Waldorf News

Using Colored Light Elixirs with Children

By Deborah Craydon

The best known vibrational waters are flower essences, first developed by Dr. Edward Bach in the 1920’s in England. A simulated dew process, they are made by placing flower blossoms in a bowl of spring water exposed to early morning sunlight.  Dr. Bach’s original repertory of 38 flower essences address core emotions in need of harmonizing: denial, anxiety, depression, anger and fear.

Working with clients over the years as a flower essence practitioner, I found a need to develop three kinds of essences to address the three-fold body, soul and spirit:  flower essences, which harmonize soul forces or your thoughts and feelings; gem elixirs to align your newly harmonized feelings with the physical body via the various crystalline forms in gemstones, and a new kind of essence: colors in water that infuse the various subtle layers of your system with pure colors, enhancing your spirit.

The Waldorf schools, initiated by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, use color on the walls of their classrooms as a way of cocooning children and teens in environments that reflect their stage of conscious: peach blossom pinks for kindergarten children, red for 1st grade and on through the rainbow of colors until high school when the rooms become shades of higher consciousness: lilacs, magentas, purples.

I developed a series of twelve colors in water after nine years of asking: ‘’What is a natural way of delivering color to the body, beyond the use of electric light?” The liquid colors work directly on people, animals and environments. Sprayed around gardens and home exteriors, landscapes reveal renewed life force, drawing in birds and animals. Called ‘Colored Light Elixirs’, they are proving the be helpful with children and teens, as well as adults. The Flora Corona Colored Light Elixirs are colors projected into water using sunlight. Calibrated 30 degrees apart, it is the specific tone of each color that makes them work accurately with the human energy system.

Marla Hanan (Blue Lotus Family Wellness in Hopewell, New Jersey) tells a story of using the colors with a 10 year old girl who was having a hard time separating from her mother before school in the mornings:

I was truly humbled and amazed at the reaction of this little girl to 12 Colored Light bottles.  She announced that she could “feel the forces of all of them”.  She picked turquoise, yellow, orange and violet and was surprised:  “These are not even my favorite colors but they have a good feeling to them”.  She articulated a deep knowing of color and said that the colors ‘are all in each other. Here are the words of my friend, as she described her impression of the session and of what transpired afterwards:

“My daughter loved the colors. She picked several individual colors but then she insisted that she couldn’t separate them and loved the whole rainbow. Marla kindly mixed up several bottles, one with the whole rainbow in it and we began to use them.  She asked if she could take the remedies herself, whenever she wanted to.  Well it’s been over a week now and my daughter happily goes off to school in the morning.   My daughter got to decide what colors she needed, not me.  Then she decided how she wanted to take them, not me.  Perhaps allowing her to decide on how best to heal and move on made all the difference”.  

Alyss Thomas, psychotherapist and flower essence practitioner from Devon, UK introduces the 12 color bottles to her clients to get an idea of their needs. She says: “Using color as the basis for diagnosis is a very valid approach within flower essence work. It cuts through complexity. If you ask the client to select a color using the bottles, it brings about a coherent sense of direction to the treatment.”

Colors have Virtues or specific healing qualities. Here are some over-lighting qualities of the 12 Colored Light Elixirs, each shown with its opposite or complimentary color.

RED – Creativity, Enthusiasm, Play, Passion, Vitality
BLUE – Sooth, Calm, Breathe, Trust, Release

ORANGE – Abundance, Warmth, Joy, Communication
INDIGO – Intuition, Imagination, Inspiration, Manifestation

YELLOW – Light, Courage, Wisdom, Hope, Rebirth
VIOLET – Peace, Silence, Forgiveness, Serenity

LIME – Cleanse, Clarity, Transformation
PURPLE – Grace, Tenderness, Solace, Gentleness

GREEN – Love, Health, Healing, Nature, Equanimity
MAGENTA – Birth, Bliss, Gratitude, Generosity

TURQUOISE – Repair, Rejuvenate, Renew, Immunity
CARMINE – Beauty, Flower, Grow, Fruitful

Rainbow

Children pick specific colors but also often want all 12 colors. A Rainbow combination bottle containing all 12 colors is having helpful effects with children as well as adults who use it.

Nozomi Sakata from Japan says:

“Here’s a photo of my son adding all 12 colors- making a Rainbow spray- he told me he can drink a whole bottle because it tastes sweet to him. And he did. That’s why he’s making the spray again. Kids are drawn to these colors.”

Karen Eastham, nurse, psychotherapist and animal healer from Lancashire, UK, uses the Rainbow combination of all 12 colors in one bottle:

“I use this combination with my clients and their horses and take it myself. I totally trust and believe in it. I feel that there is no end to what this combination of 12 colors can do.”

Healing by Touch

What’s interesting is that often a child or an adult will just hold one of the color bottles and experience a shift in their emotions. A mother, who encourages her children pick the colors when they need help, says:

“When my son started to have a melt down, I told him to pick a bottle and hold it. He chose Red, rolled it up in his tee shirt and stomped away. I heard him whisper something to it, and less than two minutes later he walked over me and handed me the bottle and said “I’m better now”. And he was a happy camper from there on out. Amazing. Working with children with these elixirs is my favorite. They absorb the energy in amazing ways.”

Clare de Ruiz has also  found that  her little boy Domingo, who attends the DelMar Waldorf kindergarten in Cancun, Mexico, chooses colors that match his constitution:

“Here is Domingo playing with the color elixirs, settling on Magenta and Red at the end. He is one fiery little boy…”

The Living Nature of Color

Through using the Colored Light Eiixirs for many years, case studies suggest that they provide the human energy system with a kind of spiritual nutrition – beyond the more specific effects that flower essences have on the emotions and gem elixirs produce on the body. Observing the effects of using the colors environmentally in landscapes, it appears that the colors also give nourishment and restitution to elemental forces.  Like the virtues listed for each color- their use reveals that they contain a living nature – a kind of angelic quality – that uplifts people, animals and environments.

Deborah Craydon CFEP is the co-author of Floral Acupuncture, Applying the Flower Essences of Dr. Bach to Acupuncture Sites& founder/ producer of Flora Corona- Hawaiian Flower Essences, Gem Elixirs & Colored Light Elixirs. She will be teaching a 12 week course on using the Colored Light Elixirs, including learning to use them with children March-May 2019.  www.floracorona.com/pages/courses