Significance Of Colours In Yoga

During my yoga class on Friday my yoga teacher was reminded of a time she trained with a yoga teacher from India who had come over to train a group of yoga teachers in the UK.

My yoga teacher recalled that as her yoga teacher scanned the room he was shocked by what he noticed all the yogis in front of him were wearing … they were all dressed in black.

Now, to you and I this probably doesn’t feel so strange as a lot of sports apparel and in general a lot of the clothes we wear on a day to basis are black but to this yoga teacher black and yoga did not mix. He was of the opinion that when you practice yoga you should be embracing the colours of nature and the universe and appreciate that the world is full of colour.

One of the reasons I started to design my own yoga wear range was that I felt that yoga wear was deprived of colour but that was my own personal opinion I didn’t think that it had any relevance to what we should or shouldn’t wear when practicing yoga.

This little anecdote from my yoga teacher did however remind me of a time when I was in India and something a Vedic Astrologer once told me about the significance of wearing particular colours on certain days, so I went back to revisit my notes.

I’ve always remembered the colours for each day but going back I was reminded of why these colours were so relevant. The first thing I was taught were there are 9 Planets in Vedic Astrology:

1. Sun or Surya
2. Moon or Chandra
3. Mars or Mangal
4. Mercury or Budh
5. Jupiter or Guru
6. Venus or Shukra
7. Saturn or Shani
8. Rahu or Dragon’s Head
9. Ketu or Dragon’s Tail

And that each day of the week is associated with a specific Planet:

1. Monday – Moon
2. Tuesday – Mars
3. Wednesday – Mercury
4. Thursday – Jupiter
5. Friday – Venus
6. Saturday – Saturn
7. Sunday – Sun

And each Planet is associated with a specific colour:

Monday is the day of the Moon and wearing white is advised.

Tuesday is the day of Mars and wearing orange is advised.

Wednesday is the day of Mercury and wearing green is thought to be auspicious.

Thursday is the day of Jupiter and wearing yellow is advised.

Friday is the day of Venus and pink or pastel coloured clothing is thought to be auspicious.

Saturday is the day of Saturn and blue is a good colour to wear on this day.

Sunday is the day of the Sun so red, yellow or orange clothing is thought to be auspicious.

It’s a very varied colour palette and there is nothing to say that you have to dress in one colour from head to toe.

I suppose in some ways it’s not really that unusual as we often associate certain colours with particular occasions, for example wearing white for weddings or red if you’re Indian. In a lot of cases our culture dictates what colours we should or shouldn’t wear for auspicious occasions. I guess it goes to show that there’s more to colour than just fashion.