or
Q: Why is learning Yoga like learning your colours?
A: Because it's the same as learning anything.
It takes a Winter to make black look interesting, deep, meaningful.
Only a Summer's colouring can take pastel yellow, and greenish yellow at that because how else can you make yellow cool but add blue, and have it look happily, generously, fully, softly, buttery yellow.
The drape colours and our clothing colours, they have an effect on us. We have an effect right back on them.
The heat of True Autumn doesn't look too hot under that face, nor does it make her face too yellow. The gold, teal, and bittersweet look perfectly at home and she looks peaceful and honest, Autumn's claims to fame. I so love these qualities in these people. There is nothing for neuroses to stick to. It just bounces back in the best way.
The Dark Seasons aren't necessarily dark to look at. There's lots of hair and eye variation, just like any other Season. What Dark means is that on them, dark looks normal. On other colourings, it would look too dark. My normal lips lipstick is darker than you'd expect because as a Dark Winter, my colouring takes dark and turns it into right. Once we learn our own colouring, we control the retail world, a nice change from the other way round, which is how most folks live.
A Spring guy in Autumn colour tells the world, "Hi, I'm John and I'm a little angry all the time." And yet, nothing of the sort is true, but no wonder nobody will give him leadership positions.
You walk into an office. Before you cross the carpet to shake his hand, the Autumn guy in Autumn colours has said to you, "I am THE guy who's going to get you and your 8 cats out of a burning building." And as you cross that carpet, you think, "Buddy, you are THE guy I want around to get me and Poochie out of the fire." If he'd been wearing Summer colours, he looks lucky to get himself out, let alone Poochie and you.
Find the first edge of your Season. Settle, wait, and become. Grow back into your natural colouring.
[caption id="attachment_2992" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: knife18[/caption]
Summer's skim milk white looks as cloudy as skim milk white is relative to Winter white, placed under a Winter face. They don't belong together and push each other even further in opposite directions. They find the thing that makes them most different and widen a little adjustment into a chasm of unbelonging. Under a Summer face, her white looks like white. Just white.
"They don't make anything in my colours."
In training, I ask students, In that colour, how does the person look like he's feeling? We sense that he must be feeling in a way that he doesn't at all. Bright Spring in Light Summer colours can look feeble and frail. Like, "Hi, I'm Ted and I'm exhausted."
No kidding he's had trouble getting hired. His inner and outer energies come rushing back when he wears what he is. Vitality and health can be as simple as choosing a different T-shirt.
[caption id="attachment_2993" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: martini[/caption]
The Dark Winter in Soft Autumn colour announces, "Hi, I'm Ellen and I'm running out of gas." Change your shirt. Suddenly, your hair looks clean, more coloured, the skin is tight to the bones, all good. Suddenly, people are more interested in giving you money.
A Dark Autumn wearing Light Spring peach looks like a log cabin painted blossom pink. It's irrational. A floating, disconnected head. This picture says, I can't make reasonable decisions about myself. How likely am I to make them about you?
Colour analysis matters. Every person should have this information about themselves by the time they are 20. Like a social identity. Social competence has incalculable value in this world. Others decide this about us within about 10 seconds of seeing and greeting.
Wearing black or bold colours when they are not part of your own colouring don't tell the world, "I am audacious and adventurous." because we can barely register the person at all, nevermind find them daring. The person who is authentically meticulous, tolerant, perceptive, precise, and soft-hearted is telling the world,
"I am unplanned, indiscriminate, possibly abrupt, possibly intense, and possibly odd.",
so, even before introduction, from the time it took them to get from the door to you, you think, "Note to Self: Prepare. This could go a lot of different ways."
Ten minutes later, you think, "Wow. This is the nicest person ever. I could talk to them for a week. Didn't see that coming."
Once Summer pulls their own colours from the closet, the magic happens. The wavelengths synchronize instead of competing with and neutralizing each other. The whole picture unites. Those grayer colours aren't gray at all on her. They're fully energized, present, and focused, and so is she. Her hair is very colourful and enhancing.
Remember that you are safe. You already look way better than you used to. From here, it just gets better.
[caption id="attachment_2995" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: GeoDum[/caption]
Bright on Bright = Normal
Bright colours do not look overly bright on Bright Seasons. It's the rest of us on whom they are too strong and more than we are, a distracting challenge to our natural colouring.
On non-Brights, the colours say, "Look at me!!! Look at me!!!! Forget about her up there. Look down here where all the action is!!!" We would look drained and erased, worn out from always competing with our clothing. Not so on the Bright colouring. They look normal.
