About the outdoor Labyrinth space used for Bodhi Yoga's summer certifications and special Labyrinth events each year:
We will be learning together and moving through this incredible experience in a wonderfully supportive and profound environment!
The Labyrinth is here to help you trust your path. Its healing energy will be a place where you can walk and contemplate all you are learning and growing in, during this personal time of light-speed evolution.
The stones that form the path of the labyrinth are Mexican Black Beach Pebble’s (all sorts of hues of Blues) that bring in the ocean’s healing energy into the space.
As it turns out, the soil in the backyard has a sandy feel to it, which is also lovely.
The four quadrants of “the Lab” are dedicated to Healing, Enlightenment, Prosperity, and Peace. Walking a labyrinth helps to activate your “light body” (the higher and wiser aspects of your being).
To form the path, people have also brought stones from around the world that line your way—there are rocks in this labyrinth from Machu Picchu, Falling Waters, Stonehenge, Avesburyhenge, Nazareth, Sea of Galilee, The Garden of Gethsemane, The Lands’ End Labyrinth (from the cliffs on the pacific, just outside of the Golden Gate Bridge), and stones that have been taken and returned after walking the entire Camino de Santiago, from France to the coast of Spain. You too will definitely feel their sacred support as you walk this path.
The fence on the east side of the property is lined with ancient petrified wood and rose quartz rocks. There is also a huge Rose Quartz rock in the north east corner of the property, where the divine energy flows through (and another large Rose Quartz in the healing quadrant of the border of the labyrinth to help you, when the healing you seek seems beyond your ability). Often the greatest healing comes as a gift from the divine, as we learn that our part is simply bringing ourselves to a space where we can allow it to occur within us.
Rose Quartz is a gemstone that supports you on a such a comforting emotional level—initiating deep emotional purification, by helping you release the emotional limitations that hinder personal growth and happiness.
The back privacy wall is lined with a few Soldalite stones, tucked along a reclaimed wood fence.
Sodalite purifies your countenance (the subtle energy field around your body that we call “personal space”), making it a cleaner, more harmonious atmosphere for you to live in.
Just as planetary health requires a clean atmosphere, your mind-bod health requires that your “aura” (an esoteric word for countenance) be as clear as possible of disharmonious energies.
Because we are human, negative thoughts, attitudes, self-doubt, and stress can build up in the mind and collect in the countenance as clouds of disharmony—We see this sometimes in the face and posture of someone bearing heavy life burdens.
Sodalite is a natural absorber of these mental stress clouds. It also removes the other non-life-giving energies that tend to accumulate in our field, polluting it and bogging down your mind, emotions, and body.
Sodalite absorbs and neutralizes these undesirable energies and supports both your ability to focus, learn and gain intuitive clarity and strength.
There are also several opal onyx boulders (In the front of the property and the back, by both house and labyrinth): Onyx stabilizes, heals, and strengthens your root chakra, so that you may become more grounded and productive in the physical world. Onyx brings the seven color rays to all your chakras, from brow down to the root, and is exceptionally good at helping clear karmic charges that keep us stuck. In this way, Onyx strengthens your chakras at the deepest level so that they may function properly.
I’ve built a berm into the back lawn which will be wonderful for laying over in backbends and helping you in splits, inversions and all sorts of other yoga poses.
The tilt of it supports a really beautiful sitting criss-cross position that takes the stress out of your hips and back while you’re grounded on the earth!
Earthing is a practice of getting your bare feet in the ground, where you absorb healing energy, natural antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory issues begin to melt away.
With the old-growth trees in this one-of-a-kind space, you will receive all the benefits of forest bathing on body, mind, and soul.
As we sit and learn together there will be plenty of time for you to be under shade trees and absorb some of these quiet sacred spaces.
There are plenty of spaces on just over one-half acre to spend some quiet contemplative moments during your gathering or training.
Summer of 2021, I completed a new meditation corner that is lovely for our, Bodhi Yoga Teacher Training, Soul Weather annual gathering, and several other in-person gatherings at the Labyrinth.
This corner has several natural meditation seats available including two large Honeycomb Onyx boulders, tilted perfectly to take the stress out of the back and support a beautiful meditation.
—connects the emotions with the intellect, creating emotional resilience and intelligence. It also combats lethargy and laziness and brings back motivation and hope to those who have lost them.
—crystal memory boost and calms the mind. It teaches discernment so that you can sort out the important information from the irrelevant.
