03/06/2015
ARTICLE IN PUNAVISION:
LESSONS IN MINDFULNESS
CATHERINE BLACK ’94
JANUARY 3, 2014
After walking a labyrinth during Punahou’s Sustainability Fairs six years ago, Mary-Brister ’16 decided that she wanted to share this experience in mindfulness with her community. The Punahou sophomore created a 22-foot portable labyrinth as her Girl Scout Gold Award project, committing 80 hours of volunteer work to its planning, painting and implementation this fall.
The Luke Center for Public Service and Punahou Chapel had borrowed a portable labyrinth from St. Andrew’s Cathedral for several Sustainability Fairs as part of the event’s “sustain the spirit ” activities. “It really helped me and helped my friends,” says Mary-Brister. “Every time the Sustainability Fair came around, I had some type of issue and, by walking the labyrinth, I had time for myself and got to the bottom of whatever I was dealing with.”
In recent years, labyrinths have emerged as a tool to development mindfulness by meditatively walking a winding pathway from start to finish. The saying goes that “the point of a maze is to find the center; the point of a labyrinth is to find your center.” Labyrinths have been recently re-popularized by churches like Grace Cathedral in San Francisco – even though some, like the one on the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France, date back to the Middle Ages.
Mary-Brister hopes that her Punahou labyrinth will address “people’s individual needs to grow in their spirituality, to reduce stress and find who we are so that we can better influence our world in positive ways.”
After selecting a pattern, she enlisted the help of her Girl Scout troop and her sister’s troop to paint it. Each volunteer wrote their name and a wish into the labyrinth’s sinuous design before painting over them for its inaugural blessing.
During the months of November and December, the Punahou community was invited to walk Mary-Brister’s labyrinth, which was set up in the Chapel Roundhouse. Soothing music, dim lighting and a circle of cushions for reflective discussions all provided a calming, reflective space for the groups and individuals who visited.
Some classes used prompt cards to reflect on a specific question or theme while they walked, such as, “what is my responsibility for others in my community?” The prompts focused on giving and assisting others during the Luke Center and Chapel's Hunger and Homelessness service theme connected to the school-wide Food Drive. Students used words like “peaceful,” “grateful,” “centered” and “relaxed” to describe their experience walking the labyrinth.
“The experience is different for everyone, it really depends on how you go in and for what purpose,” says Mary-Brister. “What I’m hoping people will get from it is a deeper sense of themselves.” She plans to share the labyrinth with different hospitals and schools before formally dedicating it to Punahou.
In the spirit of the School’s 2013 ¬– 14 theme of Huaka‘i (Journey), Lars Howlett will visit Punahou from January 14 – 23 as the 2014 “Spirit and Service Week” Chapel speaker. Howlett is a trained labyrinth facilitator who will help to bring Punahou faculty, staff and students together in a School-centered labyrinth building exercise.
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