Exploring the Labyrinth_ A Guide for Healing and Spiritual Growth - Melissa Gayle West [21]
You also can create your own finger labyrinth and decorate it any way you’d like, making it truly your own.
MAKING A FINGER LABYRINTH
Before you make a walking labyrinth, I recommend that you make a finger labyrinth, either a simple paper one or a three-dimensional one. A paper labyrinth is the simplest to create. You can draw your own, order a paper labyrinth, or photocopy and enlarge one of the diagrams in this book.
Although you can walk an unadorned paper labyrinth, I suggest decorating the paper to individualize it and make it your own. Use crayons, colored pencils, or watercolors. Allow at least a half an hour of uninterrupted time. If you wish, put some quiet music on. Gather your materials at a table. Put your labyrinth drawing in front of you and trace its circuits from entrance to center, and back out again, with one finger from your nondominant hand.
Now place the palm of your nondominant hand on the center of the labyrinth and close your eyes. Take some deep slow breaths. Feel your inbreath filling your heart, opening and softening it. Feel your outbreath flowing from your heart down through the arm of your nondominant hand and out your palm into the center of the labyrinth. You also can imagine your outbreath as a current of light flowing into the center of the labyrinth. See, or feel, the labyrinth filling with light, chi, Spirit.
As you breathe into the labyrinth, ask for images that connect you more deeply with it. You may become aware of a particular color or colors. You might see an image in the center of the labyrinth, something concrete such as a flower or abstract like a spiral. Continue breathing into the labyrinth until it feels “full” or until you feel done.
Open your eyes and draw or paint your labyrinth with anything you have seen. It’s important to remember that this isn’t an art contest; your drawing or painting is for you, and no one else. Draw or paint until your labyrinth feels finished.
When it is dry, cover the front and back of the paper with clear self-adhesive paper. This simple labyrinth can go with you to your office and stay in a drawer to be pulled out for destressing, problem solving, or creativity enhancement, all of which you will learn in the following chapters. It also travels beautifully in a briefcase.
You also can laminate just the front, and attach the paper to a piece of cardboard or foam board with rubber cement for a stiffer and more durable “walking” surface.
Your second option for a finger labyrinth is to construct one from foam board, canvas panel (found in art supply stores), or plywood, and rope or clothesline. Although slightly less portable, this labyrinth allows for more meditative “walking”: Since the walls of the paths will be raised, you won’t have to watch to stay on the paths, freeing your mind and spirit.
These instructions will help you create a classical seven-circuit labyrinth measuring approximately 14 by 16 inches. You can make your labyrinth smaller or larger by changing the size of the basic unit, which is one inch.
To make this labyrinth you’ll need:
Canvas panel or foam board, available at art supply and craft shops, that measures at least 17 by 17 inches or a piece of plywood cut to the same dimensions
Eighteen feet of thin cotton rope such as clothesline for the walls of the circuits, or small stones or shells
Good glue, such as E-6000, available in arts and crafts or hardware stores
Ruler and pencil
Materials to decorate your labyrinth (choose whatever media attract you most): paints, pictures cut from magazines, glitter, crayons
Lay out your supplies, put some favorite music on if you wish, and refer back to Figure 4.1.
1. Begin by drawing lines, both vertical and horizontal, one inch apart across a 17-inch by 17-inch area in the center of the board, so that you end up with a grid of one-inch squares, or units. If you wish to make your