![]() Rev Schwing suspected that walking labyrinths might be even more effective than the boards. ![]() Text from a sign at the entrance to the Antioch Medical Center Labyrinth in CA. We hope you feel refreshed and ready to thrive! Bring the feelings or insights you experienced with you as you return to the world. Return: When you feel the time is right, follow the path back out from the center. Visualize yourself in a peaceful place, breathe, reflect and relax. Refresh: When you reach the center you may want to stand quietly for a few moments. Clear your mind and let go of all thoughts and cares. ![]() Gently follow the path at a pace that feels comfortable for you. Release: Begin by standing at the entrance on the edge of the labyrinth. There are three stages to the journey through the labyrinth: Kaiser Permanente cares about you! We have provided this labyrinth as a way for you to relax and rejuvenate. Welcome to the Antioch Medical Center Labyrinth Surveys of users' stress levels before and after tracing the paths revealed that most felt more relaxed afterward. They encouraged people visiting a KP hospital meditation room to try the chessboard-sized finger labyrinths. “But KP leaders were really interested in learning about spiritual care as a professional discipline that includes religion but is much larger than that and includes the quest for existential meaning.” ![]() “In the beginning there was a bit of hesitancy in bringing spirituality into a secular health care setting,” remembers Rev Schwing. Wirth brought up the idea of collaborating with Rev Schwing to obtain an innovations grant from KP for “finger labyrinths”-boards with the paths grooved into the wood so people could trace them with their fingers. When she met Rev Schwing, he was already familiar with labyrinths from one at the California Pacific Medical Center where he completed his clinical internship. Her first attempt to get funding for a labyrinth, at the existing Martinez Medical Office, failed. “She had long been interested in labyrinths and wanted one at KP,” Rev Schwing recalls. Wirth, who has since retired, was then a Director of Health Education for KP. The Rev Schwing met Wirth shortly after he came to work as a chaplain at KP's Walnut Creek Medical Center in May 2000. Among the few to survive those upheavals was the labyrinth in the floor of Chartres Cathedral, on which the two KP labyrinths are modeled.Īccording to Rev Schwing, the idea for the Antioch labyrinth came from Jane Wirth. Later, during the Reformation and Enlightenment, many labyrinths were destroyed. They enjoyed great popularity in Medieval Europe, where Christians often substituted walking a labyrinth for the more arduous pilgrimage to the Holy Land (hence one of the labyrinth's names in French- le chemin de Jerusalem). However long and intricate a labyrinth's pattern, anyone can trace the turnings and be assured of reaching the center and back out again.įrom India to Arizona, labyrinths can be found in numerous premodern cultures. Walking labyrinths, on the other hand, are intended to let those who enter find their way along a single, clear path. Mazes employ dead ends and misleading corridors to baffle and confuse those who enter. Remembering the Minotaur myth, we can be forgiven for thinking labyrinths are the same thing as mazes. They worshipped a sun god whom they often depicted as a bull. The ancient Greek meaning is “house of the double-edged ax.” This ax- labrys-was a sacred symbol of the Minoans who lived on Crete. The word labyrinth itself recalls the Minotaur. Smitten by his beauty, she secretly gives him a spool of thread to unwind so he can retrace his steps. Labyrinth at the Sunnyside Medical Center, Clackamas, OR.Īfter killing the Minotaur, Theseus is able to escape from the labyrinth only with the help of the Cretan king's daughter, Ariadne.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |