You might be looking at this flat 2D image on the page and thinking “it’s beautiful!” (I agree!), but keep in mind, aura colours are three-dimensional, moving, and experienced by the auric practitioner in a multi-sensory manner. A specific aura colour can be beautiful in one aura or situation, but quite ugly or toxic in another. You simply can’t capture the range of expression or the sensory detail in a flat 2D image! Neither can I find one name to describe each colour that adequately sums up it’s entire character, both positive and negative.

In its most positive form, this emerald green colour is like a dense forest of greenery. When it becomes unhealthy, it can take on a green-black slimy sheen, looking more like a nest of writhing snakes, or oil on water at the bottom of a dark well. The darker forms of this colour can have an acrid or unpleasant charcoal taste, like something burned that is also foul.

When I find this colour in the aura during a healing, it often appears as tangled energy lines in the heart chakra, or in the aura space between the client’s heart chakra and that of someone they love (and sometimes hate!). My job as the healer is to untangle the lines and bring the client’s awareness to the unhealthy relationship dynamic they are caught up in, so that they can begin to overcome it. The untangled energy lines makes this work of self-change easier for the client to accomplish, by providing temporary clarity, but they will re-tangle themselves eventually if the client doesn’t work on changing their behaviours. It’s a bit like going to a masseur: the massage therapist can massage out the knots in your muscles, but the knots will keep coming back if you don’t address stress, posture and general self-care.

Conflict Green can help you recognise repetitive negative patterns in your relationships. It also teaches you to take responsibility for your own behaviour in relationship conflicts, rather than becoming obsessed with the other person’s behaviour. The main character in the ongoing story of your life is you and the themes you keep re-experiencing in your relationships are due to the learned behaviours you are carrying over from one relationship to another. As your behaviours change, your relationships will change with you.

Relationships are valuable mirrors reflecting your strengths and weaknesses back to you so you can see them clearly. When you interact with others, take time to consider your underlying agenda so that you do not become enmeshed in complex interpersonal tangles orchestrated by your subconscious. Through observing your own reactions when another person presses your buttons and pulls your strings, you can more easily identify the personal wounds and insecurities that make you easy to play like a puppet on a string. Once consciously aware of the relationship dynamics entangling you, you can begin to set yourself free.

Conflict Green represents relationship conflict, stress and tension, usually of a chronic or longstanding nature, along with unhealthy patterns of relating that have become habitual. These patterns are learned in early relationships with parents, siblings, childhood friendships and authority figures. For many people, unhealthy relationships seem to begin in adult life with romantic partners, but the initial seeds of discord and dysfunction are almost always found in earlier relationships. Messy divorces are a typical example of Conflict Green at its worst, with severe auric entanglements created by mutual obsession, nastiness, provocative behaviour and mind games.

Sometimes the tangles we get ourselves into occur because the subconscious associates a person in our current life with someone from our past. If, for example, you had a bossy, authoritarian parent during childhood, the unresolved emotions and behaviours you developed in response to this childhood relationship may resurface when you encounter similar characters in adulthood. If you rebelled against the parent and now rebel against your boss, or you submitted to the parent and now allow your bossy friends to walk all over you, remind your subconscious that you are not a child any more and the other person is not your parent.

Loved ones can be particular adept at pressing our buttons and pulling our strings, simply because they know us so well. Like a child deliberately goading its mother, sometimes any reaction is better than none because at least some energy and attention is coming their way. Watching another person react to your provocations is an intriguing game and can make you feel powerful. Both parties in a relationship conflict can become hooked on the game being played, because the interpersonal dynamics and accompanying emotional biochemistry are so intoxicating and strangely comforting (because they are familiar).

Sometimes the game being played is all about the incredible lengths a person will go to in order to avoid pressing another person’s buttons, thereby being held to ransom by the threat of a particular reaction. Walking on egg shells around a fragile ego can be quite exhausting, but if your past relationships have conditioned you to experience this as a comfort zone, you will tend to subconsciously seek this experience rather than avoid it.

Playing the role of ‘persecuted’ and casting the other person in the role of ‘persecutor’ does not necessarily mean you are not contributing to the game being played. It takes two to tango. If you want to change the dynamics in a relationship, stop trying to blame and change the other person and reclaim your personal power by focusing on what you can do to change your own behaviour. All too often we play the victim in this crazy dance, repeating the same steps each time and wondering why the dance does not change.

Conflict Green might seem negative but it can be a positive sign that you are actively working on resolving relationship conflicts by becoming more aware of your patterns. To help yourself through these challenges, try working with Sanctuary Green, Healing Green, Freedom Blue, Boundaries Blue, Watchful Blue, Harmony Purple, Surrender Pink and Reflection Purple.

A reaction is exactly that: an action replayed over and over again, like a program on automatic replay, driven by past wounds and conditioning. Press pause. Take a deep breath. Do not do or say what you would normally do or say. Give yourself some personal space (see Sanctuary Green) and calm down. While you are away from the situation, think about your habitual reactions to the other person. Can you see any patterns? What triggered your reaction? What thoughts did you have in response to the trigger and how did these thoughts shape your feelings? How did these feelings make you behave and what did your behaviour accomplish?

Now think about the outcome you would prefer. What healthy behaviours would be more likely to result in this outcome? What emotional states would help you behave this way? What kind of healthy self-talk would help you feel this way? Now picture yourself back in the situation, responding in a healthy, constructive way until this becomes easy to imagine. Next time the trigger occurs, remember what you have practiced and implement it. At first, this will probably be difficult, so be patient with yourself.