Labyrinths are ancient and modern walk through symbols, often associated with ritual and mytical stories. I have recently become interested the connection between the disorientating function of labyrinths and Dr Arnold Mindell's directional vector work. Labyrinths seem to have served the purpose of moving from our everyday world into other non-consensual worlds or realities. Working with labyrinths is a way of shifting awareness, and relating to other dimensions such as the dreaming process, or connecting to your core or essence.

Some of the key aspects of labyrinths seem to be:

• Disorientating ( i.e. upside down world),
• Links everyday world to underworld, life and death,
• Conscious to unconscious,
• Heroic journey,
• Birth/death,
• Thread of awareness,
• Man and woman,
• Penitential path to salvation,
• Womb, mother and child,
• Waxing and waning of the moon.

What really interests me is how you can use the labyrinth to disorientate the everyday mind to put you in touch with your core or essence. Much like ‘vector work’, circle dancing, Ba-Gua, or the spinning of Sufi Dancers.

Another thing you can do is to walk the labyrinth as a meditation. Taking a question about our work together for example and then dropping the question and walking the labyrinth and finding out what emerges irrationally.

• The labrys is a double-headed axe from Crete which symbolizes the waxing and waning moons depicted as two blades, in the centre of which is the four-pointed cross. The ‘labyrs’ is often shown held by a goddess guarding the entrance to the labyrinth or the underworld.
• The word ‘maze’ is derived from an Old English word ‘dmasian’ which means ‘to confuse’ which refers to the disorienting experience of walking such a path.
• The labyrinth .. represents the central spiritual and psychological concerns of the culture or civilization that makes use of it.
• The labyrinth is a symbol for life ..[and] is a ‘walk-through’ symbol and therefore a creative or ritual space which mirrors the sense of unknowingness and disorientation, the twists and turns, the challenges and obstacles that we move through in life.
• The labyrinth charts the connection between our everyday life and the underworld, our conscious self and the unconscious or collective unconscious, and our waking consciousness and the dreaming process
• This ancient maze fundamentally represents both the womb and the tomb, and the thread of awareness which is needed through all life.
• The labyrinth is essentially a ‘unicursal’ maze, which means it has only one path which twists and turns but eventually leads to the centre. The maze is ‘multicursal’ which means it can have many pathways, and therefore dead-ends. The labyrinth will disorientate, but the maze can both disorientate and render you completely lost.
• Early labyrinths were maps to aid the passage of the soul to the underworld after death.
• Ancient labyrinth dances and rituals depicted the movement between life and death, tracing the path from life, through the gateway of the tomb and into mother Earth.