by Colleen Benelli
First Published – Reiki News Magazine, Summer 2011.
Artwork by Gaia Orion.
“A colour a day keeps the doctor away, So colour yourself healthy, wealthy and wise.” — LILIAN VERNERBONDS.
Reiki returns the presence of beautiful colors back to our bodies and our lives. My Reiki guides tell me that Earth is the planet of color. It is unique in creation in the variety, quantity, and brilliance of color and when a spirit incarnates on the earth, its physical body will be made of the same brilliant colors. Whether human, tree, animal, or any other form that exists on this planet, color is a common element we all share. My guides also tell me that color is one of the main attractions of earth and a major reason our spirit loves to live here.
Color is also an element of spirit. Our spirit is full of divine color. When we are born, the colors of our spirit align with the colors of our physical body a kind of gravity for our spirit, connecting our spirit to our body and connecting our body to the earth.
It is easy to heal with color and Reiki. Anyone can do it. Reiki heals with color automatically. The healing power of color is given to us in our first attunement. More than likely, you have already had similar experiences with Reiki and color.
Our chakras are the physical gateway for the colors of our spirit. Our chakra colors are the same as the colors of the rainbow. Our root chakra is red, the sacral chakra is orange, the solar plexus chakra is yellow, the heart is green, the throat is blue, the third eye is indigo and the crown is violet. When our spirit incarnates into our body, the colors of our spirit enter the physical body through our chakras. Then they align and become in sync with each other.
And life is color and warmth and light And a striving evermore for these. —JULIANGRENFELL
When our colors are full and aligned, we feel secure, capable, creative, expressive, compassionate, truthful, intuitive, imaginative, inspired, and connected to spirit. It feels as if our actions match our intentions, and that we are fulfilling our spiritual purpose here on earth. Things seem to work out easily, serendipity is present, and we can notice the blessings all around us.
When our colors are out of alignment or depleted, we can feel as if the world is wobbly and not working easily for us we can struggle with creating and manifesting. Sometimes it can be difficult to express ourselves or to know what we want; it can be challenging to feel or we can feel too deeply; our intuition may be blocked or we can feel as if we are “out of our mind.” It can be hard to speak our truth and be heard. When our chakra colors are not aligned, we can feel disconnected from spirit and from the earth, and we often feel as if we are not all the way in our body.
Twenty-year practicing psychologist Mia Rose says:
Healing colors repair the body in a marvelous way. A rainbow of colors can be seen in so many things water, snow, crystals… it’s reflected everywhere. Color affects our emotions, which will be shown through our bodies. We don’t even have to see color to be affected by it. Our bodies, too, act as a prism in the light. When we are well, all the colors shine through us in an ever-changing, rhythmical light show.
Color is nature’s healer. It can be prescribed to treat various ailments just as drugs can. Its energy affects us physically (red), mentally (yellow), and emotionally (blue). Color affects us in totality. We can eat, drink, breathe, visualize, meditate, and dance color. When we’re feeling off-color we can apply color to restore the bank of health.
Color healing is not a new idea. In his book, The Seven Keys to Colour Healing, Roland Hunt writes:
In the ancient temples of Helipolis, Egypt, the force of colour was used, not only as an aid to worship, but also as a healing agent. These temples were oriented so that the sun shone through in such a way that its light was broken up into seven prismatic colours and suffering ones were bathed in that special colour which they needed to restore them to health.”
Reiki taught me about healing with color starting with my Reiki I attunement. Color kept showing up in my Reiki sessions. My clients always told me about the beautiful colors they saw; then when I began teaching, my students talked about the amazing colors present during their Reiki attunements. These comments became more consistent, so I started asking Reiki more questions about healing with color. I also started working with chakra balancing in my Reiki sessions, so the imbalances in the colors of the chakras started to present themselves. I heard other Reiki practitioners talk of similar experiences, letting me know that I was experiencing an aspect of Reiki that was not unique to me. As Reiki will do, it taught me that it automatically heals the colors of our body and spirit, but that there was more I could learn about the separate aspects of healing with color if I paid attention.