A Bright Winter can drain colour from most any fabric, including Dark Autumn and Dark Winter. She can dull Dark Winter's strong coral rose into looking like True or Soft Summer colour. Under her face, Dark Autumn's fabulous, rich, full, bronzed raisin looks drab and plain, maybe even a little dirty. Which is how Autumn makeup looks on her face.
Even True Winter looks washed too many times next to a Bright Winter. Plus heavy. No excitement. The whole image drags down. Change the drape. The lights come on. The whole picture lifts up. The lines all focus and turn upwards instead of like melting ice cream.
Many Bright Seasons, Winter and Spring, have beige hair. They contain Spring, after all. They often feel the hair is mousy and blah. It sure is if they're wearing muted colour. All the life goes out of it. Out comes the hair chemistry. If they'd just change their shirt, the hair would sparkle. Bright Season hair is never ever mousy in correct colour.
Trust. Just let gravity take you. The great clothes and cosmetics will start showing up just because you've asked them to. Give it your attention but don't stress. Effortless effort.
A Bright Season in their own colours doesn't look more noticeably coloured than anyone else. Her red just looks like normal red. On someone else, the shirt would walk into the room before she does. It's only on a Bright that it wouldn't behave that way.
She doesn't need to shop for shiny purple or neon pink. She just wants to repeat certain colour properties to look normal. That's what it takes for her to look like she really looks. Colour analysis will find you a pretty lipstick but it's way more organic than that. It will find what you really look like, in colour, line, and texture. The feeling in the observer is, "Oh, is that what you really look like? I couldn't see you before. You were distorted."
You know how when people take off their glasses and you suddenly get a whole different picture and feeling? It's like that. An artist could paint you with a thousand different facial expressions. The viewer would expect a thousand different women to own each face. Might as well broadcast the real one.
New Bright Seasons may experience disappointment bordering on fear. She has seen her colours on others and thought, Oh, that's just too much. Yup, on them, it sure is. But the rest of us see those colours on you, not on your hanger or on everyone else in the room, the way you do. On you, we think, Fine. Nothing to adjust to. Normal. Enough. Good. Interesting. Complete. Balanced. Clear. Healthy. Easy to look at. Nice eyes.
That woman gets herself.
She's here for us to interact with. Otherwise, she's partly invisible, a place where many of us feel so much safer and try hard to find a reason to justify staying. And oh, boy, when a PCA is pulling out of your hiding place before you're ready, it's panicky. Go with it. It serves nobody to play small.
We compensate in so many ways to disguise or adapt our personality, often without knowing it, often in response to demands of the environment, parenting, society, and all the other pressures coming in. In the never-ending journey toward self-knowledge, surprising examples of being untrue to oneself turn up.
Surrender to stillness. Don't overthink it. Just be in it.
[caption id="attachment_2996" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: fygar[/caption]
Easing into the Bright Seasons.
You don't have to wear the test drapes. They're just measuring you.
You are not head to toe poster paint as a Bright, or dishwater as a Soft, or maudlin if a Dark. In describing the Season energies, I use words to separate the palette from all the others in the mind of a reader considering all 12. I have neglected to clarify that solo, on the right wearer, it would not look as extreme as the description. All it does is make sense. It would look normal, belonging, a rational extension of her, as if it could have grown out of her body.
The dusting of sunlight matters to Bright Winter. This colouring shadows easily in too-dark or too-blue.
High saturation only means pure pigment without visible gray. It does not mean vaudeville, hussy, burlesque, or Halloween clothing.
The overall picture is medium dark, still incorporating the Winter extremes of very light with very dark. Bright Winter is significantly lighter than the other Winters. True Winter black is not so flattering, especially for women.
Gloss tends to look better than matte for lips. Just a coating of shine makes a big difference. The rest of the face may be matte, or with some shimmer around the eyes.
Sweetness. These folks have a cute quality when they're 70, like kids in an adult body. Add baby peach, yellow, candy colour, peppermint colours.
Try the bright colours further from the centre in the beginning, as nail polish or a handbag, if that feels better.
Limit to smaller pieces for colour and shine. A watchstrap. All Winter does well in some type and amount of shine.
Melt into a new friendship.
[caption id="attachment_2998" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: duchessa[/caption]
Live with it for a month. Then go back and try on the clothes and cosmetics you wore before. Do they still feel like home?
