Healing Color Combinations by Ayurvedic Type

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filed under: General Health, Guidance, Health & Safety, Health & Wellness, Healthy Home, Healthy Mind, Spirituality, Ayurveda, color, healing, paint

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By Breyer

Does the color of some rooms make you squeamish? Itchy? Antsy? Does the color of other rooms make you soft? Calm? Wonderfully weak in the knees? It is no secret that we all respond to color, and each of us responds differently to different colors. Color has an amazing effect on us, and can influence our moods and energy with the simple flick of a hue.

Last year we wrote about Healing Paint Colors for Your Ayurveda Type, a super cool color system by AFM Safecoat paints that shows you how to find emotional balance through the use of color. We like AFM because they do business on a “health first premiseâ€â€“their Safecoat paints meet the highest standards of environmental responsibility, and also contain no toxic ingredients such as solvents, heavy metals, chemical residuals, formaldehyde and other harmful preservatives.

Their Ayurveda Essence color system takes the health premise a step further by offering interactive tools to help you manipulate subtle aspects of your environment to promote optimum wellness. Yay! There are 108 colors in three groups of 36. (I like how the number 108 surfaces frequently in sacred numerology.) To keep it simple, they created three micro palettes that correspond to the three major constitutional types of East Indian medicine: vata, pitta, and kapha. Once you know which type you are (see next page), you can select colors accordingly: whether the colors are hot or cold, warm or cool, calming or stimulating, uplifting or grounding, moist or dry, etc.� Eastern healing has generated many practices that promote harmony, they help to relieve stress by helping us understand how to create balance in the day-to-day.

As described by AMF, East Indian traditional healing proposes that there are five elements that can be simplified into three groups known as constitutional types or dosha. The elements are ether, air, fire, water, and earth. Ether and air are grouped together and known as vata. The vata constitution is akin to the ectomorph: of lean build and a thin frame. Fire stands separately as pitta, and the pitta constitution is akin to the mesomorph: an individual with a moderate frame and musculature. Water and earth are grouped together and known as kapha. Kapha types are akin to the endomorph: substantial in mass. Most of us are hybrids of the dosha types (such as vata/pitta or pitta/kapha), but a key point is that it is usually the aggravation of our primary dosha type that creates imbalance and disharmony

The Ayurveda Essence palettes are grouped together as such:

Ectomorph/Vata/Air and Space: A palette of muted and subdued earthy tones

Mesomorph/Pitta/Fire: Complex colors with a cooling and calming orientation

Endomorph/Kapha/Water and Earth: A palette of vibrant and stimulating colors with warm overtones

As a whole, Ayurveda Essence incorporates colors that range from deep and chromatic brights to the muted lights and neutrals. The steps in value between colors has been designed with an eye toward a harmonious contrast. This design feature automatically eliminates the kind of clash that can result from colors which are too close to one another in value, and makes the creation of monochromatic schemes easier. The key difference among the palettes is how they handle chromaticism. Each micro palette is constructed to avoid those portions of the color spectrum that would be the most aggravating to the respective constitution–they are very balanced.

Since we posted the last article on this color system, AFM has added another nifty tool to the options: a set of 17 healing color combinations. You can visit this page to see the color combinations, and while you are there you can click on the individual links on the left navigation column to see colors by Ayurvedic types: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.

If you don’t know what your Ayurvedic type is, find out here: Which Ayurvedic Type Are You?