The Party’s Over
January – the month after the exciting parties, the gift-giving bonanza and the free pass to blow our diet with all of our favorite fun foods. But, once the New Year’s Day celebrations are over, what’s left? It seems like all January offers us is cold weather and short days with long nights to accompany them. For many of us, this month brings on the after-Holiday blues, also known as the winter blues.
The winter blues are characterized by gray days that make us feel cold, empty and unmotivated. All we want to do is stay indoors, curl up in oversized, cozy clothes and eat. In effect, we hibernate. We don’t see other people as much, if at all, until the warm weather returns. Even in my tight-knit community, I might go weeks without seeing my neighbors. In fact, we are forced to pick up the phone and call each other to see how things are going, like back in the old days. But, there is a remedy to the winter blues that is simple, easy and very powerful. It all has to do with yellow.
Similar to the healing properties of that big, beautiful yellow star in the sky we call the sun, yellow provides us with a much needed boost during the winter months. When we feel tired and listless, surrounding ourselves with yellow helps bring the energy of the sun back into our life. So, we could paint our favorite room yellow, eat yellow foods or wear yellow clothes. A bright yellow scarf really adds color to a winter coat, many of which are black or gray. As we sit in the brightly colored room or make lemonade with big, bold yellow lemons, we can imagine the sun warmly radiating down on our face and soak in that beautiful, uplifting energy. This is using yellow in every way by being enveloped in it, ingesting it and visualizing it. Give it a try. It really does work.
There is so much more to yellow than meets the eye. Most of us don’t realize that yellow is the color of one of the seven energy centers that are part of the human body. Our yellow energy center can be summoned and expanded to provide power, clarification, optimism and energy. It is the awareness and expansion of this wonderful energy that can help us beat the winter blues once and for all.
We are Solar-powered
The body is an energy field, or aura, that extends beyond the boundaries of the human body and has seven energy centers known as chakras. Chakra is an ancient word that comes from Sanskrit, an ancient Indic language that has been around since 1200 BCE, and perhaps even before. The seven chakras allow the flow of energy in and out of the body’s auric field.
Each chakra can be thought of as a disk or wheel that vibrates with energy. The seven chakras pictured below,
each correspond to a color. That’s because each of the chakras vibrates at a particular frequency which responds to different vibrations, or wavelengths, of light. You may notice the chakras correspond to the colors of the rainbow, or the visible light spectrum. These are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Chakras begin at a low, slow frequency at the base of the tailbone (red) and move up the body to the crown where a high, fast frequency of energy exists (violet). The third chakra, located in the solar plexus region, is yellow.
Focusing on this chakra, located just above the navel and below the rib cage, we can connect with this area, which is our center of our powerful intuition- our center of truth and reality. This is the core of our being, just as the sun is the core, or center, of our solar system. Think about the term solar plexus. Solar meaning sun and plexus meaning a complex network of nerves. The solar plexus sheds lights on our life as it embodies true intelligence rather than mind intelligence and illumination rather than confusion. This is where yellow can provide clarity to us, focus and a deeper connection to reality. Less mind games, more yellow chakra. Less ego, more love.
Yellow provides us with so much assistance for our daily challenges, mental, emotional and physical, if we will only tune into this amazing energy center. For instance, yellow, being the brightest hue of all the chakras, offers us hope, cheerfulness and fun. It creates enthusiasm in life and can awaken confidence and optimism. Yellow is the antidote to our winter blues. With an awareness of what yellow can do for us, setting an intention to focus on it and incorporating it into our life, we can benefit from the powerful frequency of energy that is the color yellow.
Cultivating Balance with Yellow
Most of us are out of balance in many ways. Our diets are out of balance with what is healthy and sustaining and our digestion is out of balance causing many preventable illnesses associated with this area. But, even more than that, our thinking is out of balance, meaning we think our way through life instead of actually living our life. But, we can heal our lives and, in this case, we can use yellow to help us.
Cultivating more yellow into your life means balance. Instead of paying so much attention to our thoughts and getting hooked into thinking about life so much, we can focus more attention on our intuition. Intuition is without judgment, guilt, blame and resentment so it provides us with more balance in life than thinking could ever give us. That means quieting our thoughts through meditation or other means and allowing the intuition to arise within us. It is there. When we allow our intuition to guide us through life, we accept ourselves, others and life situations with grace, trust and love. We let go of old thinking that does not serve us. We forgive and we move on. A gentle flow of life develops and we are able to connect with more joy and freedom that we ever could with all that thinking.
There are many ways to heal our lives using yellow. Healing is most powerful to us when we invite it into our lives and embrace it each day. One of the things we can do is imagine yellow light emanating from our solar plexus region. This is like having our own personal sun lighting our path while leaving a trail of light in our wake as we imagine the light shining from the front and the back of our chakra. Additionally, there are yoga poses, aromatherapy, sound therapy, crystals and gemstones that can awaken and balance this energy center.
Affirmations can be a powerful way to bring yellow into your life and help you focus on the Solar Plexus chakra, too. Below is a sample of one affirmation courtesy of the chakra-anatomy.com website and adapted for use here. It is recommended to say this affirmation twice a day for up to fifteen minutes each time. You can start with two minutes and work your way up. Of course, you can always add this to your repertoire of meditations and go longer if you wish. Here is the affirmation:
I love and accept myself. I stand up for myself. I am strong and courageous. I am worthy of love, kindness, and respect. I choose the best for myself. I express myself in a powerful way. I am proud of my achievements. I honor myself. I choose healthy relationships. I am authentic. I direct my own life. I appreciate my strengths. I feel my own power. I am free to choose in any situation. I seek opportunities for personal and spiritual growth. I am at peace with myself. (A deep breath in) I lovingly acknowledge, accept and appreciate.
Yellow is a gift to us if we will open it and let the light shine through. Getting to know this color, the chakra it represents and it’s healing, balancing powers allows us to transform our lives. We no longer have to wait for Spring to arrive in order to feel refreshed, warm and powerful. We have our own sun, our solar center, which can carry us through the winter months. We have the power to turn the winter blues into fun in the sun!