The following are examples of healing with color that demonstrate signs of imbalance that may be present when color is depleted and also the results of the healing people received once their chakras again vibrated with their full colors. I remember one of the first times I recognized the absence of yellow in the third chakra of a client. I was using the Japanese Reiki technique of Byosen scanning over my client’s chakras. Through the scanning, I found that his third chakra felt completely depleted. Reiki showed me that the color yellow had drained out of his body during a very difficult relation-ship that had just ended. Unknowingly, he had given his own life force energy to this other person in an attempt to save the relationship. Her demands had literally drained the color out of him. For him, this brought about depression, low vitality, and a loss of self-esteem. He couldn’t imagine what he wanted in life anymore.
During his Reiki treatment, I placed one hand on his heart and another on his solar plexus, and called to the divine essence of yellow both from the earth and from the divine source of color above, and filled his third chakra with brilliant yellow color. It looked like liquid sunlight filling his belly. I watched as the rest of the old, worn-out yellow transformed into brilliant yellow light. Then the yellow edges blended into the green of his heart chakra, and the orange of his sacral chakra. I then completed his session by balancing and aligning all of his chakras and colors.
After his Reiki session, his strength and creativity returned, and he found new interests in his life. This Reiki session really caught my attention, and I began to include the possibility of healing color in the body more often.
In another early situation, I was asked to give Reiki to a young boy with autism. This was one of my most powerful experiences with the healing effects of color. My young client was very low-functioning at the time, but his mother didn’t tell me he was autistic. When I met him, he and I had such a telepathic connection that I thought we had had a conversation. During his Reiki session, he fell asleep, and that night, he stayed asleep through the night for the first time in his life. He had a miraculous response to Reiki. After just a few Reiki sessions, he started talking and actually became high-functioning. During his Reiki session, my spirit guides told me that he was missing some of his spiritual colors and spiritual minerals, and that this kept him in a constant state of floating inside his mind. His mind was in a state of weightlessness as he floated through the universe, unable to keep his spirit or his mind here on earth.
In his treatment, I asked Reiki to infuse his body with the spiritual colors and minerals he needed to be present in his body and on earth. During the session, I noticed powerful color entering into his body in every chakra. His body received divine color from above and divine color from the earth. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and reds entered in spirit form down through his crown chakra and divine color from the earth red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and indigo traveled up through his feet. I watched the colors from above merge with the colors from below and align in each of his chakras. The red from above merged with the red from the earth and moved into sync with each other. This repeated in every chakra. I also saw color entering his body from above and below each chakra, as if from the ceiling and the floor. Red from above and red from below filled his root chakra, and repeated in each of his chakras throughout his body. Next I saw the alignment of his spiritual colors with his chakras, then the alignment of his chakras with the colors of the earth in order to ground him here. At the same time that his colors were aligning, I also saw spiritual minerals fill his body. The minerals were shown to me in the shapes of sand and stones that came from different areas of the spiritual universe. I found myself reaching my hand out above him, and Reiki guides handed the minerals to me. I then blew them into his chakras. The spiritual minerals blended with the colors of his physical body, which grounded his spirit into his body, and then grounded his body to the earth. His mind stopped floating and he became present in his body.
When this little boy needed to see me to have another Reiki session, he would tell his mother that he needed to go see “the color doctor.” I don’t think he ever knew my name because he knew me as the doctor who brought him beautiful colors. I believe that he could see the brilliant colors even more because of his autism. He talked about them in a way that made me think that I didn’t see them quite as brightly as he.
