Living Light: The Art of Using Light for Health and Happiness - Softcover

Ryberg, Karl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501169963 ISBN 13: 9781501169960

Verlag: Atria/Enliven Books, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

In this groundbreaking guide to maximizing the restorative and regenerative benefits of light, psychologist Karl Ryberg explains how to use different types of light—sun, fire, and even artificial lighting—in order to create ultimate health and a happy mind.

Light. It’s all around us. Sometimes soothing and reviving, sometimes glaring and disturbing—light deeply affects us. But can we harness it for our own well-being?

Like plants, human bodies need quality light in order to survive, regenerate, and thrive. In this fascinating guide to “eating light” psychologist Karl Ryberg shows you how to best use different types of light to feed your brain and body.

Discover how your brain and body absorbs light photons in the form of sunshine, fire, and artificial light. With increased use of computers and screens, flickering LED products, and other “junk food” light sources, we have been paying the price with lowered vitality, focus, and flagging health. By intentionally consuming certain types of light with a proper “diet”, you can alleviate these issues.

Ryberg shows us practical ways to maximize the benefits of light therapy for our own bodies, and how to choose light sources that don’t harm the environment. No matter your age, location, or fitness level, Living Light has timely advice on a range of topics, from remedying light starvation or overload to adopting routines to suit your individual needs.

Written from a lifetime of research on light and biology, this book provides you with a vital understanding of your body clock, brain function, the importance of color, and much more, all in a clear and accessible manner.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Karl Ryberg is an architect, light psychologist, and researcher whose speciality is using precision light for therapy and design. He has invented a series of advanced therapeutic projectors and runs the Monocrom in Stockholm. Karl lectures worldwide on the creative use of light for health, happiness, and healing. He has written several books on the subject and has appeared many times in the media. Karl speaks several languages and also reads Braille. He is a numismatist and watercolor paints as a hobby.

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Living Light

MY PERSONAL LIGHT JOURNEY

My fascination with light started when I was a young boy growing up in Sweden. Dad was a cubist painter and worked on large canvases, to which he applied shiny layers of smelly oil paint. His atelier had large windows, facing north, toward the sky, and they gave the whole room a quality of transparency; he was always stressing the necessity of good daylight to get the subtle gradations of color right. I loved to spend time in that spacious studio, and somehow became fascinated with the shimmering interaction of light and color. Eventually I made crude attempts at painting, and a whole new world opened up before my eyes.

As I looked into the interplay of light and color, I wanted to find out more about the nature of this visual magic. This journey led me to study architecture as a young man. But if I thought my studies would help me to understand and indeed to learn more about the wonders of natural light, I was mistaken. It was the 1960s, after all, and the architectural approach to light was blunt and practical, and focused on artificial light; electric lamps were technical commodities to be switched on and off without any further thought. The outflow of light was promptly measured in watts and lux, the building blocks of electric light, and even though we humans were the end users of these technical wonders, there was very little mention of how they might affect us, emotionally or biologically. It was simply something that architects, and indeed consumers, didn’t think about at that time.

Those of us old enough to remember will understand that those were the days of frantic modernism, of looking forward to a bold future, a brave new world in which machines would swiftly solve most of our problems. Nature was shamelessly tamed or maimed, and fluctuating daylight was considered an erratic and uncontrollable nuisance, best barred from organized life. In my native Sweden, futuristic schools were built without any windows at all to create a generation of standardized and brave new kids. The thinking at the time was that steady artificial light would enhance the process of concentration, and that the separation of humans from the world would improve their intellectual performance—but the outcome was a complete disaster. My country started to churn out a generation of children with poor intellectual performance: until 2015, Sweden languished on the lower rungs of the educational ladder, with averages in science, mathematics, and reading lower than those for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The political explanations are many, but, in my view, they neglect the impact of one key factor: lighting.

However, it was my very nationality that fueled my interest in all things light. As we know, Swedes occupy an extreme climate zone with huge luminous contrasts between seasons. This puts a definite strain on our biology, and mood swings are part of the game for many of us. In summer we are bathed in continual light and the sun doesn’t even bother to set. Migratory birds come all the way from Africa to lay their eggs and enjoy the extravagant luminosity, and we Swedes celebrate the festival of Midsummer with eating, dancing, and great celebration. Nordic winters are another story altogether, with long, dark nights and barely any daylight at all. The looming shadows hang on for months. Many of us northerners hibernate indoors and binge on sweet carbohydrates by cozy candlelight. Alcohol is imbibed for additional consolation. The winter blues are a stark reality as the life juices slowly wane away. In Sweden, much of the population eagerly awaits the light of spring to recharge their batteries. The situation is more or less the same in the subarctic regions of northern Canada and Russia.

After finishing my studies, I went to work as an architect in Australia and New Zealand, where the light conditions are vastly different from those in Scandinavia. The luminous effects on people were enormous, and my curiosity about the effects of natural light led me to study psychology and medicine to find out more.

As I wrote my thesis on light therapy, I kept coming across the name Rosenthal in scientific papers. His research was revolutionary and literally shed new light on an old problem. Every Scandinavian knew of the dreaded winter depression, but no real remedy had been found. Women, with their naturally keen color vision, were much more affected than men, but traditional medicine would turn a blind eye and treat it as a collective form of female hysteria. Not until 1984 did Dr. Norman Rosenthal understand what we now know to be seasonal affective disorder, or SAD for short. Under the influence of darkness, the brain will produce the sleep hormone melatonin. This ancient habit worked fine for our African ancestors, because they lived near the equator and their climate came with little seasonal variation, but you can imagine its impact on those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. In winter we would be sleepy for months on end! Moving entire populations back to the equator is, of course, an impossibility, so Rosenthal came up with the bright idea of using strong light to simulate sunshine and to stimulate hormones to get the brain back in shape. Somehow, his optic trickery seemed to work.

This was groundbreaking news. At last, someone had proven a clear connection between the level of ambient light and our mental health. Having returned to Sweden, I continued my studies in psychology to gain a better understanding of light and its effects on the human mind. To help in funding my studies, I opened a light clinic in Stockholm offering treatments with the new method. I called it monocrom, meaning “single color,” and over the years my small practice has developed as I have learned more about the transformative qualities of light.

Dr. Rosenthal had recommended using white electric light in large doses to imitate daylight. White rooms in all light clinics were flooded with several thousand lux and the patients were supposed to wear white, too. The visual effect was quite stunning, as you can imagine. However, at the time, the only available sources of sufficient power were large fluorescent tubes, and even though they were effective in improving my clients’ moods, people were less enthusiastic about all that ugly glare.

As a compromise, I started wrapping the fluorescent tubes in colored filters to provide more pleasant visual treatments, and I discovered that the purer and more radiant the colors, the happier my clients would be. The most beautiful colors are known as monochromatic, and these gorgeous eye-catchers are found in rainbows and peacock feathers. Monochromatic in this sense means strictly one-colored as opposed to polychromatic, or many-colored. The pure hues are technically difficult to achieve, but, after some searching, I found highly selective filter coatings that could deliver super light to my clients. The therapeutic outcomes were stunning. Empirically, I found that monochromatic light delivered better results more efficiently, with many clients reporting great benefits, such as incredible lifts in their mood, and many cases of winter blues could be alleviated or totally avoided.

My work in light therapy was going well, but I knew that more could be done. Coincidentally, at this time, I read a fascinating article in an international scientific journal, mentioning a Russian professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Tiina Karu. She was doing research on the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atria/Enliven Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1501169963
• ISBN 13: 9781501169960
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar