Saturday, December 13, 2008
Color Response
With the help of the Thekwini Project and my work with the University of Natural Medicine, I have learnt a lot about color and how this affects mood. A country like Canada has less sunshine hours per day as opposed to South Africa which enjoys lots of sunshine throughout the year. During the winter times in Canada, there are two colors i.e. white and grey. White is for the snow and grey is for the clouds. Canadians live under these ambient conditions for extended periods of time.
How does this affect mood? The research studies show that Canadians are twice as much as their American counterparts to suffer from depression. That’s because Americans have more sunshine on average than Canadians. The Mother Nature sunshine provides medicinal properties against depression.
The weather conditions also affect the color of clothes. When I first landed in Canada, most people wore dark clouds like black winter coats, brown coats and so forth. As time progressed, more and more people began wearing brighter clothes. In the forefront of wearing brighter clothes are the Canadian ladies which explain why I pay tribute to Canadian ladies in the book A Goodbye To My Little Troubles.
Brilliantly Red Winter Coat
Some few years ago I bought a brilliantly red winter coat. It was the greatest thing I had ever done. It brightened my mood, increased my sense of confidence and it was also very warm which helped a lot. Lots of people were always staring at me wherever I went in Ottawa because I seemed like a novelty. One day at my work, a Latin American colleague approached me with his brilliantly red winter coat which he had just bought and the rest is history. It’s now becoming common in Ottawa to see a guy with a red winter coat. Way to go guys! We still don’t have enough but I think as more people try these winter coats with rich and brilliant reds, they will find them to be conducive to positive mood.
Burgundy Color
The color that guys liked to wear or see in their cars was burgundy. This color is atrocious and I don’t understand why anyone should care about this color other than in their glass of wine. It does have its place like anything else but definitely not as a winter coat. The problem with burgundy is that it’s a subdued red. Why wear a subdued color which will further subdue your mood? Your mood is already subdued by the weather and why add to the existing aggravation? If the brilliant red does not work for you, try another color like white or even gold or yellow or sky blue. That would be a mood lifter.
Let’s Talk About Pink
Many guys associate pink with a girly color. Sure enough lots of girls wear pink but it doesn’t have to be a girly color. The powerful salmon fish wears pink and is capable of swimming against formidable currents in order to reach its goal. There is a lot of power associated with pink. It’s too bad that I haven’t seen a male winter coat in pink; this would be a great experiment. The color pink has the ability to lift mood. There is a reason why girls prefer this color because it lifts their mood.
Photo Sensitivity
We do know however that there is an exception to every rule. There are people that have a rare condition known as photo sensitivity. These folks develop discomfort or in an extreme case seizure as a result of a red color. Usually the trigger is the movement of objects with red in them. In some cases it may just be the movement or flashing of some color at a certain frequency. If you are such a person then avoid red as it may not be good for you. Talk to your health professional.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Enhancing Mood With Color
Some forms of negative mood like depression, anxiety and defensive aggression can respond well to the use of color as a therapeutic outcome. The use of color for therapeutic purposes is an ancient African healing modality.
The ancient Egyptians used color in their assortment of remedies. Some Sangomas use color as part of a holistic healing experience. The graduates of Lebollo in South Africa wear a certain color on their skin in a convocation ceremony which causes women to scream in the villages. Thereafter no one complains of depression or anxiety. The African cleansing and therapeutic rituals integrate color as a healing agent. How is it possible for color to be a healing agent?
Everyone has felt the calming effect of watching a blue sky. Color is a form of visible light that approximately vibrates at wavelengths ranging from 400nm to 700nm. When a 420nm light wavelength strikes the retina it is perceived as violet blue. Retinal light has always been described in terms of visual guidance for the organism. For the longest time it was not known how some form of colored light impinged on mood.
This fact changed when a groundbreaking research by Dr. George Brainard of the Thomas Jefferson University’s Department of Neurology led to the discovery of the missing link. Dr. Brainard and colleagues discovered the fifth photopigment that used light not just for vision as the other classic four i.e. rods and cones, but for purposes of regulating the circadian and neuroendocrine systems. These are systems that affect our mood. Dr. Brainard found the peak response in the range of 446nm to 477nm. These vary in the blue range.
When I demonstrated Thekwini on a laptop to the scientists at the Royal Ottawa Hospital and the NRC (National Research Council) in Ottawa they were amazed at the novel concept of inducing positive mood using a visual stimulus with color wavelengths. This project was subsequently approved for funding under the Industrial Research Assistance Program of the NRCl in Ottawa. Thekwini uses the principles of physics, vector calculus, signal processing, and signal detection, among others to process and inject the healing wavelengths into the visual stimulus.
An article “Shaking Off Negative Mood States With Thekwini” was been published in the newsletter Volunteer Views of the Canadian Mental Health Association in Ottawa. That article, according to the editor, received lots of positive feedback from the readers. It is hypothesized that Thekwini can effectively manage some forms of negative mood like depression, anxiety, SAD, defensive aggression, among others, in a non-invasive way.
