Colours of Inner and Outer spaces.

Some writers outline their thoughts.

I seem to host conversations with them.

It happens because two distinct professions occupy the same mind. The healer, who spends time navigating the subconscious and inner landscapes. And the storyteller, who stands outside watching society behave in endlessly strange ways.

One lives inward.
The other narrates outward.

A convenient Yin and Yang arrangement, until they start commenting on each other’s thoughts.

Which they frequently do.

Today the argument began with a deceptively simple question:

Which colour describes my personality best?

The healer, unsurprisingly, took the philosophical route.

In her world, people rarely describe emotions directly. They describe colours. Someone will say life feels grey. Another claims their week has been unusually blue. A rare optimistic soul might report that things are finally looking bright.

Clinical language is overrated, apparently. The subconscious prefers colour palettes.

From a healer’s perspective this is not surprising. In energy work and hypnotherapy there is frequent talk about the seven aura colours—the subtle energetic fields believed to surround us.

Red speaks of vitality and survival instincts.
Orange carries creativity and emotional flow.
Yellow suggests confidence and personal power.
Green leans toward healing and compassion.
Blue reflects communication and calm.
Indigo wanders into intuition and inner perception.
Violet hints at spiritual awareness and transcendence.

The healer treats these colours less like mystical labels and more like emotional weather reports. They shift, fluctuate, appear and disappear depending on what someone is experiencing internally.

Human beings, it turns out, are walking mood rings.

This is where the storyteller becomes suspicious.

Society, after all, has been assigning meaning to colours long before modern therapy began decoding the subconscious. Cultures everywhere seem oddly invested in emotional colour-coding.

Take classical performance theory. Even the ancient Indian treatise Natyashastra formalised emotions through the framework of the Navarasa, the nine aesthetic states that drive storytelling and performance.

Each rasa carries an associated colour.

Śṛṅgāra, the rasa of love and beauty, is green—lush, fertile, alive.
Hāsya, the rasa of laughter, glows white.
Raudra, the unmistakable rasa of anger, burns red.
Karuṇa, compassion and sorrow, settles into grey.
Vīra, courage and heroism, radiates orange.
Bhayānaka, fear, darkens to black.
Adbhuta, wonder, shines yellow.
Bībhatsa, disgust, leans toward blue.
Śānta, peace, rests in pure white stillness.

Entire performance traditions were built on this emotional colour wheel. Actors expressed them through costume, makeup, gesture and music. The audience understood instinctively.

Which raises an inconvenient question.

Did colours acquire emotional meaning because humans felt them that way?

Or do humans feel that way because culture taught them to see colour like that?

The healer suspects the subconscious came first.

When people close their eyes in deep relaxation or hypnosis, colours frequently appear before coherent narratives. A calm state might unfold as soft blue space. Anxiety flashes in agitated reds. Moments of emotional healing often arrive in surprising greens.

It happens too consistently to dismiss entirely.

The storyteller, however, is unconvinced that the subconscious deserves all the credit. Society is an extremely persuasive storyteller in its own right.

Consider the environments we grow up in.

Celebrations drenched in gold and red.
Hospitals painted in reassuring greens and blues.
Meditation halls glowing with white and saffron.
Corporate offices determined to appear productive in muted neutrals.

At some point it becomes difficult to tell whether colours are influencing emotions or merely reflecting them. Possibly both. Humans have always been very efficient at creating feedback loops.

Walk into a bright yellow room and energy rises slightly. Step into a dim grey corridor and the mood quietly collapses. A splash of red can energise a room—or irritate everyone in it, depending on the shade and the day.

The subconscious responds instantly. Society then writes meaning around that response.

A tidy collaboration, really.

The healer finds this fascinating because colour becomes a form of communication that rarely announces itself. People speak it constantly without realising.

The colour someone chooses to wear when they want confidence.
The softer shades chosen when comfort is needed.
The darker tones people retreat into when the world feels overwhelming.

The storyteller has a less poetic interpretation.

According to her, wardrobes are simply emotional subtitles.

But even she admits colour symbolism appears everywhere once you start looking. Festivals erupt in pigment because joy demands visibility. Rituals use colour to guide collective emotion. Entire industries—from fashion to interior design—quietly rely on the psychological effects of colour.

Humans insist on believing they are rational creatures.

Yet a large portion of our behaviour appears to be influenced by wavelengths of light bouncing off fabric and walls.

Which is both impressive and faintly ridiculous.

The healer would say colours help the subconscious speak.

The storyteller would say colours help society perform.

Both explanations seem uncomfortably plausible.

Metacognition complicates matters further. Observing my own thoughts about this topic reveals a small irony.

For someone who spends considerable time exploring emotions, guiding people through inner landscapes, and thinking about how human beings communicate subtle signals to one another…

yet I never really paid attention to colours.

BTW what do you think your colour today is today 🎨

Just in case you need help. 🎧 Spotify Listening Companion

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