Labyrinths

realm of the labyrinth. Now, as we mentioned in the previous podcast, and we're gonna rehash here, there's a difference between a maze and a labyrinth. These terms are often used interchangeably to a certain extent. It's kind of an elegant variation where you use use a word to describe something that is similar but it's not quite the same. They're often used interchangeably, so he can't get too up in arms over the distinction, but certainly for modern users,

there is a distinction between labyrinth and mazes. The maze is a path of it's not even a path, it's just the space of walls that are confining you in and you're trying to find your way out. There dead ends, there are corners, There may or may not be a minotaur wandering around after you. Uh. It is the stuff of the hedge maze and the shining. It is the stuff of everything you see in the movie Labyrinth. Despite the name Labyrinth, that is uh, it is a movie

in which the individual rooms through mazes. Yeah, it's a spatial puzzle. And I really think about Labyrinth as more of the antidote to a maze. Yes, because you're not engaging the hippocampus as you would in a maze. Because in a labyrinth, you don't have to really really worry about the path or your memory or even trying to stake out a blueprint, because really the blueprint is in front of you. It may look like a maze, but really it's one uh, continuing path that just circles around. Yeah.

You there's one entrance, there's one egg it and there are no choices to make you simply follow the path. And the path is winding, and the path is slow going because you're having to take all these turns in these in these twists, but never do you have to actually think do I go this way or that way? Because there are no choices. It is. It is one

curving line from one end to the other. It's like a ball of string, you know, if you were to travel through that string on the outside, and it looks intricate and complicated, but but really it is one path.

And I really think about it as an act of submission when you enter into this labyrinth, because you are following a preordained path, right, and you are submitting yourself to this path, and in doing so, UM, it is a sort of meditative practice because you are now UM, I guess you could say you are busying your mind just with the act of walking. And that's what we're

going to talk about today. We talked about the stress response with m mazes, but now we're going to talk about this more meditative quality of the labyrinth and what it means to us on a logical and physical level. But first I want to mention that labyrinths are all over the world, um, and have been for for many thousands of years. You can find them in the United States, in Europe and India, Afghanistan, Java, Sumatra, and various sights in the US left by Pueblo Indians, the Happy and

Zuni and others. Yeah, you see the design of a labyrinth. You see it on a classic room and flooring, you see in the remains of labyrinths throughout Scandinavian Northern Europe. You see it in the graffiti at Pompeii, Ancient Britain's cut labyrinths into the turf, Bronze Age tombs in Sardinia, other carvings dating back to three thousand d C. It's like the maze. We discussed how the maze. It's like this pure physical or pattern base, but certainly a physical

embodiment of either internal confusion or external navigation confusion. It is about the state of confusion in the human mind as a physical reality, and like you said, the the labyrinth is an antidote to that. Yeah, it really is the polar opposite. And it's funny that those terms are used interchangeably because when you think about a labyrinth, you

think about wide open space. It's right, because this is typically something that is uh cut into the earth or made with stones or made out of stones, and so you can still see the vista around you. You're not your vision isn't impaired in anyway. In other words, there's not something on your right or left, and uh, you can see and hear everything right. In fact, some would say that you're able to pay attention more to these aspects of being. You're able to really tune into the

sounds around you, the smells, the sites. So it really is the polar opposite of a maze. Yeah. Yeah, there's no walls rising up around you. It's a winding course, but there are no choices to be made, and you generally find these your You often find them rather uh in churches, either in or in the serene garden environments. I encountered one at the Desert Museum in Arizona where they had and out amid the cacti in this one

little cactus garden, and it was just really serene. You start at the beginning of the labyrinth and it just curls you around and you're just walking following the path, noticing all these beautiful succulent plants growing all around you. And then eventually you wind your way back out and you just yesterday sought out a labyrinth within the maze

that is Atlanta. So, especially since there aren't really I mean, labyrinths don't really make for great movie and fictional storytelling, you know, because movies and in fiction, and I mean, it's all about putting you in a situation of drama. So of course fictional characters wind up in mazes. They rarely, it seems, wind up in labyrinth. So describe your experience

