Healing Gardens — in the most commonly experienced sense — offer a respite-fully passive environment or seek an engagement in primarily a displayed, educational manner. An AWPR(TM) Therapeutic Garden, in contrast is far different. It applies the integrating notion of Japanese Garden Roji-en (spirit cultivation by taking in the holistic; all the while appreciating the subtleties of the conscious and unconscious human-ecological interplay. Poetically, I like to say our AWPR facilitators evoke Rhythm Divine to Activate the Soul.
We appreciate that two major parts of the mind control our biology. We also understand the conscious mind is the part that represents our personal spirit and creativity. It manifests our wishes and desires. It, alas, is only in control about 5{b8199d4e76d5c4c4a9fa89ec04f495f77a40e6e04d2b7b455e3b26e8fd6a6d2e} of the time.
The other part is the subconscious mind. As an efficient, autonomous agent it functions to pattern recognize and execute. It is, therefore, magnitudes of order more powerful than the conscious mind and is operating around 95{b8199d4e76d5c4c4a9fa89ec04f495f77a40e6e04d2b7b455e3b26e8fd6a6d2e} of the time. This part of the mind essentially records and spools back repetitive patterns. And, like a voice-activated recorder, responds to emotionally dynamic events by needing only a single “recording session”. The challenge in this arrangement, of course, is that the subconscious is in the driver’s seat almost all the time and controls the tunes, to boot. Worse yet, it’s tuned to an oldies station, literally: playing back behavioral programs we accumulated in our most receptive imprinting period (when parents, educators and society coded into us multi-layers).
To get at the controls and change the groovy pattern response we have to first: arrest attention, second: awaken awareness. No easy task when one is virtually immune to the background noise. (And implicitly trusts the DJ spinning out the play-list we ingrained before we gave it any critical thought.)
As cellular biologist, Bruce Lipton, Ph.D, puts it, “the individual’s ability to listen, hear and filter information is key to assessing that information.” In other words, one must be able to perceive the pattern in order to gain understanding. Lipton comes at this perception question from the cellular level and suggests multi-sensory pathways of cellular activity can be highly effective to change behavior patterns. He likens the vibrations that cells use to communicate as the undercurrent of electro-magnetic rhythms that reflect our unique identity. “These identity receptors act as signal-receiving antennas, downloading complementary (resonant) environmental signals. These identity receptors read a signal of self which does not exist within the cell but comes to it from the external environment,” concludes Lipton.
It’s at this self and environmental nexus that AWPR enlists body (in the pragmatic sense) and soul (in the subtle sense) to conspire over the mind. Paradoxically, control is relinquished by the mind when the body is forced to be hyper-attentive and able to meditate. This releases the mind to awaken and move, thus creating the “momentary lapse of reason” that allows for a potent remediation of these unconscious programs. Again, to quote Lipton from an interview in The Harp Therapy Journal, Vol 14, No.4 (Winter 2009-10):
“The subconscious can run every function of the unconscious body/mind. Conscious focus, and mesmerizing moments can stop unconscious control (i.e. yoga, meditation). If an individual’s energetic field can be entrained to be conscious and in harmony, it can over-ride negative programming in the subconscious mind.”
