Positive Health Online

Light – Luscious, Luminous, Life-Giving

by Marion Eaton LL.B, Dip Aroma, Dip RM, Reiki Master

Dusk was drawing in as I finished the meditation. I put my hands over my closed eyes and suddenly it seemed as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds. I took them away to check, but it was almost dark both inside and out.  I replaced my hands and received the same sensation. Warmth and light: as though I were looking at the sun through closed eyelids. I stayed still, reveling in the strange but profound experience. Slowly the light faded, and my hands became simply ordinary hands once more.

 Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.com

https://pixabay.com/photos/hands-received-on-light-4153292/

I have been a Reiki healer for almost thirty years and have honed the sensitivity in my hands so that I am able to sense all sorts of variation in energy, but this was the first time I ever received such direct confirmation that the energy of healing is light itself.

You may have seen Kirlian photography of healer’s hands emitting light.[1] I had too, and sometimes, when giving Reiki to my own eyes I had been aware of light energy emanating from my hands, but I had never experienced it so profoundly or for so many minutes. I know this was different from my usual meditation: it took place in the time of Corona Virus and I was joining in with thousands of others who follow the path of love with Panache Desai,[2] who was transmitting the meditation.

However, it took me back to when I first began to meditate, almost thirty years ago now. I would sit on the sofa in the living room with my dog beside me and my cat lying along the back of the settee, close but not touching me. Often I would lose track of time, and if I had been playing a CD, it usually ended before I opened my eyes and went to bed. But in order to sleep, I would have to keep my eyes open the dark, because when I closed them the kaleidoscope of colours was so bright and so luminous that sleep was impossible.

I often wish I were able to describe those colours: they were of a luminosity and intensity that bore no relation to the colours we see through our eyes in daylight.

Definition

But what is light? According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,[3] light is electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the human eye.

In fact, while electromagnetic radiation occurs over an extremely wide range of wavelengths, the human eye only sees a very narrow band of wavelengths. Our vision ranges from about 700 nanometers (billionths of a metre) for red light to 400 nanometres for violet light.

We are aware that there are other frequencies close to these – infrared at the red end and ultraviolet at the other – not because we see them, but because we have been told of them.

If, like me, you need reminding of the difference between wavelength and frequency, a good explanation can be found here.[4]

The incredible speed of light in a vacuum (which is believed to be a physical constant) of about 186,282 miles per second is difficult to imagine, although it is used in science to measure almost incalculable distances.

If we find that difficult to grasp, how can we possibly comprehend the distance travelled in a light year? The distance of far objects in the cosmos (stars and galaxies) are measured this way, so it is no wonder, perhaps, that by the time we see a star in the night sky, the origin of that light may no longer exist.

Light and Darkness

Throughout the ages, darkness has been equated with evil, while light is identified with goodness and transformation. Most religions have some saying about light as in Jesus Christ saying “I am the light of the World.”

We talk of becoming ‘enlightened’ when we finally understand the Truth of our being, and realize that we can be out own light: we do not have to be possessed by the dark. Pictures of holy beings often illustrate this by showing them surrounded in light and in a similar way icons and holy pictures show the heads of saints surrounded by halos of light.

In life we are seldom in complete darkness. Even on a cloudy moonless night there is some discernible light from the stars. As a child, I was taught to welcome the ‘friendly’ darkness and so the absence of light has never held any terrors for me, but I am still delighted when the first rays of sunlight pierce the gloom, especially on a cold winter’s day.

Light brings warmth and colour out of darkness.

Light and Colour

Light and colour are inseparable. In total darkness, colour is not discernible. Thus, in a dark room, the colours of a bright rug still exist, but it is only when the sun rises or a source of light is switched on that the colours sing into existence. To put it simply, light is energy and the phenomenon of colour is a product of the interaction of light with matter.

We are probably all aware that white light contains all colours visible to the naked eye. Prisms will split a single beam of light into its respective colours.

This separation into colour can also be seen when light is refracted by rain: we see a rainbow. The rainbow is curved because colours oscillate at different frequencies on differing wavelengths: red is seen at the lowest shortest curve because it has the shortest wavelength and violet is on the outside of the curve because it has the longest wavelength.

The colours’ wavelengths mean that they are seen in the following order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain was the mnemonic schoolchildren of my generation were taught as a means of remembering the order.) Colours have specific properties and in the hands of a colour healer are greatly therapeutic.[5]

Put simply, red is warming and grounding, orange exciting and convivial, yellow is clarity and mentally stimulating, green – the colour of Nature – is harmonious and balancing, blue is calming and pain relieving, indigo is the colour of receptiveness and intuition, and finally, violet is tranquil and peaceful – a connection to Source.

