Sit quietly, let the breath slow, and bring a single color into the mind's eye. Then let it widen into the next one. That is the basic movement of a rainbow meditation, a practice built on the simple idea that the colors of the spectrum can work as a doorway into stillness. Carrie Suwal's video on the subject, "Rainbow Meditation," runs about twenty-one and a half minutes and is pitched in her own words as a way to "ease your mind as you replenish your soul in the joys of color." The description is short, and this article is not a transcript of the session. It is an account of what the practice is, why color is a useful focus for the restless mind, and how a reader can work with it without the video in front of them.
Most meditation instruction starts with the breath or with sound, and for good reason: both are always present and easy to return to. Color is different. It is visual, it arrives without effort, and it carries an emotional tone that most people feel before they name it. Red reads as heat and urgency, orange as warmth, yellow as clarity, green as growth, blue as spaciousness, indigo as depth, violet as a kind of quiet at the edge of perception. A practice that moves attention through these tones gives the mind a sequence to follow, which is often what a scattered mind needs most at the start of a sit.
The video's framing, as the description puts it, is about joy and replenishment as much as calm. That distinction matters. Some meditation is about watching the mind's noise go by. Color-based practice tends to be more receptive: you are not trying to clear anything, you are letting something nourishing come in. Many people find that shift alone makes sitting easier, because it gives the attention something to do other than fight itself.
The general shape of practices like this is consistent across traditions that use color or light as an object of attention. You begin seated, spine upright but not rigid, eyes closed. You settle the breath for a few rounds, letting the exhale lengthen. Then you bring up the first color, usually red, and hold it in the mind's eye without straining. You notice where it sits in the body, what temperature it has, whether it stays steady or flickers. When attention wanders, you return to the color rather than judging the wandering.
From there, the movement is gradual. You let red soften into orange, orange into yellow, and so on through the spectrum, pausing long enough on each color to register its quality. Some people find it helpful to take a breath per color; others let the transitions blur into one continuous wash. The sequence can end at violet or return to white or gold, a light that holds all the colors at once. Whatever the ending, the point is to finish with the mind a little more gathered than when it started.
I should be clear about the limits of this account. I was working from the video's title and description, not from a transcript, so I cannot confirm the exact order, duration of each color, or any specific instructions Suwal gives on screen. If you watch the video, treat the outline above as a general map of the practice rather than her exact method, and let her instructions override anything here.
Expect the first few sessions to feel uneven. The colors may come vividly for a moment and then dissolve, or they may never quite appear and you get only a sense of them. Neither is failure. The mind learns a new kind of attention slowly, and the act of returning to a color, again and again, is the practice itself. Over time, many people find that the colors become quicker to summon and that the body begins to settle before the visualization does.
A few practical notes help. Use a quiet room and sit at a consistent time if you can. Keep the eyes closed for the main portion, though you can open them briefly afterward to look at an actual object of the same color and let the two experiences meet. If a particular color feels uncomfortable, such as red bringing agitation, you can shorten your time there and spend more with the colors that feel supportive. The practice is meant to be nourishing, so it is reasonable to adjust it to what actually nourishes you.
The fastest way to understand rainbow meditation is to sit with it. Watch Suwal's video, which is available on her YouTube channel, Carrie Anne Suwal, and follow along with her guidance. Then try the outline above for a week, keeping a short note after each sit about which colors came easily and which did not. That record will tell you more about your own relationship to color than any general description can. If you want to go further, look for other color and light practices across contemplative traditions and compare how each one moves attention through its chosen palette.
