“Do you have something red or orange to wear tomorrow?” At my very first yoga teacher training, I remember hearing something about what colors we might want to wear on particular days. I also remember thinking that this was both frivolous and cultish. “Silly yoga people”, I thought. This practice is based in Vedic Astrology and the idea is that each day of the week is influenced by a particular planet and its attributes. By wearing the planet’s associated color, we are acknowledging the planet and its energy. It wasn’t until a couple years later that I would see that moving through the week with color is a sweet and useful practice.

After years of wearing DC’s seemingly-requisite black and grey (yawn), my New Year’s resolution for 2010 was to start wearing color. I figured that following this system might give me a nice structure and motivation to follow my resolution. It worked. Although I still don’t follow the system perfectly, I have noticed some pretty sweet benefits from wearing more color including:

1. Very easy decisions and saved time in the morning. Knowing that I will wear white on Mondays simplifies the decision making process immensely. Color co-ordinating your closet can also be fun, especially for someone with a lot of pitta 🙂
2. Perhaps most importantly, beginning my day by purposefully acknowledging something bigger than myself allows me to have a more expanded view of life as I go through the day.  It helps me move from a more ego-focused attention to a wider view of reality. Also, purposeful adornment can honor the way in which we inevitably affect those around us, even with things as subtle as the colors we wear.
3. Increased joy! Looking down and seeing a lovingly chosen color can inspire a smile.

In case you want to give it a try:

Lavender-ly Yours,

Kat