Want to know the healing colors? Try green if you are hyper or recovering from an injury. This explains why some hospital walls are painted green. Feeling depressed? Try sky or indigo blue. In the winter season there is less light. A brilliantly saturated red, yellow or orange may be in order or an outright red or white colored coat can lift mood. Some epileptic persons must avoid rapidly moving stimuli likely to induce seizure like interlaced video screens, video games, dance clubs, some Television programs or set. Thekwini was designed to accommodate such persons. To see a demonstration of Thekwini check out The Gentle Sky on the Youtube Colormedicine channel.
About the Author:
Vusi Moloi is a published author of a contextual poetry book A Goodbye To My Little Troubles and a creator of Thekwini. In this book he writes about the history of mathematics and the cell membrane among many topics of human interest. The author explores the subject of color healing in the scholarly paper “The Golden Rays of the African Sun” published in The Heart of Our Community. Besides working as a software engineer Vusi holds a Diploma in the Holistic Science of Color Therapy.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Power of Transcendence
The Impossible Odds
At a certain time in the history of the great struggle for self-preservation, the African mongoose was like an ordinary mouse that constantly fell victim to the ferocious and bellicose cobra. The routine was for the African mongoose to always freeze and get eaten while the unprovoked snake destroyed and destabilized the families of the mongoose society. It seemed impossible to change the status quo.
From Victim to Survivor
One particular mongoose of long ago Manneheng decided that things had to change. This mongoose bargained with her creator for some retrofitting in order to take charge of her destiny. She needed to feed her babies and ensure their survival as well as leave a legacy of an indomitable life to the descendents. As the medicine women narrated the story to me, she did exactly that.
Her first line of attack was to analyze the brutal ways her foremothers and forefathers had been almost wiped out by the cobra in the same way that the great African American boxer Muhammad Ali analyzed the fighting sequences of his opponents before stepping into the ring. She discovered that, despite his fearsome stature and lethal fangs, the cobra was too slow and if she improved on that she could destroy him like a lightening bolt.
On a particular day she was traversing the grasslands of her African motherland when the cobra puffed his hood. This was a different day because she had put herself through the grueling physical and mental training that gave her the necessary preparedness to fight back. One interesting observation is that she seemed unimpressed by the cobra's hood. As the snake made the usual aggressive overtures, the mother mongoose respectfully maneuvered on the treacherous grounds. In a sudden move like a lightening barrage she jumped on his fearful hood and destroyed his crown. The African mongoose had changed the course of history. Not only did she move from victim to survivor, she went a step further to be crowned a victor.
Paying Tribute to the Heavens
She gathered all her babies and members of the extended family around the mountain of Matamong. Interestingly, it was the sentinels of the mongoose tribe that broke the news. At that point the mongoose looked to the heavens and as if to thank the Creator she bowed in what appeared to be a grateful curtsy. She was paying a deserved tribute to the heavens and the Creator.
Conclusion
It seemed outrageous for the ordinary mongoose that got eaten like a mouse victim to ever entertain the idea of fighting back. The impossible odds were stacked against her but trusting her instincts helped change the course of history. Today the cobra wets its pants when it sees the African mongoose. As humans we should take a page from the indomitable African mongoose.
Brain Overload May Trigger Depression
An Overkill Distress
Usually a specific incident will set off a depression response in a person. An overkill distress is a situation that drops a firewall between the individual and all forms of dignified exit from a personally embarrassing or catastrophic situation. It creates a feeling of being blocked similar to a perceived sense of being death trapped inside a stuck elevator. A depressed person sees no options. As a result of this extreme case, the brain goes into overdrive to force the individual to disengage. Thus depression is like a tow truck that hauls a person away from a survival damaging situation.
Chemical Disposition
Brain studies show that reduced levels of certain brain chemicals can make an individual susceptible to depression. The mail chemical linked to mood stabilization is serotonin. Brains of both depressed individuals as well as serial killers have been found to be very deficient with respect to the serotonin system. This partly explains the fact that depressed people may lose interest in living to a point of considering suicide as an option. This is a worse case scenario where a depressed person poses a threat to himself or herself as well as others.
Melancholy Thoughts
Facing a situation that create funks in the mind can lead to the processing of melancholy thoughts. Scholars have established that depressed individuals usually entertain negative thoughts which reinforce their depressed state vis-vis the never depressed individuals. The difference between the two is that the never depressed persons have the mental skills or some kind of mental rehearsal that helps them to protect them against succumbing to depression.
Poor Diet
The brain chemicals that stabilize mood like serotonin are indirectly found in natural foods like carbohydrates as well as fowl meats like duck, turkey, and chicken to name a few. Other food sources include wall nuts, almonds, tuna and others. Now I need to explain something here. I qualified the food sources of serotonin with the adverb "indirectly". This is because if you were to take serotonin by way of pills or somehow ingest it, it would not boost your brain levels of serotonin. Why? This is because serotonin cannot cross a blood brain barrier.
