Aura Therapy Health Article

Definition

Aura therapy is a healing technique based on reading a person's aura, or vital energy field, and then treating diseases revealed by the aura color or colors. Aura therapy is generally considered a subtype of biofield therapy, which is a form of energy therapy that utilizes energies thought to reside in or emanate from the human body (as distinct from electromagnetic energy therapies). There are several variations of treatment, but in general aura therapy emphasizes manipulating the aura energy back into a positive balance.

Origins

The exact origin of aura therapy is unknown, but historical references to it date back about 5,000 years. East Indian, Chinese, Jewish, and Christian faiths all have references to auras as energies that vibrate through physical matter. The energies are seen as colors and represent such states of being emotional, mental, astral, and celestial. Halos have also been considered a kind of aura. Historically, it was believed that the special powers of a psychic, mystic, or clairvoyant were needed to see auras. Today, there are many New Age centers that teach the art of aura reading and therapy.

In the late 1890s, the scientist and inventor Nicola Tesla (1856–1943) became the first person to photograph an aura. Auric photography took a big leap forward in the late 1930s when Semyon and Valentina Kirlian introduced a high-voltage imaging process that became known as Kirlian photography. Although there have been challenges to the use of Kirlian photography, the process was designed to photograph aura energy emitted by life forms, including plants, animals, and humans. A newer variation is aura imaging photography, which uses a special camera to take instant photos of a person's aura. The size, shape, and color of the aura can then be analyzed to reveal specific physical, emotional, and mental problems.

Types of aura therapy

Since the early 1970s, several different forms of aura therapy have emerged within the alternative medicine field. Some brief descriptions follow.

Aura color therapy

Aura color therapy is more closely related to light therapy than to such other forms of aura therapy as therapeutic touch. In aura color therapy, the proportions of the colors in a person's aura as well as their clarity or intensity are analyzed and treated. Aura color therapists maintain that the aura of a healthy person will have an undistorted oval shape around the body, with clear lines of light energy and a perfect balance of the seven colors of the rainbow. Muddy colors, bulges or swirls in the energy lines, or an absence of any of the major colors signal energy imbalances. For example, a depressed person will have large amounts of blue and green in the aura with no orange or yellow. A chronically angry person will have too much red and little or no blue.

Color therapy treatment consists of adding extra colors to a dull or depleted aura or using complementary colors to correct a color imbalance in the aura. For example, orange, which is the complementary color of blue, would be used to treat the aura of a depressed person. Several different techniques may be used to add or balance the colors, the most common being the use of colored lights to irradiate the client's body, or the placement of colored gemstones on the client's body while he or she lies on the floor or on a massage table. In another variation of aura color therapy, the client is advised to wear clothing in colors intended to balance or correct the aura.

Therapeutic touch (TT)

Therapeutic touch, or TT, is a form of energy therapy that was developed in the United States in 1972 by Dora Kunz, a psychic healer, and Dolores Krieger, a professor of nursing at New York University. In TT, the practitioner alters the patient's energy field through a transfer of energy from his or her hands to the patient. When illness occurs, it creates a disturbance or blockage in the aura or vital energy field. The TT practitioner uses her/his hands to discern the blockage or disturbance. Although the technique is called "therapeutic touch," there is generally no touching of the client's physical body, only his or her energetic body or biofield. TT is usually performed on fully clothed patients who are either lying down on a flat surface or sitting up in a chair.

A therapeutic touch session consists of five steps or phases. The first step is a period of meditation on the practitioner's part, to become spiritually centered and energized for the task of healing. The second step is assessment or discernment of the energy imbalances in the patient's aura. In this step, the TT practitioner holds his or her hands about 2–3 inches above the patient's body and moves them in long, sweeping strokes from the patient's head downward to the feet. The practitioner may feel a sense of warmth, heaviness, tingling, or similar cues, as they are known in TT. The cues are thought to reveal the location of the energy disturbances or imbalances. In the third step, known as the unruffling process, the practitioner removes the energy disturbances with downward sweeping movements. In the fourth step, the practitioner serves as a channel for the transfer of universal energy to the patient. The fifth step consists of smoothing the patient's energy field and restoring a symmetrical pattern of energy flow. After the treatment, the patient rests for 10–15 minutes.