One day last week I was troubled. Not in a dramatic way, but I had a work issue that was bothering me. I was finding it distracting and it was making me cross. I managed to shove it to the corner of my mind for the morning as I was running a training session and needed to be present for those people in the room. But once that was over, there it was front and centre, and I needed to give it some focus before returning to the office.

Fortunately I was at St Martin’s Priory and the sun was shining. I had visited the Labyrinth there before and knew it to be a grounding experience to walk around. So I headed up to the garden, discarded my bag and shoes, and stood at the labyrinth entrance. I shaped the question I wanted to ask, my thoughts drowning out the sound of traffic and regular life. As I slowly followed the meandering path towards the centre I stripped back the layers of the issue, cast away the emotional frustrations I was feeling and dived into the core of the problem. The closer I moved to the centre of the labyrinth the closer I felt to pinning down what was creating my feelings of irritation. And there, just before the I reached the middle, I found it. What was bothering me. I caught the thought and smiled. Yes, that’s it.

I paused at the centre; turned and slowly made my way back outwards; building my thoughts back up as I stepped along the path; identifying my next steps to taking the issue forward in a constructive way; leaving any unhelpful emotions behind.

The labyrinth offered me structured space and time to think. It did not fix my problem or tell me the answer. But it held me, gently and safely, while I tapped into my own resourcefulness. It acted as my coach.

About the Labyrinth

The St Martin’s Labyrinth was designed by Sonia Overall, Senior Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing and is lovingly maintained by our Grounds and Gardens team. Sonia says:

“I made the labyrinth as a temporary installation for a conference. I have used labyrinths in teaching and for writing, and have published about this in the conference proceedings and in a book about using labyrinths in HE (‘Writing and walking the labyrinth’ in Learning with the Labyrinth: Creating Reflective Space in Higher Education. Sellers & Moss, eds. Palgrave, 2016).”

You can visit the Labyrinth anytime in the garden at St Martin’s Priory (unless there is a wedding or other event taking place).

Juliet Flynn, Organisational and People Development Advisor