Color healing is nothing new. Thousands of years ago the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, not to mention the peoples of China and India, used color for healing by constructing painted temples, color halls with color baths, and using colored crystal salves, dyes, garments, oils and plasters.

As the Roman Empire crumbled, transforming the world, people abandoned previous healing methods. But as time passed, things changed again. Tenth-century physician Avicenna taught that color was important in healing. He drew up charts showing the connection between colors, temperaments and physical conditions. He also indicated which colors would help or aggravate each one.

For example he wrote that anyone suffering from a nosebleed was advised to keep away from red since red light could keep up the blood flow while blue would lessen it.

The Renaissance period developed the healing arts throughout Europe, but the eighteenth century - the age of enlightenment and reason - preached that one could only believe what could be proved one hundred percent. By the 1800s, medicine was focusing only on the physical body, ignoring mind and spirit. The medical field was busy with new advances like surgery and antiseptics, and forms of healing like color therapy died out.

Yet it wasn't long before color therapy, or chromatherapy as it has been called, resurfaced once again - this time in the second half of the nineteenth century.

One famous researcher and physician of this field was Dr. Edwin Babbit who used color therapy during the American Civil War to successfully treat pain, infections and post-traumatic distress. And throughout the twentieth century and up until today, numerous theories and beliefs about color healing are continuing to be proven.

Like the fact that different colors have different effects on living organisms - including plants. Like the fact that color can be used to diagnose physical and psychological problems. Like the fact that colored eyeglasses are beneficial for learning disabilities.

And listen to this: color has an effect even when people can't see it - like if they're blindfolded, colorblind or just plain blind! Not only that, but with minimal practice they can recognize color with their fingertips or forehead or even by holding their fingers slightly above color cards