Talk: The Therapeutic Labyrinth Garden

Revd Lizzie Hopthrow, the chaplain of the Pilgrims Hospice in Canterbury, UK, presented details of an interesting project called "The Therapeutic Labyrinth Garden" to staff during a picnic arranged at Peace Park on January 26, 2010.

The premise behind the Therapeutic Labyrinth Garden is that a labyrinth, a single path that winds to a central point and out again - unlike a maze, which has dead-ends and false starts and so can induce anxiety because it is difficult to find your way - frequently induces spiritual or emotional calm and can even help in decision-making. For these reasons, a labyrinth is counted as a timeless mystical and spiritual tool that is poignantly relevant to people approaching death and their loved ones coping with bereavement. Based on the ancient ideas of pattern and spiral, the winding nature of a labyrinth draws us into not only the centre of the labyrinth itself but also into the centre of our selves. There we may face our deepest fears, hopes or longings and there is the place of inner healing or enlightenment. When a labyrinth is walked, the analytical left hand side of the brain gives way to the more intuitive right hand side and we are led by the path away from stressful thoughts into stillness. The labyrinth thus leads us into the spiritual part of our being and gives us the potential for inner transformation. As we walk towards the centre we may become released from stresses and strains, hurts or concerns that cause us tension or emotional or spiritual pain. We let go of anxious thoughts or situations and may enter into prayer At the centre we pause to receive a blessing, peace of heart, a moment of relief or enlightenment, a deep sense of calm, a creative idea or a resolution. On the way out again we return to the world taking with us our experience of the labyrinth.

Amazing! Doesn't that make you want to walk a labyrinth right now? Revd Hopthrow has used this method with patients of the Pilgrims Hospice.