with the labyrinth. UM. I walked it at St. Barthl Bartholow mules Uh Episcopal Church, I believe, and it was an outdoor one and it was really lovely, and I'm sure I have a psychologically primed for the event, but UM, I spent minutes walking in a couple of times, and what I noticed about it is that it does draw you out of yourself again. The landscape is open, you can see the sky, you begin to notice things, and this is really important. I think we'll talk about this

um a little bit later. But it takes you out of that chattering part of your brain a bit um and it puts you It gives you a little bit more stillness. And that's what I noticed. And here's how I actually tested the level of meditative UH quality to this experience. I went to the Whole Foods after this. Now it's a it's late December now and there's a

lot of bustling action at Whole Foods. I despise going to Whole Foods, even when it's a calm period, because people seem to me to act very aggressively in Whole Foods, whether or not just trying to get a parking space or they're just taking their shopping carts around and jamming into the aisles. For some reason, I find it to be a disturbing place to be, even though it has a sort of holistic vibe about it of health and wellness and all that stuff. Afterwards, after walking this labyrinth,

I was like I was floating on air. I did not care. I parked really far away. Who could care about getting a parking space up close? I didn't um. But of course all of this again could be psychological priming. But I think that does speak to this act, that when you go through this physical act, that there can

be some sort of transformation mentally. And was it circular basically informed, because it seems like that that is sort of the standard for the labyrinth, is that looking at it from above, it's the circular zone of in which this path twists and turns. Yeah, it was circular, and at the very center it had symbols had three things that were a symbol of something. Now, I think you guys will probably been hipped to the fact that I'm not a religious person, so I don't know what the

significance of that is. I guess I'm going to make a guess that it was like the what is it, the Holy Spirit? The three things, Larry Curly, yes, y, yeah, those those were the faces. I thought it was just pattern recognition, but now that you say that, I think it was Larry feeling it was the holy trend. But

it's interesting that you mentioned how it is this. There's this feeling of guidance in the labyrinth, so it makes perfect sense that they would be in holy spaces because certainly within a church environment is the idea that God is my co pilot, or you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna trust in something greater than myself to guide me through this life life. And therefore, what is the labyrinth? But it is allowing the path to guide you and in freeing yourself of the worries about which way did

you go this, this way or that way. One of the most famous labyrinths that is this in a church setting is Chartress and Um, an archaeological excavation has shown that the cathedral this is in France overlies the alignment and foundations of earlier Roman buildings. And this is built in twelve sixty and around today. This is really cool.

If you visit the labyrinth on the summer solstice, you'll see that at exact actually at noon, a sunbeam falls directly on a nail that was placed in the floor, you know, And there's something beautiful about the I mean, it's still there because there are no there are no walls to fall down inside a labyrinth. You construct a maze. We mentioned the Maze of Minos in the podcast about mazes.

You know, whether that actually existed in any way, shape or form, you know, that's that's an area of discussion among historians. Most seem to think it did not. We certainly cannot find evidence of a vast subterranean maze in which a monster lived. Uh. There's some speculation that the palace itself there on crete, was kind of like a maze. It had big, thick walls, and it was very intimidating and a little confusing. But a lot of that has fallen down and we've had to, you know, sort of

to to piece things back together. So a maze not only the confusing, but it can fall and change due to the weathering of the world. Whereas, uh, it's kind of beautiful to think of a labyrinth that's something that that is persistent because there's nothing that can be eroded. It can be covered up, but it's still there underneath the turf if you know to look for it. You know what's interesting about that too, I was I was thinking about the Nazca lines, and these were lines drawn

by the Nasca people. And this is a civilization living in modern Peru. Yeah, we're talking four between four hundred and six d Yeah, and uh, this civilization actually disappeared about hundred years ago, but you can still see the traces of these lines, these labyrinths that were designed by scraping away red dust and rock and revealing the white ground underneath it. And um, and they're in the shape of of of animals. Yeah, it's so cool, like animals,

the monkeys, monkeys, some humans. Birds and fish are represented humming birds, sharks, lizards. Yeah, and and these are huge. We're talking about six hundred and sixty feet across and so ancient aliens people love these. They the idea it's like they would tell on aliens about monkeys, that's what

this was about. Well, actually, what they think is that the was a rite of passage in that it was a contemplative act done by small groups of the civilization that they walked these labyrinths in order to get to the end of Um. What was largely this metaphorical ritual. For not only the idea here is not only is this uh a line that creates the shape of a monkey as visible from a spaceship, this is also this is a line that you traverse. You're traversing the shape