—It alleviates emotional stress and replaces it with serenity. It is a stabilizing stone that will help you trust your feelings, increase discernment and faith in your judgments and decisions.
—balances your will and God’s will for you
—creates network resonance between all the nadis, energy line meridians to work together for healing, as it relaxes fascial stress and tightness held in the connective tissues of the body.
—Alleviates the ability of the body to reproduce cancer cells, as it cleanses in brightens the lymphatic system, stimulating cellular cleansing.
Honeycomb Onyx is PERFECT for the beautiful dappled LIGHT, which changes by the moment in this wonderful corner. It glows, like a salt lamp, with the dense weight and strength of granite. Honeycomb Onyx is a stone of empowerment that works with our Sacral and Solar Plexus Chakras, helps us regain our personal power by easing our troubles and worries during challenging times, enabling us to realize we are strong enough to persevere through anything.
Vastu is an art of sacred dwelling that supports body-mind-spirit evolution and integrity. This space is designed to create a flow in you to have life-changing and personally potent alignment and growth experiences.
Tips for walking this Labyrinth
The Labyrinth is a symbol for THE PATH of life that we all walk in one way or another. Walking a Labyrinth, is a meditative, spiritual tool for learning to walk through life more awakened, body, mind and soul.
A labyrinth, simply put, is a walking prayer wheel. As you wind your way through the straight and narrow, that is also one Eternal round, the path guides you in all different directions. You’re never facing the same way for a very long and the turns and curves come unanticipated. Each step you take makes you let go of the way you think things should be and turn your will over to God-Source, so by the time you get to the center, you are more open and receptive than you would otherwise be on your own.
In the center of this walking labyrinth, if you clap your hands there’s a resonant echo, that goes flat as soon as you start to clap them over the outer rings, indicating a energetic funnel pouring in where you see the grass reaching a Heavenward. In Energy Healing language: The center of this sacred space holds an electromagnetic channel that activates both the liberating and manifesting current of your chakras.
It is important to do your best to simply remain open and receptive, while taking the time you need in the center of this powerful and sacred space.
Once you feel complete in the center, you wind your way back out, with the ability to feel surrendered (a conduit or channel) to the divine support that was pouring through you in there. On your journey outward, you begin to understand the metaphors you were learning on the path. By the time you’re ready to step out, the way you stepped in, (having completed your meditative prayer cycle), everything has changed.
[hdot size=”4″]Watch how Syl’ Created this Sacred Space here:[/hdot]
The Labyrinth is a symbol for THE PATH of life that we all walk in one way or another. Walking a Labyrinth, is a meditative, spiritual tool for learning to walk through life more awakened, body, mind, and soul. The Labyrinth simply put, is a walking prayer wheel; a symbol that has been found in many cultures, over thousands of years—a universal symbol for the path into truth and self-knowledge.
When walking the labyrinth, you will find your perspective is constantly changing. Your mind’s tendency to fall into old patterns is interrupted, as you are repeatedly led into, and away from, the direction you think you should be heading. Your vision and body are never facing the same direction for long; a technique to coax your inner-knowing outward, as you begin to let go of your outcome-based expectations and start to trust that the path will eventually lead you into the center.
During your walking meditation, through the Labyrinth, you will repeatedly head in the four directions of east, west, north, south—a message that the support you need to take you through life can come from any direction, person, or place.
Once in the labyrinth, you cannot go in the wrong direction, unless you give up entirely. You will find no dead-ends to block you or strategic choices, it is not a maze meant to test you like that, but a path to lead you into more of who YOU ARE.
After you spend the time you need in the “center” and begin out again, you will feel yourself begin to relax along the meandering, smooth lines, drawing you back and forth, inward and outward, you are gently nudged further and further; having moved in through the center then back out again.
It’s no mistake that this ancient symbol resembles a cross-section of the human brain.
Three Stages to Walking the Labyrinth:
There are 3 stages to a Labyrinth walk, that mirror the three stages of prayer:
Stage One—Purgation:
A gentle (or not so gentle) challenge to your ego-self to turn your will and direction over to the path, to be guided in each step, as you slowly become more willing to open, to releasing and letting go of the details of your life. A sacred cleansing of your attachments and naturally occurring habits toward outcome-based expectations and conditions we tend to put on life begins to occur.
