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SALT LAKE CITY — Yoga instructor Syl Carson was going through tough times. She was dealing with copyright infringement and the death of a close friend … and then she was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.
“Actually a tear-shaped tumor over my heart,” she says.
Carson turned for help from something very old.
She went online and printed out a labyrinth — a maze-like meandering path with a single route leading to a center. On some of her darkest days, she says, she traced the path with her finger.
“(It) would help me trust that I was on the right path,” Carson said.
Labyrinths date back more than 4,000 years.
They started appearing in European churches, such as the Chartres Cathedral in France, in the 12th century. It’s thought those were built as symbolic pilgrimages to Jerusalem at a time when actual journeys were too difficult and dangerous.
In the 1990s, Lauren Artress, then canon for special ministries at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, singlehandedly instigated a modern resurgence of interest in labyrinths.
Today, in Salt Lake City and around the U.S., you’ll find labyrinths in churches, schools and public spaces.
For some, walking a labyrinth is a religious or spiritual experience. For some, it’s walking meditation — a path to mindfulness. In health care settings, such as the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, they can be a path to healing.
Carson promised herself, if she survived her illness, she would build a labyrinth she could walk. When she recovered she put out a call on Facebook. Friends, yoga students and strangers came from Utah and across the country to help her build her own version of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth in her backyard in Provo.
Now, several times a week, Carson takes a good long walk, with lots of twists and turns. It’s a mile long — a half-mile in and a half-mile out — long enough to give things some thought.
“As you wend your way into the center it makes you let go of the repetitive thoughts that we get into as humans,” she said. “And so the labyrinth is the way to walk it out.”
In Salt Lake, David Keyes, a retired schoolteacher, teaches a course in walking meditation.
“I just feel a lot calmer when I do it,” he said. “I’ve become a much calmer driver,” he says (noting that he does not meditate and drive at the same time.)
On the last day of class, his students, like actor Spencer Belnap, walk a labyrinth at the University of Utah.
“You get caught up in your thoughts,” Belnap said, “but you just try to come back to the walking, come back to the steps, back to the present moment.
“It does help me just be present in the moment, which is a big part of acting and just to be mindful and connecting with whoever you’re within the scene."
To find a labyrinth near you, go to https://labyrinthlocator.com/. With more than 30 years in broadcast journalism, Peter is a skilled reporter, producer, and editor. He's won the National Press Photographers Association Reporting Award, as well as national NPPA editing and photography awards and six regional Emmys.