of the monkey or the lizard or what have you. Yeah. So again, you know, this is probably more meditative practice that was done by the civilization UM, and not communication to ancient aliens. UM. But I think that it points to this idea that throughout history there has been this sort of walking meditation done in different ways. Yes, and we'll get more into the idea of walking meditation shortly. Yeah, particularly when you consider it being used as a healing

practice and and actually in medical well um centers. Yeah, you set around the world, you see them pop up again and again, and as we mentioned in the last podcast, a great source for these two episodes was a book by esther In Steinberg titled The Science of Healing Places. She devotes one chapter to labyrinth and mazes, but the whole book is about how physical environments affect us both in body and mind effectively, how they affect the mind body through our you know, and this can be negative,

this can be positive. And and how if you're building something like a hospital, you want to take that into account. You don't want to build a hospital it feels like a maze, if anything. You want to build a hospital that feels like a labyrinth, that it's open, right, And failing that, you just build a labyrinth in the courtyard, which many places do, right, because you have this idea of opening space metaphorically and physically so that your brain

can sort of acclimate itself to that space. Um. As you had mentioned the book Healing Spaces, there is a Harvard cardiologist that Sternberg author talks about. His name is Harvey Goldberg, and he says that a lot of the meditative practices meditative walking, our yoga, or tai chi um is really about gaming the relaxation response through breathing. And he says, quote, I think of it as an unclenching. When the system gets overly tense, it's like a tight fist.

It's locked somehow. By focusing your attention elsewhere, there is an unlocking and unclenching of the fist. Now this is really important when you think about an act of walking meditation, but as in a labyrinth, when you're walking around like that, because you are focusing on something other than yourself and yet you're allowing your thoughts to unfold naturally, and this is that contemplative act that labyrinth's encourage. Yeah, so think of this when you're actually walking on the path of

the labyrinth. What are you doing? Why are you feeling relaxed? First of all, you're focusing on the path you're having. You're looking down. Maybe you're looking up a little bit too, but then you're you're kind of looking down and watching the path that you're walking. There are no walls to head you in. It's about following this path on the ground. Secondly, because of this, you're moving slower, and because you're moving slower, you're breathing slower. Also, unlike a maze, your vision is

not obstructed. You're able to hear and see the world around you like you mentioned, and you're you're not having to depend on you know, landmarks or what have you, just kind of on autopilot, Yeah, which allows you to get into that mental space that is healing. As Sternberg and Goldberg and Herbert Benson, who is very much an authority of meditative thoughts and actually meditation itself. We will talk more about this. We're gonna take a quick break.

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All right, we're back and we're continuing to explore the idea of labyrinth, which again is the calm, singular path that winds you through a space and uh and takes you to the other side, as opposed to a maze, which is chaotic and confusing and full of stress and anxiety because you don't know if you're going this way or that way, and then you run into dead ends. But there are no dead ends in a true labyrinth.

It's true. And when you look back at some of these more ancient labyrinths, like the Nasaca lines, again it comes up why why did people make these? What why were they built? Why were they created? And certainly a spiritual reason is present. It's um much possibility for some of them. Some people think there are astrological reasons behind them.

And if you look again at Chartreu, which is the cathedral in France, again you see evidence that it was designed in conjunction with the summer solstice, so that maybe

it had something to do with that. Um. I tend to think that if the sunlight is beaming down in the middle of a labyrinth on the summer solstice at noon, that that would be very powerful to churchgoers, particularly if they're walking the labyrinth, because it's the idea that this path is in tune with celestial dynamics, with the mechanics of the universe, right, and that you are in unity with nature. Yeah. Like it makes me think back to