Stage Two—Illumination:
When you reach the center, you reach a sacred place of openness, meditation, and prayer, set aside for you to be more open and able to receive whatever insights or guidance. The Center is for receiving. Three stones remain there. These are Syl’s (mine) archetypal stones representing receptivity; body, mind, and spirit. The three center stones also represent my three most important loves, simultaneously my greatest teachers (please take care not to move these three stones, as they also represent the body-mind-spirit connection of whoever is in the center, in their meditation).
Stage Three—Oneness:
Joining with your Higher Power, God-Source, the healing forces at work in the world, as you wind more calmly outward. Completing the path, by going out the same way you came into the center, yet not the same, changed, more awakened, closer to your Essential Self. This is the space for sending out your intentions and desires. Every time you complete your labyrinth journey, you are brought “full-circle”, with new insights into who you are, and where your path can lead you into a more exemplary, honest (body, mind, spirit) and “well-lived” life.
Understanding Sacred Spaces:
Any Sacred Space has a life and energy of its own, in essence, it is alive. Nature itself is already a vibrational match with the Sacred and will respond to it. That is why, with this Labyrinth, the center has a circle of green grass. It was here in the yard before the Labyrinth was built around it. The center is not watered, has no water source, yet remains alive and green. This is an indication that there is a vortex of life-giving energy at play here. A vortex is a fancy word for Gate, between earth and heaven, yang and yin thought and matter; a place where paradox has the potential to resolve and insights to occur. When in the center, you are at the apex of this so-called “vortex” and you will hear that you are in the center of a funnel, as your voice will echo back toward you, when you speak, or clap your hands.
The configuration of a Labyrinth itself is a literal expression of Divine resolution and the nature of God. In many spiritual traditions, God’s way is described as “straight and narrow”, while being simultaneously, “One Eternal Round”. In many ancient traditions, the circle represents heaven and the square (or cross) represents matter or earth. A Labyrinth resolves the separateness of heaven and earth. The symbol of the circle and the square being ONE signifies the marriage of both heaven and earth flowing simultaneously through the person walking it.
Several elements come together to create any Sacred Space and assist in giving it its energy:
First, a field of attraction, an electromagnetic charge is what makes this occur. A Labyrinth’s inherent spiral is the symbol of nature’s movement and will have a galvanizing effect on the space. This labyrinth is a “natural” labyrinth, meaning inseparable from its surrounding natural environment, using only organic earth elements. In short, the spiral is nature’s expression of the sacred field of body-mind-spirit consciousness working as one.
Second, the stones hold the energy of water (created over thousands of years about it), they serve as a conduit for this flow to naturally occur; creating a soothing interplay between Spirit and Body.
Lastly, there is the energy of the ones who created this space and those who walk this path, within its contemplative tradition. The energy of all who participate, the life force and love they’ve infused it with, as it was brought into being, as well as intentions and insights, all increase its depth of Sacredness. While in your labyrinth walk, it is important not to move, or take any stones. Many stones have come from places like Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, the Camino de Santiago, and many other labyrinths from around the world. Many stones are holding the place for others who are healing cancer, clearing emotional strain and stress, and for personal journeys that they are currently working through.
Walking this labyrinth with others is a beautiful experience. As you find the need to pass each other going opposite directions on the same ring of the path, simply hold each other’s left forearms and allow each of you to keep your left foot on the path, as you step your outer foot on the next ring. This way, you help each other both stay on the path, while you exchange places and move in your respective directions.
Because a Sacred Space is alive, it is important to be able to be prepared to become a vibrational match, to tolerate the energy it offers, before entering. If you enter a Sacred Space and you are unable to be a match to its frequency, it can bring up more than you are prepared for and leave you feeling a little “fried”. Paying attention to when the time feels “ripe” for you to experience such a place, is always very important and will also determine the level of benefit you receive from your experience. Each time you walk the labyrinth, you become more naturally empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul is reaching for. The intention you take with you will help determine the energy and experience you will have; however, you can also just enter your Labyrinth walk “open” to whatever you are supposed to experience. If no intention comes to mind, you can always allow the general intention, set by me when creating this particular Labyrinth, pour in to guide you as well–That it be a place of Healing, Enlightenment, Prosperity, and Peace.
You can read more about the four quadrants of Healing-Enlightenment-Prosperity-Peace which make up this lovely Labyrinth at:
http://syliloquies.blogspot.com/2014/12/four-corners-of-soul.html
Namaste