Grey Days

Some of us love nothing more than the cosy feelings of grey winter days, snugly in hats and scarfs, closing the curtains early shutting the rest of the world out, log fires burning brightly, comforting lunches of home made soup and fresh crusty bread and butter.

But.........

What if your one of the many people who find these days difficult to live with, those grey winter days can leave us feeling low in mood, lethargic, having loss of concentration, mood swings and cheering ourselves up by comfort eating. These feelings are most likely triggered by the lack of sunlight in winter months, with shorter days and the winter weather causing darker cloud cover, contributing to the disruption of our natural body clock rhythms.  Research suggests that the lack of sunlight might stop a part of the brain called the hypothalmus from functioning properly, affecting our production levels of the hormones melatonin and serotonin.

Maybe if we change the way that we feel about the colour grey it can help us to overcome the struggle of those winter days. Is grey a colour of compromise, being neither black or white? The darker grey becomes the more dramatic and mysterious it becomes, whilst the lighter it goes towards being silver and white, the more illuminating, lively and sparkly it can be. We can think of grey as being timeless and practical, it can also be conservative, boring, drab and depressing or maybe it's sophisticated, elegant, smart and cool. Grey is the perfect neutral and allows it to be flexiable, it can moderate brighter hues and expertly pull a colour scheme together.  When too much grey starts to create feelings of sadness, loneliness or even depression for us, maybe its time to add some colour to change these feelings. To add energy and warmth try reds, oranges and yellows for a calm cooler mood add blues, purples and greens. Enjoy experimenting and see what works for you.  

Remember if we always colour the picture of our world grey, the picture will constantly be GREY, use the crayons of your imagination to colour the pictures that you want to see in your world.

Using Mindful meditation seeing practice to look carefully at the colours that are around you and really see them, every shade, tone and hue. Capture each moment, colour can capture emotions, memories, words and pictures. Walking out in nature watching the seasons change, every month brings something new to see, hazel catkins blowing in the wind, the tips of snowdrops starting to show and shorter days do make dramatic scenes and amazing clouds formations.

"Grey skies are just clouds passing over" Duke Ellington