My experience with this young boy taught me about Reiki and color. After working with him, I finally realized that color was a consistent healing aspect of Reiki. This little boy had no filters and could see the power of color healing him. I am so grateful to him for teaching me through our Reiki sessions and to Reiki for changing his life. He was able to go to school and even take Tai Chi classes. In his Reiki sessions I was shown that he would live a full and thriving, happy life. His spirit told me that he wanted to keep some of the gifts he had from his autism. I eventually attuned him and his nine-year-old brother to Reiki so they could give each other Reiki. His older brother wanted to know how to use this amazing gift to help his little brother. He said that he wanted to grow up and become a color doctor and use Reiki to heal other children with autism! Over the years, I have found that imbalanced color in all the bodies mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical can lead to all kinds of ailments. A recent client who is in her seventies had a series of highly stressful life experiences that left her with a loss of memory, fatigue, and physical aches and pains. During her Reiki session, I found that in one of her recent stressful moments, a particularly traumatic phone call had made her spirit jolt inside her body. The result was that the colors of her spirit shifted out of alignment with the colors of her body. The green of her heart chakra was in her solar plexus and the yellow was in her heart chakra. Her spiritual colors were incorrectly overlaying the chakras of her body and it was affecting her mind and her emotions. Her physical body exhibited strange symptoms that her doctors couldn’t explain. During her Reiki treatment, Reiki adjusted the colors of her spirit, mind, and body, and then infused her with fresh color from the earth and new, divine color. Then it aligned her chakras again. Although she was not aware of what Reiki was doing during the session, she suddenly spoke about the amazing colors she was seeing. Afterward, when we talked about the Reiki treatment, she absolutely knew she felt very different. Her chest felt completely new and full. She could feel and imagine every shade of green again. It is one of the most fascinating blessings of Reiki that people actually know how their Reiki session has affected them, even when the results are outside of what they normally believe. As in her case, she was very aware of the color changes within her after the session. And she said that the session seemed to identify what she had been trying to tell everyone about her symptoms, but could never quite put into words. Although it was very different from what she had expected, she was delighted with her results. She immediately felt better and clearer than she had in a long while.
In another Reiki session, I found that my client was not aware of color in her external world. She had recently lost a loved one and felt as if she simply walked through a grey world every day. She was able to accomplish her daily tasks, but she felt no inspiration, passion, or enthusiasm. It was as if the earth had turned monotone in her vision everything seemed dull and lifeless and she had a hard time seeing beauty in the world around her. During her Reiki treatment, we both felt the colors of the earth flowing through her. The colors filled her aura and expanded the light around her body. My Reiki guides told me that she would awaken to the colors of the earth now and that everything would be more vivid and alive. They said she would see beauty with both her physical and her intuitive eyes. Her passion returned, and she was blessed with inspiration and enthusiasm. She flew home to Los Angeles the next day, and while she was driving home from the airport, a rainbow appeared right in front of her on the freeway! She actually drove through it! (This is very unusual for L.A.!) When I talked to her, she said she felt so much lighter. She also felt clear-headed about some big life decisions she had to make that in fact everything felt so much easier and brighter.
Color infusion and alignment is also great for babies. Of course when working with babies, you won’t always have the ability to do this exactly as it is written in this article because babies move around a lot!
I recently had my back go out for three weeks. As I was giving myself Reiki, I asked for my colors to align with the colors of the earth. Then I asked for my colors to be filled up with the divine color of my spirit. In the beginning I couldn’t sit down or walk. Each day, I gave myself Reiki and a color session. I found that I was able to let the tension causing the pain in my back to release, and I sent it into the earth. I also found that this treatment helped me receive the benefits of acupuncture, chiropractic, and massage. Today, I can sit and walk again, and I feel about 90% back to normal (which has allowed me to write this article)!
The examples above are just a few of my experiences in healing with Reiki and color. I find that I balance the colors of the chakras in most of my Reiki sessions as part of my Reiki session routine. Our chakras can easily get out of balance because of our life experiences and struggles, and even if color imbalance and depletion isn’t a primary cause of their ailments, almost all of my clients can use a color infusion and alignment.
As a Reiki practitioner, I find that people’s colors are often depleted. Almost every client has at least one color and chakra that is out of balance. Using Byosen scanning over the chakras can identify the lack of color within a body. There isn’t necessarily a consistent feeling I get with Byosen and misaligned colors in the chakras most often, I just get a sense of emptiness.
