First Session

Today's session was the first in our Rainbow Light Project which will culminate in the Sutton Arts Festival in May/June.

A Summary of the Session
We started with a brainstorming session in which we discussed the project and its basic themes of Colour, Light and Sound, mentioning the Hindu Festival of Holi which is upcoming and is a Festival of Colour in which coloured powder and coloured water is thrown.

We then moved on to thinking about black and white films/TV/photos as opposed to the colour versions and comments which the children made included: colour film wasn't invented until fairly recently; black and white looks darker and less realistic; colour is brighter but also harder on the eyes. We discussed how odd it would be if life was black and white and had no colour. We noted that most people had favourite colours, although some people liked all colours equally, and that we liked to look at and wear our favourite colours as they made us feel good.

I read the poem Colours by Christina Rossetti to the children to give them the idea of thinking about each individual colour and what it akes them think of.

There was a fair amount of interest in helping to write the song, though the children weren't so sure what was involved in making the light-boxes.

We welcomed Colour and Sound Therapist Ingrid Hennze to the group to give us a holistic health perspective on colour and sound. She reminded us how powerful colours can be to give certain impressions, for example their use in advertising and in decoration in places like prisons, hospitals or vandalism-prone areas. She talked us through the idea of colours causing vibrations in a similar way to sound, which led onto the concept of how bodies feel when they're 'out of tune' and how music can affect the way we feel in a similar way to colour.

Ingrid then led the group in some chanting associated with each chakra. For the base chakra (red) we chanted 'oooooooh' in a long tone. For the sacral chakra (orange) we chanted 'ohhhhhh'. The solar plexus chakra (yellow) was an intermittent tone of 'oh-oh-oh-oh-oh' and the heart chakra (green) was 'aaaaaaah'. The throat chakra (blue) was 'eeeeeeeye', the third eye chakra (indigo) was 'aye-aye-aye' and finally the crown chakra (violet) 'eeeeeee'.

It was great to see (and hear!) how much the children (and the parents) got into the chanting and singing tones. We could all really feel the vibration in the room afterwards and this was the part that really hooked the children into the subject matter.

It was a hard act to follow, but Ingrid managed it with her chakra-attuned tuning forks. Sounding the tones continually and walking round the room, the children were rapt and hardly a sound could be heard apart from the tuning fork tone. The babies and smallest children were especially attentive and seemed to love the sounds passing round their heads.

When the sounds stopped there was a moment of hush and we all seemed to be aware of the vibration of the air around us from the sounds.

During and after the talk, the children had free access to art materials and drew some lovely colourful pictures. We also incorporated colour into movement with some co-operative parachutes games using our new, colourful parachute.

All in all, a successful and enjoyable starting session for this project.

A Summary from Ingrid, Our Speaker
A challenge for me, to tell a very mixed crowd of mothers and a great number of children of varied ages, about my love for colour and sound. How do I bring across my love and belief in what I know works so well to help balance our lives, emotions, mind, body and soul? To get everyone to be quiet enough for me to hear myself talk, plus make sense so all stayed interested enough and motivated to listen.

A bit about colour and it's vibration, the relation to our bodies, seeing it as a rainbow and of course bringing into it the chakras. The vibratational benefit of colour to balance and heal the body. Talking about vibration bridges the talk and takes me to the vibrational healing frequencies of sound.

So I managed to engage all of us to sound with our voices. All the sounds of the chakras. That was going really well and the sounds in the room where amazing. Everyone was so willing to take part and even close their eyes to listen into the vibrations in the body. This certainly gave me a great feeling of joy.

To finish I used the tuning forks, giving a taste of the 8th and 1st fork, addressing the base chakra, which is beneficial for grounding, which was good after the sounding. To finish I used the 6th and 7th fork (colour royal blue and violet) the A and B note, which are the notes used in ancient and classical music, to stimulate a feeling of harmony and peace.

The reaction of the young infants in the room was very beautiful, they really enjoyed the sounds, and some of the older children came up to me afterwards telling me how the energy was still vibrating through their heads. Some experienced pain in their forehead with the first sound of the forks, but with the last ones they found they felt happy and nice. And one fell asleep briefly.
The room was very quiet and everyone's attention was with what we were doing.

That in itself was great, I feel greatly encouraged and happy to have had this opportunity of sharing my love for colour and sound with my captive audience!