Image © Marion Eaton 2020

Light – the Bearer of Information

Light affects all life on Earth. All life needs it as all life is intimately connected. Consider the way that plants use light to photosynthesize.  

Apparently only 7% of what we know about someone we meet, is what they say. The rest of the information is contained in the light that bathes our bodies in its vibration.

Light is absorbed by our skin, eyes, skull and our electromagnetic sheath or aura and affects all parts of our being, mind, body and spirit. Light contains information that is synthesized by our body-mind, through our aura and the energy centres known as chakras. These are situated at various nodal points in our bodies (often where there is a ganglion of nerves) that use it to feed the body with energy and information.

We humans are beings of light. Each one of our thirty trillion cells[6] is bounded by a membrane of oil which reflects and emits light while water (which makes up most of the rest of our cells) does not. And the reason that each cell is bound by oil is simply because oil and water do not mix. The cells are therefore separate from one another, preventing the body from being one big blob!

Every cell in our body requires light energy to function. Because we live on a planet with hours of darkness and hours of sunlight, we are connected to the rhythm of light – night and day – the circadian rhythm that regulates every function of our bodies.[7,8]

Light and Heat

Light and heat are closely connected can be seen from our sun, that great ball of flaming gas that provides our planet with both light and heat, and in a similar way from the flames of a hearth or camp fire, but light travels further and faster than eat, as can be observed by watching stars twinkling in a black sky on a frosty night.

Light and Healing

Light has long been connected with healing and, as I mentioned above, there are several studies showing that a healer’s hands emit light during a healing.

There are hundreds of other studies that have examined the connection between light and healing. And amongst well-known facts are the following:

• One of the vitamins that is essential to life is Vitamin D which is manufactured in the human body on exposure to sunlight;[9]
• Lack of light in winter months can lead to depression, known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which can be ameliorated by using certain light frequencies, usually those with a blue element which is more similar to daylight than the softer yellower light produced by many electric bulbs;[10, 11]
• On the other hand studies have shown  that the blue light emitted by electrical devices, especially computer and phone screens adversely affect sleep.[12]

Light and Medical Technologies

Light is used in medical procedures, from the light that helps to set a filling in a tooth, to operations carried out with laser surgery. A laser, a finely-honed narrow beam of light, enables surgery through very small openings and can be guided very specifically so as not to damage tissue surrounding the site of the operation.

Light is also used in the cameras that are inserted to take internal videos and photographs.

Light is used in radiology treatment and in X-rays.

The possibilities of light in medicine are legion. There is so much still to be discovered in this context. I believe that light will prove to be one of the most effective medicines of the future.[13]

Light and Sound

Like sound, light is a vibration that travels onwards continuously. Blocking it may transform its nature from a particle to a wave but does not stop its onward projection.

Where it differs from sound is in its speed, as is demonstrated by a thunderstorm, where lightning is generated at the same time as thunder, but they are only perceived as synchronous where the observer is very close to the place where they are generated. This is demonstrated in the practice of counting the seconds between a lightning flash and the crash of thunder: each second of difference donates approximately a mile of distance from the centre of the storm.

Image © Marion Eaton 2020

‘Light gives of itself and is not thereby diminished.’

Light is a Blessing

In this strange time of Covid-19, one blessing in the Northern Hemisphere has been the coming of Spring, and the lengthening of daylight hours.

Although all of us have been affected by restrictions on our daily way of living, the sun has still risen every morning, bathing us in its life-enhancing light and encouraging Nature to grow, bloom and sing.

We have been blessed with perhaps the most appreciated, beautiful and peaceful season that we have ever known.

References

1.      Kirlian Analysis - Positive Medicine

https://www.positivemedicine.co.uk/index.php/therapies/kirlian-analysis/

2.      Panache Desai | A Truth That Changed My Life:

https://www.panachedesai.com/

3.      Light | Definition, Properties, Physics, & Quantum Theory | Britannica:

https://www.britannica.com/science/light

4.      What is the difference between frequency and wavelength?

https://www.lorecentral.org/2018/10/what-is-the-difference-between-frequency-and-wavelength.html

5.      Colour Therapy - Learn all you need to know about Colour Therapy

https://www.colourtherapyhealing.com/

6.      How many cells are in the human body?

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318342

7.      Effects of light on human circadian rhythms, sleep and mood

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751071/

8.      Our circadian clock sets the rhythm for our cells’ powerhouses

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180306093116.htm

9.      Vitamin D study sheds light on immune system effects

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190417111440.htm

10.    Biochemical cause of seasonal depression (SAD) confirmed by researchers

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141020212412.htm

11.    Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) - NHS

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder-sad/

12.    Research progress about the effect and prevention of blue light on eyes

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6288536/

13. NASA - NASA Light Technology Successfully Reduces Cancer Patients Painful Side Effects from Radiation and Chemotherapy

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/heals.html