A precursor of serotonin, known as tryptophan, is capable of crossing the above mentioned barrier. Thus you need foods with high levels of tryptophan. However there is a caveat. Even if you had enough tryptophan it would still not boost your brain's happy hormones if you are low in vitamin B6. Tryptophan, like other brain chemicals, needs vitamin B6 in order to manufacture serotonin. If your diet was lacking in terms of tryptophan and Vitamin B6 you would be more likely to suffer depression.
Experts in mental health have experimentally shown that when an individual is deprived of food for longer periods it can induce a depressed or aggressive state. This is due to the brain chemical levels being at their low point
Conclusion
We have shown that the causes of depression include a variety of factors like an overkill distress, a chemical disposition, melancholy thoughts, and diet lacking in tryptophan among others. Failure to trust your instincts and heed some of these salient points may make it easy for depression to catch you off guard. Finally your current or next stressful experience does not have to be the last straw that broke the camel's back.
Yes Hypnosis Can Relieve Depression
Depression and its Function
Depression is a natural progression for the brain in the face of an inescapable overpowering distress. Normally a person would have been previously subjected to a series of overwhelming or stressful events and eventually some overpowering distress may trigger a depression response. Depression is a message from the brain that it has reached a point of saturation and can no longer effectively cope with the situation. The brain therefore goes into a mode of retreat. This explains why depressed people lose interest in things that they used to like to do. I explain more about this in my Youtube Channel Colormedicine.
Needed Mental Skills
The first order of business is to disengage from a distressing situation or environment. This is a prerequisite mental skill needed to bounce out of depression. Other necessary skills include the ability to relax and not be too hard on oneself. Depressed people are usually hard on themselves and show some form of mental inflexibility. Hypnosis can be used as both a relief as well as a way to equip a depressed individual with the correct mental skills.
Hypnosis and the Brain Activity
The Nobel Prize winning Russian scientist Dr. Ivan Pavlov declared that a hypnotic state put the brain in a form of half-sleep. Moreover fMRI studies show that depressed people bias their frontal brain activity of their PFC towards the right side whereas the Tibetan monks' brain activity, during intense meditation, is biased towards the left side of the same bilateral brain region. Hypnosis has been shown to achieve this as well, particularly among suggestible persons. Obviously, the qualitative outcome is a function of the hypnotist in terms of the repertoire of his or her skills. In other words hypnosis is your second best if you are not capable of engaging in efficacious meditation like the great Tibetan monks or the Sangomas of South Africa who also show the same mental discipline during situational extremes as explained in my book A Goodbye To My Little Troubles.
The Serotonin System
Brain chemistry is a factor in depression since it has been scientifically demonstrated that mood is governed by brain chemistry. This article is not the right place to talk about the esoteric biochemistry of depression but I will make a few points. Serotonin is an important brain chemical in terms of stabilizing mood. The lack of or malfunctioning of serotonin has been scientifically linked to depression among others. Hypnosis can induce the right cortical activities to facilitate the normal activities of the serotonin system.
Conclusion
We have shown that depression is a necessary mechanism when the brain is attempting to disengage from an overpowering situation. For this reason, hypnosis can be used as a temporary tool to relieve depression.
The New Colormedicine Blog on Mood
Yippee!
This is a new blog committed to the topics related to mood like anxiety, depression, aggression, eating disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and much much more. This is a breakthrough after starting this project on Thekwini more than ten years ago at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada.
This is a second blog the first one being theYoutube channel Colormedicine. In that blog or vlog we cover the same topics but using video format. Now this blob allows for the written word on the same topics. In the meanwhile all the written articles pertaining to this subject can be found in the Colormedicine Yahoo Groups, рдеे colormedicine website http://www.colormedicine.net/, the Thekwini website http://www.thekwini.com/ as well as the Helium website http://www.helium.com/ and by entering my names there Vusi Moloi you will be able to access the articles I have written on that website.
It gives me great pleasure and excitement to be consistently working on this long haul project. So you can expect some of those previously published articles to re-published here and newer articles being commissioned. Off course I commission myself since I am the engine behind the project. Someday when this takes off it will be possible to commission others to research and write high quality articles on mood.
Why am I doing all this? Why am I going into such great trouble as to establish a blog dedicated to mood? This is a topic I am passionate about. This is a topic I care about. This is a topic I have built lots of expert knowledge around. From the humble days as a computer science student and where I consulted a lot with my professor Dr. Jensen Sedgwick of the School of Computer Science at Carleton University to the point where I successfully demonstrated a working and advanced prototype of Thekwini at the Royal Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa it has been a rewarding journey of great challenge. Eventually the NRC (National Research Council) in Ottawa funded the Thekwini project for further development and that was an icing on the cake. Since then we are working hard on proving the efficacy of this innovative project hence the importance of establishing a blog where I can interact directly with people whose interest it is to find ways and means of overcoming their mood disorder in a non-invasive way.
I am excited about this blog as it allow for the streamlining of this project as well as communicating with others about the issues they care about. So you are encouraged to check this site, to book mark it and also to check out Youtube channel as well. The link will be posted on this main site.
You can expect the same high quality articles here. You are encourage to subscribe and post your comments. By so doing you are injecting good vibes into this blog.
Many thanks to everyone for dropping by to check out the new Colormedicine Blog.