809th Week: Energy Hygiene and Subtle Activism

Going through old files from my office, I came across an article from 1972 which described a process created by Yvonne Martine and taught to me by my mother and grandmother when I was a young person. It’s about a process of “breathing color” to create healing, physical and emotional vitality, and other outcomes. When I reread the article, I decided to begin to use the process more regularly as a form of “energy hygiene” for personal use, as well as a form of subtle activism for collective healing. 

Reading the article reminded me that various colors relate to healing and nourishing different aspects of the body and psyche. My limited understanding of working with color is that each color represents a particular frequency and I know from my experience that shifting frequencies/qualities can shift a mood, a physical symptom, the quality in a room, and more. My first recent experience with breathing pink, which is the most fundamental of Yvonne’s color breathing exercises, arose recently when I woke up two mornings in a row feeling discouraged and in a funk over our collective situation. It’s very unusual for me to go into a funk, so I was glad to have a practice I could engage  that might make a difference. After two days of breathing pink, I awoke on the third day and was back to my usual self. I could only imagine that breathing pink shifted the frequency with which I was resonating and allowed me to return to my more normal way of being.

My experience is that this particular color—rosy pink, specifically—naturally stimulates and orients itself to our heart intelligence and perceptions. As I’ve explored the heart’s perception and intelligence over recent years, it’s become clear to me that the heart sees and interprets experience quite differently than does the head brain. I sense that rosy pink supports cultivating the heart’s perspective and I feel that’s one of the most important things any of us can do at this time. The more I have spent time breathing and imagining rosy pink, the more at ease I have become, even in the presence of challenges. The effect is tangible and noticeable and I can’t shake the feeling that it has to do with having an even more open heart as a result of resonating with the frequency of the rosy pink.

And so, for this week’s practice, I invite you to explore breathing color and see how it works for you. I encourage you to use it in two ways: first, as a means of energy hygiene, to improve and support your overall quality of being; and, secondly, as a form of subtle activism. In the subtle activism aspect of the practice, you offer rosy pink, which represents/expresses universal love, to the whole world and everything living within and on it, to all our earth-kin.

It’s helpful to keep in mind that we each are likely to imagine colors in unique ways, so please allow yourself to be present to whatever version of “rosy pink” appears to you. Yvonne Martine says that, for her, rosy pink has some salmon in it. For me, it’s a robust and vibrant pink with rose and maybe also some subtle salmon tones. The main thing I experience is its living vitality.

Breathing Rosy Pink

• Begin by settling in and finding that place in your body that is your internal home base, your internal center of gravity.

• Imagine a source of rosy pink, the color of universal love, in whatever way that makes sense to you. Some people imagine a cloud of rosy pink, some a bubble, some a showering down of rosy pink from the cosmos—whatever comes to you as representing a source of universal love.

• Breathe the rosy pink deeply into your body and hold your breath for a few seconds. Then, as you exhale, imagine the rosy pink going deeply into your entire body and psyche, being fully absorbed, and then, as it moves into and through you, also moving on out into the world.

• Do this three times and notice the resonating tone of your experience.

• Then, as a form of subtle activism, take some time to imagine the rosy pink raining down on, covering, or enfolding the whole planet, encompassing the entire planet in whatever ways make sense to you. Remembering that universal love comes from a cosmic source.

• Take a few minutes to imagine the entire planet and everything on it, without exception, receives and takes in this inflow of universal love.

• Notice your internal experience as you sense everything on the planet soaking in the rosy pink.

• To close the practice, take one more breath of rosy pink into yourself and spend a few moments resonating with your internal experience after you have exhaled it deep into your body-mind being, into every particle of your body and all the energies of your psyche.

As with all these practices, please remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion. In this case, allow your curiosity to explore the ways in which this exercise may shift or enhance your internal quality of life and also to notice any mixed feelings you may have about doing this kind of practice. As always, please also remember to pat gently on the head any judgments that may arise, allowing them to move on through without your having to do anything about them but to notice them.