The benefits of infusing your workout with color.

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The beginning of summer has seen me gravitating toward color galore: sunny days spent outside, nurturing my houseplants, and slipping into my favorite bold floral dresses.

So when I saw the photos from our recent photoshoot with Shoreditch-based studio ChromaYoga, I was ecstatic.

From the pop-color activewear to rainbow-hued lights, it was the prismatic pick-me-up my workouts needed. And while I knew instinctively that certain colors elicit different feelings (red always makes me want to pick up the pace), I wasn’t clear on the science behind it.

That’s why we tapped ChromaYoga founder Nina Ryner to share the deets on her workout immersion which combines light and color therapy techniques, brain-stimulating soundscapes and bespoke natural scents for a multi-sensory yoga experience.

Below, Nina shares coors can recalibrate a specific emotion, physical issue or state of mind.

As a warm red tone, pink is a color associated with love, affection and nurturing. Coupled with specially selected essential oils and sound frequencies, a pink class may invoke these feelings and guide us to a serene and relaxed state of mind. It may also aid in losing subcutaneous fat and reducing cortisol levels, especially in the abdomen. This activation helps to mitigate the effects of the usual fight-or-flight stress response that can be damaging to your physiology and well-being. Slower movements cultivate space for a deeper experience of the poses and the breath.

Blue represents a dynamic flowing class where breath is linked with movement and used to wake up the body and increase energy. Blue light is the all-mighty controller of our sleep cycles, and can help with boosting productivity and alleviating mood swings.

Advances in technology over the past 40 years have culminated in an influx of over-exposure to blue light through laptops, smartphones, TVs and tablets. Prolonged exposure to blue light has been scientifically proven to suppress the production of melatonin and subsequently interferes with our natural circadian rhythms.

But this doesn’t mean that blue light is bad; we need simply to regulate those times to which we are exposed. It is especially beneficial in the winter when the days are shorter and greyer. Correct exposure to blue light may help with the following:

- Boosting productivity

• Reducing feelings of tiredness
  
  As such, each Blue ChromaYoga class is held at an optimum time of day. If you are exposed to a chronic amount of blue light (working night shifts, for example), try a Red or Orange class in the evenings to get your body’s melatonin production back on track.

Our Orange classes provide the techniques needed to achieve a yoga practise which works best for your body. Here we use a very specific wavelength of Orange light — which exhibits very similar results to that of the deeper-penetrating red light — which provides the benefits of both.

Not only is orange light recommended for rebalancing your sleep cycle, it may stimulate the cognitive part of the brain, reduce anxiety and promote youthful, healthy skin by balancing collagen production. Its benefit to the skin, brain and muscles is thought to stem from its effects on mitochondrial energy production. Mitochondria are known as the powerhouses of our cells, taking fat, sugar and protein from our food, and combining them with oxygen to convert into energy.

This same mechanism is also responsible for many of the benefits of sunlight, which contains orange wavelengths as part of its spectrum.

This dynamic class incorporates circular movement — transitioning from the front to the back of the mat throughout the class. Deep stretching poses are used with twists and core stability to energise and strengthen.

The light in each Chromatic class moves through the spectral colors of sunrise or sunset, replicating the light upon which our body builds its natural circadian rhythms. Expect to finish on a burst of uplifting Blue light in the morning and melatonin-inducing Red light in the evening.

Circadian comes from the Latin ‘circa’, meaning ‘about’ and ‘dies’ meaning ‘day’. Therefore, a circadian rhythm is a repeating pattern based on the natural progression of night and day. The study of circadian rhythms is chronobiology; this time from the Greek ‘chronos’, meaning ‘time’, ‘bio’ meaning ‘life’ and ‘logos’ meaning ‘discourse’ or ‘thought’. An obvious example of a circadian rhythm? Our decision to sleep upon nightfall and to be active during the day. On one level it’s just the practical thing to do, given that most of us require illumination to function, so darkness serves us well as a time to rest. But there’s a chemical response going on as well.

The ideal environment in which to produce melatonin would be total darkness but, as we have evolved as social beings, it seems unrealistic to live a life solely by the rise and fall of the sun. Blue light is key to the suppression of melatonin, so an evening-hour compromise may be to use amber or red light to block Blue light frequencies. Red, Orange and Yellow light possess longer frequencies and show little to no impact on our bodies’ natural production of melatonin, thus allowing for us to go about our usual tasks without interfering with sleep cycles.

A strong, powerful, dynamic class based on the energy giving properties of red light. Focusing on strength, flexibility and core, Red provides the power to challenge yourself.

Red light interacts with the body by penetrating the first 2mm of skin tissue, allowing it to be absorbed and increase energy generation on a cellular level.

Red light is absorbed by a protein in our mitochondria and is intricately involved in the final stages of respiration — producing energy, carbon dioxide and water.

Properly functioning mitochondria are essential for all functions of life and it is thought that red light removes an inhibitory/stress molecule called nitric oxide, therefore restoring the normal function of processing oxygen and converting it into energy. From this perspective, red light has an unique anti-stress effect and indirectly normalises energy production which enables our body to perform all of its normal functions optimally.