-----
Q: Why is learning Yoga like learning your colours?
A: Because it's the same as learning anything.
It takes a Winter to make black look interesting, deep, meaningful.
Only a Summer's colouring can take pastel yellow, and greenish yellow at that because how else can you make yellow cool but add blue, and have it look happily, generously, fully, softly, buttery yellow.
The drape colours and our clothing colours, they have an effect on us. We have an effect right back on them.
The heat of True Autumn doesn't look too hot under that face, nor does it make her face too yellow. The gold, teal, and bittersweet look perfectly at home and she looks peaceful and honest, Autumn's claims to fame. I so love these qualities in these people. There is nothing for neuroses to stick to. It just bounces back in the best way.
The Dark Seasons aren't necessarily dark to look at. There's lots of hair and eye variation, just like any other Season. What Dark means is that on them, dark looks normal. On other colourings, it would look too dark. My normal lips lipstick is darker than you'd expect because as a Dark Winter, my colouring takes dark and turns it into right. Once we learn our own colouring, we control the retail world, a nice change from the other way round, which is how most folks live.
A Spring guy in Autumn colour tells the world, "Hi, I'm John and I'm a little angry all the time." And yet, nothing of the sort is true, but no wonder nobody will give him leadership positions.
You walk into an office. Before you cross the carpet to shake his hand, the Autumn guy in Autumn colours has said to you, "I am THE guy who's going to get you and your 8 cats out of a burning building." And as you cross that carpet, you think, "Buddy, you are THE guy I want around to get me and Poochie out of the fire." If he'd been wearing Summer colours, he looks lucky to get himself out, let alone Poochie and you.
Find the first edge of your Season. Settle, wait, and become. Grow back into your natural colouring.
[caption id="attachment_2992" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: knife18[/caption]
Summer's skim milk white looks as cloudy as skim milk white is relative to Winter white, placed under a Winter face. They don't belong together and push each other even further in opposite directions. They find the thing that makes them most different and widen a little adjustment into a chasm of unbelonging. Under a Summer face, her white looks like white. Just white.
"They don't make anything in my colours."
In training, I ask students, In that colour, how does the person look like he's feeling? We sense that he must be feeling in a way that he doesn't at all. Bright Spring in Light Summer colours can look feeble and frail. Like, "Hi, I'm Ted and I'm exhausted."
No kidding he's had trouble getting hired. His inner and outer energies come rushing back when he wears what he is. Vitality and health can be as simple as choosing a different T-shirt.
[caption id="attachment_2993" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: martini[/caption]
The Dark Winter in Soft Autumn colour announces, "Hi, I'm Ellen and I'm running out of gas." Change your shirt. Suddenly, your hair looks clean, more coloured, the skin is tight to the bones, all good. Suddenly, people are more interested in giving you money.
A Dark Autumn wearing Light Spring peach looks like a log cabin painted blossom pink. It's irrational. A floating, disconnected head. This picture says, I can't make reasonable decisions about myself. How likely am I to make them about you?
Colour analysis matters. Every person should have this information about themselves by the time they are 20. Like a social identity. Social competence has incalculable value in this world. Others decide this about us within about 10 seconds of seeing and greeting.
Wearing black or bold colours when they are not part of your own colouring don't tell the world, "I am audacious and adventurous." because we can barely register the person at all, nevermind find them daring. The person who is authentically meticulous, tolerant, perceptive, precise, and soft-hearted is telling the world,
"I am unplanned, indiscriminate, possibly abrupt, possibly intense, and possibly odd.",
so, even before introduction, from the time it took them to get from the door to you, you think, "Note to Self: Prepare. This could go a lot of different ways."
Ten minutes later, you think, "Wow. This is the nicest person ever. I could talk to them for a week. Didn't see that coming."
Once Summer pulls their own colours from the closet, the magic happens. The wavelengths synchronize instead of competing with and neutralizing each other. The whole picture unites. Those grayer colours aren't gray at all on her. They're fully energized, present, and focused, and so is she. Her hair is very colourful and enhancing.
Remember that you are safe. You already look way better than you used to. From here, it just gets better.
[caption id="attachment_2995" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: GeoDum[/caption]
Bright on Bright = Normal
Bright colours do not look overly bright on Bright Seasons. It's the rest of us on whom they are too strong and more than we are, a distracting challenge to our natural colouring.
On non-Brights, the colours say, "Look at me!!! Look at me!!!! Forget about her up there. Look down here where all the action is!!!" We would look drained and erased, worn out from always competing with our clothing. Not so on the Bright colouring. They look normal.