Dante's Inferno again, particularly Dante's Paradise. Paradise is a very strictly ordered thing, like the cosmos, whereas when Dante's actually in Hell, it's an ordered system, but it's it's a lot more confusing. Yeah. And then there's this I like this one. There's the dancing theory. Oh yes, this is great. This takes me back. There was there were like a couple of old goofy cartoons. I'm sure Holly would tell you could tell me exactly when and where they occur

in the long list of Disney productions. But there were a couple of goofy cry of pop stuff. There are a couple of goofy cartoons and one he quit smoking and another he was trying to lose weight, I think, And they dealt They were really cool. They dealt with like an adult goofy like dealing with like the demands of being like a bachelor. It was weird stuff. I

have checked it out again. But but there's one where he's like trying to learn how to dance, and there's this kid he gets where you listen to a record, and you place these cutouts of feet of on the on the floor and then you dance by moving and he has like a mannequin with him and you move from one these steps to this step, and this teaches you how to dance by following the patterns on the floor. It's this so that he could now in his bachelorhood

a woman. Yes, okay, so this is helping kids who are seeing their their father who's now a new bachelor. I think these were and again pop stuff will have to clear me up in this. I think these were aimed at These were These were kind of like an early Simpsons in a way, because they were they were kind of aimed at maybe a little bit of kids,

but more at the adults. But anyway, that the dancing ritual. Yeah, and the idea so, so the idea here is that labyrinths were potentially not merely this thing that you walk on and serenely follow, but you dance through. Because think about what dances and I'm not talking like you know, grinding booty shaking necessarily, but but think of something like

like square dancing, some sort of ritualized dance. Certainly the whirling dervishes where there is a pattern that you're following, and you're you're giving yourself up to the pattern of the dance, to the rhythm of the beat, to the You're giving yourself over body and soul to the music and the movement, and and and that is in a sense of labyrinth you were becoming. You kind of become the labyrinth. You become the dance, to become the music.

In that becoming, you cannot be this bundle of worries and and in troubles that you are the rest of the time. Yeah, it's the rhythm of the night. You leaven all your cares behind right hythm of the night. Yeah, I won't do that anymore. So what's interesting about that too is that this is uh, not just something that is again an act of submission, but perhaps some sort of right of passage. This is perhaps something that young men who had proved themselves as warriors would go through

this dance. This is also a fertility right for women who would go through these um the labyrinth dancing. And again you're talking about syncopated rhythm. We're talking about a group activity that would line everybody up. And we talked before when people are singing together. It's like their their neurons are all firing on the same pattern. And uh, some more thing with these movements, right, think about it as the first Congo line. Is it cong or congo?

I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. In the book, Steinberg points out that this is possibly why like early in church history, like certainly churches came to embrace their labyrinths. St. Bart's here in Atlanta is not ashamed of their labyrinth. They're rather proud of it. But in the old days there's maybe a little suspicion where the older members of the church, especially like I don't know about these labyrinths.

There's something kind of not right about them, fancy about them, you know why, because they have found all sorts of evidence. In fact, an intrust can vase from six BC depicts not just the dance in the labyrinth, but sexual acts going on. So the church kind of was like, m I'm not sure about showing the positions, the sexual positions, um,

you know, overlaid on the labyrinth here. Maybe we could kind of cover that up a little bit, but there's a little bit of that involved with it, and that, you know, and that of course hints paganism, right, So let's talk about the way that it affects the Okay, so you talked about this idea that when you're walking, you began to slow down your breath, right, and you began to relax. So your breathing slows, your heart rate downshifts, and this is when your body gets the queue that

it's time to slow down and relax. And this is the opposite of the stress response. This is the relaxation response. Yeah. The slow breathing activates the vegas nerve that counters the adrenaline like sympathetic nervous system response of stress. Yeah. And what's really cool about this nerve is that we've known that it has it's workings with stress and counteracting stress, but it also regulates the immune system, in particular in

fighting inflammation. So when we start to talk about this in the stress response, we start to talk more about the immune system as a whole, because we know that if your body is in a constant state of stress, that this can be destructive at a cellular level. So this is why it's important to try to uh promote

as much of this relaxation response that you can. Yeah, and it's really crazy to think about it about the mazes and labyrinths in this sense the idea that a maze in physical space can physically harm you, like on a cellular level, and likewise a labyrinth can heal you. Because when we talk about healing spaces, it's easily to think of it in terms of some hippie dippy nonsense,

has some some spiritual talk. And maybe I'm not that into the idea that a space has all these magical properties about it, But as we've discussed, a space does have an effect on the body and mind, and and we see that in a way in their purest forms in the maze and the labyrinth. Yeah, because again I will bring up the default mode network. This is that part of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex and medial

