How Indigo River Academy Got Its Name

By Kristin Hogue Villasenor

It all started with the color indigo. Indigo is a deep purplish blue color that can sometimes be seen in a night sky. The meanings of indigo, however, are even more profound.

Indigo is seen as the color of personal healing and transformation. It is also a mystical color used as an aide in intuition. Furthermore, indigo represents wisdom, self-mastery and spiritual realization. Indigo increases personal thoughts, insights and understandings. Indigo is also seen as a catalyst for inspiration.

Indigo can be used as a guide to cosmic knowledge and stones containing indigo are often used for that purpose. The indigo stones are lapis, quartz, sodalite, indigo, sapphire and azurite.

Indigo is also the color of the ‘Third Eye’ or ‘Brow” charka. A chakra is…The Sanskrit term for this chakra is Ajna which means ‘to perceive’. This chakra, located between the eyes is all about intelligence and intuition and focuses on self-reflection. Its element is light. When this chakra is experiencing an excess one experiences headaches, nightmares and difficulty concentrating. When this chakra is deficient one experiences poor memory, poor vision and denial.

This leads me into the next aspect of indigo, which has been talked about a great deal by the media and in mystical circles – and that is the Indigo Children. It is said that these children are highly intuitive and can see through all of our hidden agendas and facades. They are often strong-willed and at times may seem easily distractible or unfocused. Yet they are also seen as very empathic especially when someone is not feeling well (either emotionally or physically). Because of their empathy these children are very affectionate. Additionally, these children are highly intelligent. Because of this intelligence they bore easily and don’t understand when they are forced to conform their actions to a random group of other children. These children often feel they are special and deserving. They seem to have been born with an innate feeling that they were meant to be here. All of the aspects that Indigos have can be positive or negative. They are capable of great acts of good or evil.

The first child I considered homeschooling was my eldest son, Quintin. Quintin is a clear cut, hands down, no doubt about it, Indigo child – right down to the headaches and distractibility. Initially, I didn’t give his being an Indigo much thought and did my parental duty of forcing him to conform to external standards and requirements. But Quintin would not conform – and things got bad! After some research and learning on my part, I then began to relate to him on his own terms and construct learning experiences suited for any Indigo child. And guess what? He flourished! The rate of his educational progress has amazed me – and our homeschool was born!

Not all of our children fit the ‘indigo’ definition. In addition to Quintin, our middle daughter, Merrin, also fits this description. Indigo, however, does fit our school as we are simply tailoring the education to the needs and pace of each individual child. We believe that learning is an individual process and no two people learn alike.

The reason why we added ‘River’ to our school name was because river means life. We also live near the American River, so we thought it was fitting. And finally an Academy is a type of school that specializes in something. Our school will specialize in the type of education that is appropriate for each individual child to learn at their best.

Our mascot for our school is the sea turtle. We chose the turtle because we all liked the analogy of the tortoise and the hare. The children think they’re all tortoises in the race of life. Additionally, the children thought the sea turtle was cuter than a tortoise – and he lives in a river – so it all works!

And that’s how Indigo River Academy earned its name.

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