A Bright Winter can drain colour from most any fabric, including Dark Autumn and Dark Winter. She can dull Dark Winter's strong coral rose into looking like True or Soft Summer colour. Under her face, Dark Autumn's fabulous, rich, full, bronzed raisin looks drab and plain, maybe even a little dirty. Which is how Autumn makeup looks on her face.
Even True Winter looks washed too many times next to a Bright Winter. Plus heavy. No excitement. The whole image drags down. Change the drape. The lights come on. The whole picture lifts up. The lines all focus and turn upwards instead of like melting ice cream.
Many Bright Seasons, Winter and Spring, have beige hair. They contain Spring, after all. They often feel the hair is mousy and blah. It sure is if they're wearing muted colour. All the life goes out of it. Out comes the hair chemistry. If they'd just change their shirt, the hair would sparkle. Bright Season hair is never ever mousy in correct colour.
Trust. Just let gravity take you. The great clothes and cosmetics will start showing up just because you've asked them to. Give it your attention but don't stress. Effortless effort.
A Bright Season in their own colours doesn't look more noticeably coloured than anyone else. Her red just looks like normal red. On someone else, the shirt would walk into the room before she does. It's only on a Bright that it wouldn't behave that way.
She doesn't need to shop for shiny purple or neon pink. She just wants to repeat certain colour properties to look normal. That's what it takes for her to look like she really looks. Colour analysis will find you a pretty lipstick but it's way more organic than that. It will find what you really look like, in colour, line, and texture. The feeling in the observer is, "Oh, is that what you really look like? I couldn't see you before. You were distorted."
You know how when people take off their glasses and you suddenly get a whole different picture and feeling? It's like that. An artist could paint you with a thousand different facial expressions. The viewer would expect a thousand different women to own each face. Might as well broadcast the real one.
New Bright Seasons may experience disappointment bordering on fear. She has seen her colours on others and thought, Oh, that's just too much. Yup, on them, it sure is. But the rest of us see those colours on you, not on your hanger or on everyone else in the room, the way you do. On you, we think, Fine. Nothing to adjust to. Normal. Enough. Good. Interesting. Complete. Balanced. Clear. Healthy. Easy to look at. Nice eyes.
That woman gets herself.
She's here for us to interact with. Otherwise, she's partly invisible, a place where many of us feel so much safer and try hard to find a reason to justify staying. And oh, boy, when a PCA is pulling out of your hiding place before you're ready, it's panicky. Go with it. It serves nobody to play small.
We compensate in so many ways to disguise or adapt our personality, often without knowing it, often in response to demands of the environment, parenting, society, and all the other pressures coming in. In the never-ending journey toward self-knowledge, surprising examples of being untrue to oneself turn up.
Surrender to stillness. Don't overthink it. Just be in it.
[caption id="attachment_2996" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: fygar[/caption]
Easing into the Bright Seasons.
You don't have to wear the test drapes. They're just measuring you.
You are not head to toe poster paint as a Bright, or dishwater as a Soft, or maudlin if a Dark. In describing the Season energies, I use words to separate the palette from all the others in the mind of a reader considering all 12. I have neglected to clarify that solo, on the right wearer, it would not look as extreme as the description. All it does is make sense. It would look normal, belonging, a rational extension of her, as if it could have grown out of her body.
The dusting of sunlight matters to Bright Winter. This colouring shadows easily in too-dark or too-blue.
High saturation only means pure pigment without visible gray. It does not mean vaudeville, hussy, burlesque, or Halloween clothing.
The overall picture is medium dark, still incorporating the Winter extremes of very light with very dark. Bright Winter is significantly lighter than the other Winters. True Winter black is not so flattering, especially for women.
Gloss tends to look better than matte for lips. Just a coating of shine makes a big difference. The rest of the face may be matte, or with some shimmer around the eyes.
Sweetness. These folks have a cute quality when they're 70, like kids in an adult body. Add baby peach, yellow, candy colour, peppermint colours.
Try the bright colours further from the centre in the beginning, as nail polish or a handbag, if that feels better.
Limit to smaller pieces for colour and shine. A watchstrap. All Winter does well in some type and amount of shine.
Melt into a new friendship.
[caption id="attachment_2998" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Photo: duchessa[/caption]
Live with it for a month. Then go back and try on the clothes and cosmetics you wore before. Do they still feel like home?
-----