There are several symbols that I believe enhance Reiki’s ability to empower us with color. I have described them below. How ever, if you aren’t attuned to these symbols, Reiki will still heal with color. All of the Reiki symbols will respond to your intention. Just invite the ones that you are attuned to and ask them to heal, balance, and align the colors of the body. In every Reiki session, Reiki is always doing the work, so using the exact symbols isn’t as important as allowing Reiki to flow through you for healing. It is also not important that you know a lot about healing the body’s colors, or that you receive information about the colors.
Again, Reiki knows what to do; all you have to do is to let it do its job.
The Distance Symbol is the Reiki bridge of light. When I invite this symbol to heal with color, it creates a bridge of light into our body for the colors of our spirit and the colors of the earth. It gives the following Reiki symbols even deeper access to our spirit and our body by opening a pathway for them to enter from the divine to the physical.
The Usui Master Symbol is the “Treasure house of the great beaming light.” When I invite this symbol into a session for healing color in a person, divine color shows itself to me as ethereal light descending from a source above. It enters the body through the crown chakra, travels through each of the chakras, through the feet, and into the earth. It has a different feel to it than the colors of the earth because the colors of the earth are physical, and the colors of the divine are spiritual. The Usui Master Symbol helps the Divine enter the physical, filling you, “the treasure house,” with great, beaming lights from the divine source of all color.
The Tibetan Fire Serpent symbol connects the divine essence of the earth with our physical and spiritual bodies. When I invite this symbol in with color healing, it shows itself to me as the colors of creation from the earth, rising through the feet, up through each of the chakras, and out the crown chakra. The colors of the earth fill every cell of the body. It also connects us to the earth and the rhythm of her heartbeat within us. It reminds us that we are natural beings made of the earth and that our body holds the beautiful light of our spirit.
The Usui Mental/Emotional symbol heals our mental and emotional bodies. When used with color healing, it will align the colors of our mental and emotional bodies with the colors of the physical and spiritual bodies.
The Karuna Reiki® symbol Kriya balances our chakras. When I invite this symbol to heal with color, it shows itself as a very earth-centered, practical symbol. It balances our left and right sides, and aligns each chakra with the chakras above and below it. It connects us to the gravity of the earth and grounds our spirit to our humanity and to the planet. I use this symbol to align the colors in the chakras both vertically and horizontally. In other words, the colors enter vertically through our crown chakra and through our feet. They also enter us horizontally. Imagine that as you are lying there, the colors also enter each chakra from above us (as if from the ceiling) and from below us (as if from the floor).
The Karuna Reiki® symbol Rama empowers our soul essence within our body. When used for healing with color, its job is to bring our soul essence into our body and complete the alignment of our colors by synching our mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical bodies. I use this symbol last.
The following session style can be used for yourself with Reiki, or it can be used for your clients.
This technique can be used for yourself or for others. I find myself taking moments throughout my day to connect with the colors of the earth and to call them into my body. I may do long meditations connecting with the colors of my body, or I may take just a moment several times throughout my day to call color into my life force and body.
It is easy to heal with color and Reiki. Anyone can do it. Reiki heals with color automatically. The healing power of color is given to us in our first attunement. More than likely, you have already had similar experiences with Reiki and color. Reiki naturally brings bold and vivid color back to our lives. When we are in full color, we view the world through rose-colored glasses!
Colleen Benelli can be reached by email at colleen@reikilifestyle.com, by phone at 503.912.0664, on her website at www.reikilifestyle.wpengine.com, or on her Facebook page, Reiki Lifestyle-Colleen Benelli. Join Colleen’s monthly ReikiChat™ conversation, www.reikichat.com.
Colleen offers Reiki training and Reiki sessions. She is a compassionate, conscious healer who has clients around the world. Her healing methods include decades of discovery into the world of Reiki, including the new and powerful Holy Fire III Reiki. Learn more >
