Color Breathing for Relaxation

What Is Color Breathing?

Color breathing is a simple activity that reduces stress and anxiety. Due to its simplicity, it can be easily used as a tactic to help people trying to calm themselves. It involves picturing a specific color in mind while you focus on breathing. The color is usually chosen based on how someone wants to feel.

Although they seem similar, color breathing differs from guided imagery meditation, where someone is prompted to imagine scenarios and environments rather than specific colors. However, like guided imagery, the mind and thoughts are used to imagine colors surrounding and entering the body.

Is Color Breathing Helpful for Children?

Color breathing exercises are often used in therapy for children or other young people. Due to colors being an easy-to-reference guide for children, telling them to think about a certain color can be fun while also helping to calm them.

Therapists who specialize in working with children often use color breathing as a part of their therapy in helping to calm kids who are struggling with anxiety or restlessness.¹ The color breathing method is also beneficial when working with people with intellectual disabilities or cognitive disabilities that prevent them from articulating their feelings and experiences.

How Color Breathing Meditation Helps Anxiety

Due to the sense of calm and protection evoked by different colors, color breathing exercises and meditation can help relieve anxiety symptoms. Meditation has long been used as a tool to decrease anxiety and depression.² Because color breathing is a form of meditation, it brings with it the many benefits we get from meditation and the additional benefits that the colors offer.²

When we imagine a specific color in our mind as we focus on breathing and mindfulness, it helps to enhance the benefits that we get from meditation. “Colors are psychological experiences”³ and can be used to evoke many different feelings due to how the colors are present to our eye and how they are interpreted in our brain.

How Color Breathing Works

Color breathing involves a combination of visualization and focused breathing. It involves mentally picturing a specific color that evokes a desired feeling or experience. Start by picturing the color in your mind. Some people picture themselves completely covered in this color, while others simply imagine a screen or field of the color. Then, progress by slowly imaging this color entering and exiting your body.

It is important to note that “a single color can have a series of meanings and interpretations to various people in various regions of the world.”³ Thus, red could symbolize strength and power to one person while provoking and symbolizing anger or frustration to another. Therefore, the psychological effects of colors are important to be viewed in a cultural context and based on the individual feelings that you associate with colors.³

Step-by-Step Guide to Color Breathing for Relaxation

Color breathing is a very simple and easy-to-use form of meditation. All you need is a comfortable place to sit or relax, privacy, and quiet moments. Find a spot where you are not likely to be interrupted for several minutes, shut off the lights if you feel comfortable, and set a timer for 5 minutes.

Here are the steps to color breathing:

1. Identify Your Emotions & Colors

The first step in color breathing is to identify the emotion that you are experiencing. Identifying emotions and feelings can be difficult for some, so take a moment and reflect if needed. When you can identify what you are feeling, this is where the color comes in. First, imagine that a color visually represents the emotion you are experiencing. You may feel anxious, which you feel is represented by yellow or red, for example.

2. Imagine the Emotion You Want to Feel

Next, imagine the emotion you want to feel instead. For example, you may want to feel calm if you are currently experiencing anxiety. What color is “calm” when you visualize it in your mind? For many, blues and purples come to mind, but they may differ for everyone based on life experiences, culture, and other factors.

3. Get Comfortable

Like any meditation or mindfulness exercise, being comfortable without interruptions ensures the best possible experience. Get into a comfortable chair or even a couch where you can relax. Some may choose to remove their shoes or loosen their tie to allow their body to relax.

4. Begin Breathing

Next, start the process of breathing in and out, noticing the sensation of your breath in and out of your body keeping your breath at a comfortable and steady pace. While breathing, imagine yourself surrounded by the desired color.

5. Imagine the Color Entering You

You can start by picturing the color in your mind, then slowly imagine it enveloping your body. Start at the top of your head, with the color entering your skull. Then, picture it slowly going down through your face, shoulders, and down through your torso and into your legs. As you breathe in, imagine the color entering your body. As you breathe out, imagine it slowly leaving your body.

Using Color Breathing to Address Specific Challenges

You can use color breathing for many challenges or situations, including stress, anxiety, or other emotional states. Because colors have different meanings or evoke different emotions, it is important to choose a color based on what you need support for at the moment. For example, blue and purple are great choices for calm and relaxation, while yellow and red help to promote energy and strength.

Here’s a list of colors and their meanings:⁴

• Blue: When you need to unwind and relax, blue is the desired color to imagine. Due to the feeling of serenity and calm that this color evokes, picturing it can help decrease anxiety and stress and to clear the mind.³ Due to this, it is a great choice for people who are struggling with the inability to sleep.
• Orange: This color is used to promote optimism, happiness, and open-mindedness, and to help the person develop inner strength and promote joy and creativity.
• Green: Green is used to promote balance and self-acceptance. It is used for healing and self-cleansing.
• Purple: This color decreases negativity and releases any stressful or difficult thoughts plaguing your mind. It helps promote a sense of calm and, like blue, is great for people with insomnia.
• Yellow: When concentrating on a project, yellow is a great choice. It helps promote confidence, clears the mind, and helps to stimulate thought.
• Red: This color is used to promote energy and strength and to evoke confidence and bravery in the person imagining it.
• Pink: When you need to clear your thoughts or cope with a difficulty in a relationship, pink is a great choice because it promotes nurturing and sensitivity.
• Turquoise: This color promotes healing sharing, and can promote self-confidence.

Integrating Color Breathing Into Your Daily Routine

Because of its ease of use, there are many ways people can incorporate color breathing into daily life for stress management. It can be done in a few minutes before starting a presentation at work while you are still in your office. You can do it while parked outside your home before going inside for the night. And for those who struggle to relax at night, it can be used to prepare the mind and the body for sleep.

By integrating color breathing into your daily routine, you can get the benefits of meditation as well as the benefits brought by different colors that you imagine.

Benefits of Color Breathing Meditation

For those who incorporate color breathing into their lives, there are many short-term benefits, such as decreased stress and worry, improved concentration, reduced negative or unhealthy coping skills, and improved awareness.²

When you sustain a color breathing practice, you can experience many long-term benefits. You can see better management of anxiety and depression, improved sleep, as well as other health benefits such as reduction in blood pressure.⁵

How to Find a Therapist Who Uses Color Breathing

It is very easy to use color breathing meditations on your own, but if you would like to work with a therapist, either to help improve relaxation and decrease anxiety or stress or to learn better ways that these things can be incorporated into your life, therapy can help.

Start by looking for a therapist who is licensed in your area by checking an online therapist directory and searching for a therapist who specializes in life stress or relaxation. From there, you can check to see if they take your insurance, what their rates are, and if they have availability.