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What Do Labyrinths and Life Coaching Have In Common?

The attentive audience gathered around for the short orientation to the labyrinth. I explain, “Labyrinths are amazing and versatile tools. People who walk them often experience an almost magical meshing of their analytical or rational mind with their intuitive and spiritual consciousnesses. From this altered state of consciousness, we can amplify our intuition, clarify complex questions, create incredible possibilities, and connect deeply to Spirit.”

As always, upon completing the orientation, I ask, “Do you have any questions?”  Inevitably someone voices this question: “How does a labyrinth work?” A rich question that I never tire of fielding!  Addressing it takes us into the depths of Nature’s Mysteries.

Early peoples lived in vivid realization of the Great Mystery through their intimate relationship with the four directions, the seasons, the sun, the moon, the stars and planets, and other natural forces. By tapping into energy dynamics that today are inaccessible to us, they created sacred spaces like the great pyramids, the Mayan temples, Stonehenge, and labyrinths.

We don’t know how labyrinths came to into being with the technology known at the time, nor do we know how they appeared in distant areas on the earth at about the same time. Furthermore, we don’t know what purpose they served in the ancients’ lives. By walking a labyrinth, however, we can intuit and even experience the energy those early inventors harnessed.

In an almost universal response, adult modern labyrinth walkers perceive the labyrinth as sacred space.The purpose of sacred space is to amplify the connection to Spirit, the Sacred.  Pythagoras (580 - 500 BC) claimed, “Number is the within of all things.” From Neolithic times up to the Protestant Reformation, sacred spaces around the world were constructed using the principles of Pythagorean or Sacred Geometry, a system of ratios and numbers in relation to the number one (the One). Labyrinths, too, were constructed of Sacred Geometry proportions.

Prehistoric labyrinths were predominantly circular. When the ancient builders embedded Sacred Geometry ratios in the circle, they created a resonance field, the vibrations of which could be physically perceived by stepping into it. They also aligned the placement of the labyrinth with the sun, moon, or planets, and typically located them at power centers, beams of charged Earth energy lines.

Circles abound in Nature.  As the “mother” of four cats, I note that each of them makes a clockwise circular nest before laying down.  Like the circular homes of birds and other creatures, it is their place for rest, recuperation, and safety.  Likewise, in almost every human culture present or past, the circle has represented not only the home but the sacred, the One.

Observe the structure of the ancient seven-path labyrinth. Notice that it contains a semi-circular center, surrounded by seven paths contained within the boundaries of a larger circle.  Ancient peoples were astonishingly knowledgeable about astronomy. It is believed that they experienced the Earth as the center of the Universe with the seven planets known to them orbiting around it.  I marvel at the synchronicity with the seven paths leading from the labyrinth’s center.

Since recorded history, the number seven has been associated with mysticism, magic, the sacred Sabbath.  Seven is considered the virgin number because it cannot be divided by any number except itself and one.  Ancient peoples believed that the world was ordered and harmonious. They had discovered the seven-note scale and used musical vibrations to calm and heal. Their life was ordered around the moon cycles of 28 - comprised, of course, of four weeks of seven days.

Walking the labyrinth connects us to these energies at a subconscious, kinesthetic level.  Even more astonishing and, to me, more intriguing, is the idea of geomancer and labyrinth builder Richard Feather Anderson. The labyrinth, he says, contains the eight patterns intrinsic to every living system in Nature. Each pattern is Nature’s way of doing something in the most efficient way.

What are these eight patterns? Read more

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