.
Decades ago, when my son was just a few years old, he had a fever. We put him in his bedroom, put blue light bulbs in the light sockets, and let him be in blue light. Within a couple of hours his fever was gone…..
A lot can be said about color therapy and if you are interested, I suggest you Google it…there is some interesting information out there.
Photography is all about light. Photo, as a word, is Greek in origin and translates to “light.” The graphing of light, however, is incomplete without shadows. Shadows give distinction and character, dimension and shape. Without shadows, a photograph wouldn’t be much to look at.
Psychologically speaking, the same is true about the mind, or the psyche. The shadow part of our personality, the “dark” side, has its place and a fair amount of therapy is geared towards looking at, accepting, and working with this shadow.
The shadow is considered an “archetype.” Archetypes are like blueprints. Archetypes tend to come in pairs. There is the “good” and the “bad.” The good “hero” is typically considered the antithesis of the bad “villian.” The hero is light, the villian is shadow. The hero, is honest, the shadow is deceitful. The hero is……and the shadow is………so many “positive” and “negative” qualities to list. There are other blueprint types found in psyche: the jester/joker, the magician, the elder, the child, the rebel, the servant, the teacher, the student, the man, the woman……Psyche can be well populated….YOUR psyche, IS well populated……