parialtial cortex in the metal medial temporal lobe. This is that part that is the mid line chatter, the me, me me, the fear response. This is all this is concerned with the ego and the seat of consciousness that really helps to inform. This is supposed to balance our sense of self. But when we have too much of

the chatter, there's hyperactivity. That's when to russion sets in that is stressful, right, And as we discovered in our podcast The Shaman and the Scientist, it is meditation that is one of the things that can quiet this part of the mind. And this was really important in helping to relieve depression. And I wanted to just bring up once more that Dr Judson Brewer used f m R I to scan experienced meditators and he found this decreased

activity in the default mode network. Now, meditation really is just about again gaining your breath and because if you do that, obviously that your body is going to get these cues that it needs to relax. So this walking meditation through a labyrinth is very much a type of meditation. So when you think about that, then then as you say, it's no longer just like this hippie dippie, like hey, meditate and you will fill one with the world. It's

that it is changing you at a cellular level. And we talked about this too, with meditation changing you um your genes as well your stressed genes, being able to

actually turn those off through stress responses. Steinberg pointed out too, with resuscitation, when you're resuscitating an individual, you're you're talking about one breath every six to seven seconds once the hardest started back up again, and that is the optimal breathing pattern to get the optimal amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide into the body to nourish tissue and keep

the brain working. So it makes sense to me that you would begin to see some of these labyrinths popping up in medical centers because no doubt, those are some of the most stressful places to be in because either you or a loved one um is in this medical center of being treated, or you're someone who works there. It's a high stress job, right um to be in

the medical professions. So if you had this labyrinth there and you had patients walking it, that could or you had family members or friends who are walking in these times of despair and stress, then it could help you. That relaxation wants to open you up a little bit more in your mind and to sort of tamp that down again at the mental level, at the cellular level. Yeah, it has a lot in common with walking meditation, which is a form of meditation you do walking being and

remaining conscious of your steps and your breathing. But it is also as Steinbroup points out it has a lot in common with tai chi as a gentle exercise. You might not think of walking a labyrinth as exercise, but essentially it is. It's a gentle exercise. But even this

has a positive effect on the body. Yet does There is a small study that finds that mindfulness meditation and moderate exercise have protective effects against cold and flu, with people who engage in the practices having less severe, shorter, and fewer symptoms of acute respiratory infection. So what we're talking about is a study that was published in the Annals of Family Medicine, and it included a hundred and

forty nine people and average age of fifty nine. Fifty one of them were a signed to have mindfulness meditation training for eight weeks, forty seven did moderate exercise for eight weeks, and fifty one they didn't have to do anything. And what they found is that those who went through the mindfulness training were linked with a forty decrease in symptoms fluid symptoms, while exercise was linked to a thirty

decrease in symptoms. So, in other words, again what you're seeing here is that this act NTI achieving a moderate exercise in walking being a moderate exercise does have real ramifications on your health. All right, I'm going to close out here with just a brief little bit of quotation from Kick not Hahn, who is of course a zen master in the Vietnamese tradition, and he wrote a book called Walking Meditation that came with like a DVD in a c D. It's still out there if you want

to learn more about walking meditation. It's a good source. So this is the Welcoming Path by Ticknahan. The empty path welcomes you, fragrant with grass and flowers, the path paved with paddy fields, still bearing the marks of your childhood and the fragrance of mother's hand. Walk leisurely, peacefully, your feet touch the earth deeply. Don't let your thoughts carry you away. Come back to the path every moment. The path is your dear friend. She will transmit to

you her solidity and her peace. And I think that applies beautifully to the idea of labyrinth. I think so too, And it's very nice. If you're interested in finding a labyrinth in your city, you can actually go online and there is a database of them. I believe it's called Worldwibeh or hold wide Web LABYRINTHUM or something along those lines. Just google it and you'll find it UM and it will actually give you all the locations. That's how I

found the one near our work here in Atlanta. All right, well, let's call over the robit here. You couldn't find us in the maze, but the labyrinth it's pretty easy for him to get here. All right. Just one comes to us from Jerick Jareck its and it says, Hi, Robert and Julie. I just finished listening to the Tongue Parasite podcast, truly the stuff of nightmares. I had a question that I can't seem to find an answer to. If the parasite is still eating blood and available food, then it

