I’d like to warmly introduce Sue Claire Morris, who brings over 20 years’ of experience as a therapist/healer/facilitator. I had the good fortune of meeting Sue Claire and Zoe Hudson whilst participating in the Moving Mandala training in October 2012.
The Moving Mandala is a profound and powerful community-building tool for people ready to transform together. This program is experiential with a focus on opening to Spirit through the expression of shamanic journeying, sound, colour, movement, and the arts.
Here is Sue Claire’s article about working with labyrinths.
The labyrinth is an ancient universal symbol found all over the world and increasingly, labyrinths are emerging in communities as a sacred space for people. They are also used as a tool for problem-solving, in personal relationships, for meditation purposes, or purely for enjoyment. They are amazing resources – they can work real magic by bringing worlds together and creating transformation.
Here in East Devon where I live and work as a therapist and group facilitator, we are lucky enough to have an 11-circuit labyrinth based on the one at Chartres Cathedral. It is situated at Seaton on the Jurassic Coast with far-reaching views across to the Dorset cliffs. A local man, David Kelf pioneered this and attracted Heritage and Lottery funding and it was completed in 2004. I first came across it through a dear friend and have been walking it alone and with others ever since, and then the two of us set up a company “Healing Hearts and Landscapes. We offer individual sessions as therapists and group pilgrimages around the Celtic calendar. Zoe and I run an ongoing course for groups “The Creative Power of the Labyrinth” as an experiential weekend to embody and experience the labyrinth, with trained Veriditas Labyrinth facilitators, such as ourselves.
1.“The labyrinth serves as a sacred container. The clear physical boundaries of the pattern, which contain both the circle and the spiral, offer a feeling of safety. This container is even more powerful when we add community. New emotions, unique thoughts, and a sense of being at one with others can enter our awareness.”(Artress, L 1995)
2.“Based on the circle, the universal symbol for unity and wholeness, the labyrinth sparks the human imagination and introduces it to a kaleidoscopic patterning that builds a sense of relationship: one person to another, to another, to many people, to creation of the whole. It enlivens the intuitive part of our nature and stirs within the human heart the longing for connectedness and the remembrance of our purpose for living.” (Artress, L, 2006)
Whether walking the labyrinth alone or with a group, there is a sense of making a deep connection with our true selves and then feeling part of a bigger picture. The centre is an opportunity to link with energies beyond our own hearts and somehow this brings a new awareness that can then be with us on the journey back to our lives, on the path out of the labyrinth.
Walking the labyrinth is a very personal experience where we each bring our hopes, dreams, unique history, and yearnings. Unlike a maze you cannot get lost on a labyrinth, there is one path in and then the same path out, although the journey will be different.
In my work at a College of Further Education, I have facilitated a group of students to create a labyrinth in the grounds. It is in a very peaceful place away from any buildings or cars and before the labyrinth was there, I used to go and meditate in that spot and felt the space would benefit from having one. It is a classical seven-circuit labyrinth cut into the grass with pathways delineated from bark chippings of trees felled in the grounds of the college.
3.“The labyrinth is a means of meditation, offering us space to listen to ourselves. It can be a slow and contemplative experience or fast and energizing:it can help us shed layers of emotion and unravel a problem or it can stimulate the mind and offer inspiration.” (Raphael Sands, H 2001)
4.“The circular path inward cleanses and quiets us as it leads us in. The unwinding path integrates and empowers us on our walk back out. Walking out of the winding path, we are ushered back out into the world in a strengthened condition.”
(Artress, L, 1995)
www.healingheartsandlandscapes.co.uk