i dont know what new agers actually call this, but some believe that using colors can heal you.
a friend of mine gave me a 'color healing kit' which was a chart, and colored bubble bath.
according to this kit, i was to have a bath with the color that coresponded with my health, or spiritual problems.
so i tried it.
i was feeling a bit tired for about a week, so used the yellow bottle which supposidly cured lathargy and spiritual stagnation.
it smelled like oranges.
so i used the unable to sleep one a couple of days later.
it smelled like lavander.
after using all 6(i think it was six, this was a couple years ago) i came to the conclusion that color had NOTHING to do with it, and it was the smells.
smell has a powerful effect on people.

so, is this just more new age garbage designed to sucker people out of their money, or are there colors that can 'clear your chakras' as this kit claimed it could do?

if anyone knows of a good site both for and against this 'technique' please post them.

I think that this kit was incorrectly labeled. There are colours that are associated with each of the seven chakras, but i can't remember them off the top of my head right now.

This kit should have been called "herb healing" or something like that. The colours were probably only present to be visaully pleasing. Colours can have an effect on our mood and what not, and can sometimes be healing in nature, but in your case, it was the herbs (smells) that did the healing. The herb Lavender, is most often used for it's calming effects and as an insomnia aid. Orange is often used for rejuvenation.

Please don't think horribly of this stuff. My question to you is: Did it work?

I wouldn't rule out color therapy just yet. This article is about a color found to have amazing calming effects:

Baker-Miller Pink

It's long, but well worth the read.

my kit worked for me, but because of the smells, not the colors.
scents can have an amazing effect on our bodies and minds.

i dont hold a lot of faith in colors being able to 'heal' us as a few sites that ive found about this claim.
do they work on blind people?

personally i think that healing with colors falls in the same line as cryatals. if you truly think it will help, it just might, but they will not help for serious things.

color is important to us, it definatly affects our mood, and feng shui, which i practice in my home relies heavily on color, but i doubt that it can affect our health in any major way.
sure, being in a hospital room might not make you feel any better due to the horrible colors they always insist on painting them, and not using bright yellow in your bedroom is a good idea, but i dont think that it goes any further than that.

t-i-e
i read that article, and agree that THAT is what color should be used for, it can have calming effects, but NOT what new age shops claim color can do.
ive seen some 'color healing kits' that claim to be able to cure a cold, rhumatism, strained muscles, lethargy, ect just by placing one of their overly priced patces of color with sticky stuff on the back on certain parts of your body.

As i said above, Lynda, the kit should have been called "herb healing" or something to the like. I don't know the extent of colour healing or it's power, but i'm sure there are some places (and people) out there that are just trying to scam money. Unfortunetaly, there are people in this world like that. In either case, i'm glad that the kit worked for you even if it wasn't the colour that was doing the "healing".

Colors can certainly affect people. Generally, doctors offices, hospitals and even restaurants have carefully chosen color schemes designed to put people in a certain mood. This, however, would probably not work for blind people. They say, though, that a person who has lost one of his senses makes up for it by improving the others, so perhaps a blind person would sense the emotions of others in the room, and the color would affect him in a by-proxy sort of way...

As for the chakras, there are seven. They are each assigned a color, parts of the body and emotions. If, one of your chakras is off-balance, you might feel a certain way. Identifying your state of emotion and then determining which chakra is out of whack helps you focus and clear out your chakra so it is not overwhelmed.

Color therapy may work for some people, but aroma-therapy is certainly more known and probably used more. As for color, when I perform healing I will visualize colors. It help me but has no effect on the person I'm healing (unless that person is me!).

Well Psychology has discovered that colors can affect a persons mood, Red raises the passions and hunger, this is why red is found in many restaurants. Further, Red is an attention getter - thus all the signs with Red.

Blue is a mellowing color, it is used in bed rooms and has been found to bring on depression.

Certain shades of green have similar effects.

Yellow is a bright and cheery color, it is found in Kitchens and makes the room feel 'good'.

White is considered sterile and cold.

Smells also have powerful influences on people - but they can be a bit tricky. I know people who find the most off smells to have different effects. I knew one guy who was attracted to the smell of motor oil - for him it was a 'turn-on'. This is due to a past expereince where the scent was associated with a strong emotion of love and security.

Aroma Therapy attempts to cause a reaction by filling the person's sense of smell with a scent which he/she associates with a certain feeling or mood. There are general scents which most people react to in a similar way.

Sounds have also been found to do the same thing.

Some people respond to one aspect more than they do with another.

These are not exact sciences since no two people are exactly the same - what works for one person may not work for another.

It sounds to me that the gift you received was an aroma/color therapy type of thing and you reacted to the aroma part more than the color part. This is 'normal' since not all people will not react as strongly to one aspect as the other.

Researchers have been studying these kinds of things for years there is validity in the concept.

Cheers

David