has to be producing waste too. I didn't think having something eat your tongue could get any worse, but then it uses your face as a bathroom crazy stuff. Thanks again for the great podcast, Jerry, and thank you Jarek for taking an already disturbing concept and making it just

a little more disturbing by bringing up this biologic for reality. Now, if the parasite had sexy time in your mouth, you can then rename your mouth or not your mouth but the fish's mouth a cloaca, right, I mean really, because it's got to be able to function in those three different ways. I guess, so cloake a mouth for fish. We also heard from a listener by the name of John John Writeston and says, at the end of your Dark Side of Creativity show, Robert puts mathematical thought and

creativity into distinct back baskets. Roughly, if you're not really creative, if you are more the logical mathematical type. Unquote, he continues, I believe you drastically missed the point. You can find the following in various places. Quote. One of hilbert students stopped showing up to classes. On inquiring the reason, Hilbert was told that the student had left the university to become a poet. Hibbert said, I can't say I'm surprised.

I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician. Um and uh. And then John suggested that we explore the connection between mathematics and creativity. As it turns out, we have explored mathematics and to a certain extent, of

link with creativity in some past episodes. So I apologize if I came off like I was dismissing mathematic or certainly science as a whole, as anything less than creative, because certainly you don't have to be dealing with art or fiction to use creativity, to to make any of the great leaps and science that humanity has benefited from these have It has come down to creativity, to finding the creative answer to a perplexing problem, and that, of

course is the same way with mathematics. We did a podcast about the nature of mathematics is mathematics human creation or human discovery? And so that one was really good. And then we did one music Math and Mayhem, where we talked about the interconnection between between mathematics and music, both of course very creative disciplines with some overlap, but

maybe not as much as we we think. So certainly, I'm I'm glad John raised the point because I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea that mathematics is not a creative endeavor. And then here's one more from Sean. Shawn writes in in response to the same episode, The Dark Side of Creativity, says I just finished listening to your podcast on the Dark Side of Creativity and listening

to this podcast I asked myself several questions. As I am a blogger who shares book reviews and some of my own short stories online, I often find myself writing in the horror genre, So at first I was very interested in the dark side. As I listened to the podcast and heard how some with this mindset are liars and thieves, something came to mind. It is the same by P. T. Barnum on how quote there is a

sucker born every minute unquote. It explains to me how those with a creative mind can easily take advantage of those who do not engage that side of their mind. It explains how so few can steal and lie to so uh to so many, as some just don't bother to use rational thinking. At the same time, I think of the thousands of writers out there in the world. Those who tell story to entertain and enrich others through their words are not lying, but sharing their creative mind.

They use their talent as a means to entertain and not to trick. Then, of course, there are those who write songs, movies, et cetera, and use their minds for so much more. It's not the creative mind that is dark. In my thoughts, but that part of the ego that decides how a person uses that creativity and puts it to use. So to me, it's up to the individual on how they use this gift, much like the force. Will they be a Jedi for good or a scythe

for evil? And that's from Sean a k A. Night Missed And if you want to check out his blog, it is night miss dot WordPress dot com. Huh So, thank you Sean for those thoughts. Certainly worth pondering over the idea of the dark side of creativity and to what extent creativity is a neutral force that has been

employed by the ego. Well, I like this idea of bringing the ego into it because if you are a literal thinker and you're not so into abstract thinking, you still have an ego obviously as well that you tap into to make decisions about your life, which means that you could also go to the dark side. It doesn't necessitate that you be creative in order to why I love this idea of looking at the ego as being the center of this problem. All right, So there you

have it. If you would like to get in touch with us, we'd love to hear people's thoughts on mazes and labyrinths, about the difference between the two, about how mazes and labyrinths match up with our experiences of the world abroad and our our inner turmoil or at times inner peace. Let us know about your experiences with mazes and labyrinths, walking a maze, how it made you feel, walking elabyrinth, how it made you feel uh In any additional listener feedback, we can get on that all the

better as far as conveying the idea. So you can find us on Facebook and you can find us on tumbler. On both of those we go by the name stuff to Blow Your Mind, and then on Twitter we use the handle blow the Mind. And you can also drop us a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, Is it how stuff works dot com