Into the Labyrinth: What Happens When We Stop Running from What We're Carrying?

Did you know that May 2nd was International Labyrinth Day? 🙂

Working with labyrinths as a tool for mindfulness and nervous system regulation has become extremely popular in the last few years. In almost every mindfulness program you can find an advertisement for finding a sense of calm as you walk one or trace it with your finger or pencil for a paper version. While working with a labyrinth from this point of view can have its benefits, a labyrinth was originally intended to be a tool for reflection, contemplation, and challenging the different habitual ways we think, feel, and struggle with soulful questions, choices, and the spiritual journey of surrender. 

I had worked with labyrinths here and there at different retreat centers and meditation classes early on in my awakening journey and it was a nice thing to do, but it wasn’t until a workshop in 2013 that I was attending as a speaker that I was fully initiated into the depths and power that working with a labyrinth from a contemplative point of view holds. 

An Initiation I Didn't Expect

As I entered the labyrinth, I was wrestling with the inner knowing that I needed to let go of my inner stance of blame and anger toward aspects of my life that parts of me viewed as “the problem”. The thoughts within were swirling with beliefs that if these people and/or events had not happened, I would be…happier, freer, healthier, more open…the list went on and on. Even though I consciously knew that my past no longer had any hold on the present or what I could create in the future, I was still stuck at a crossroads of some part of me just not wanting to let go of it. 

I would love to say that once I walked the labyrinth that day, I exited it with a sense of relief and a newfound zest for life. Instead, every time I made a switch back, I grew more and more angry, dysregulated, and downright enraged. And despite the very unwelcomed experience, the walk in the labyrinth that day was a huge gift. It cracked me open in a way that I could never have felt so clearly where my inner work was calling me; I needed to dive into the grief work I didn’t want to do, and to cultivate a level of self-love and compassion work I didn’t understand at the time. 

A Year of Walking Through

Luckily, at that point in my journey, I had begun to develop a framework for shadow-work that helped me work with what the labyrinth was bringing up based on the core tenets of contemplation and self-inquiry. 

Over the next year, I worked with the spiritual healing tool of the labyrinth and that framework to help hold me, show me, and guide me to connecting with the parts of me I needed to witness, heal, and give life to. And almost a year to the day that I started my journey, I was able to exit the labyrinth with a true exhale, releasing, and willingly welcoming forgiveness to myself, my past, and all the players in it—even the ones I found extremely problematic. I released the hold those experiences had on me and was willing to give life force energy to the present and to my future, free from the weight of unmet needs and pains of the past, controlling how out showed up. 

In honor of International Labyrinth Day this May, I created a special oracle card spread that brings the very framework that helped hold me so that you too can unbridle this kind of transformational work in your own practices.

This free guide [PDF] gives you that spread.

It's a 4-card practice you can use with any shadow-inclusive oracle deck (including the Sacred Witness Oracle Deck 😀) – whether you're walking a physical labyrinth, tracing a finger labyrinth, or simply sitting quietly with your cards and a question you've been carrying.

Download your Contemplative Spread for Labyrinth Work today, so that it can help hold you in the same courageous love and compassion that held me as I walked in, through, and out of some of my heaviest burdens. 

Also, if you would like to have a spread to work with right away, I gave a special free training and reading for our Sacred Witness Oracle Circle private FB group that I would love to share with you as well.   

Watch the full video to see the spread in action!

Offering light, love, and JOY on the journey!  
Michelle

PS: If you haven’t brought home the Sacred Witness Oracle Suite, now is the perfect time 🙂 Click here to shop our store or visit your favorite online book retailer for the ebook versions. 

And if you would like more personal support on your journey, our live classes and workshops are the perfect pairing to self-work. Click here for the latest on the different offerings that you can join today.