Spiral Beyond Shame Labyrinth
When shame curls you into a ball
The only way forward is through….
When your face flushes and your insides twist, the only way forward is through. When every footfall feels like stepping in hot lava, the only way forward is through.
This processional labyrinth pattern is not a maze, with false turns and choices. There's only one way in and one way out. You cannot be trapped in this shame spiral. You may feel lost, but you have been on the right path the whole time.
I built this 40’ labyrinth of rope and solar LED strings for Alchemy, a Georgia regional Burning Man event held in October. It’s one of 87 labyrinths I designed over 15 months to process each of the emotions and experiences in Brené Brown’s book “Atlas of the Heart”.
From the street, the labyrinth
sweeps a walker easily through a tightening blue-purple spiral
In the center,
the purple shades into red, spiking outward through orange and yellow
After doubling back and snaking past itself
the yellow path leads past four elemental grounding stations, and deeper into Camp Pretty Lights to process in our chill space or burn off excess energy on our dance floor
It’s so easy to slip into a shame spiral, and once I do, everything gets sharp and pointy.
My feet do the floor-is-hot-lava-dance: “Damn! Oh, fuck. Ouch!” And even when I think I’m past the moment, I tend to hug the perimeter of my shame. It creeps into my head at odd moments, preventing me from stepping fully free of its walls.
Watching walkers interact with the labyrinth, I saw their curiosity shift into surprise as they realized the path continued out from the center. “Oh, no! It keeps going! Where are we going? I don’t know!” I heard their exclamations and received their experiences.
Some stood in the center for a long time, tracing the sharp path before them with eyes or fingers to make sure they could get out. Some said “fuck that” and retraced their steps or stepped across the lines to exit as quickly as possible. Many danced through, the dynamics of the path shaping their movements. One person went through the spiral with a crew of eight people waddling like penguins who shifted into Roombas on the way out, bumping into walls and changing trajectories.
“Most people took a deep breath and trusted the path before them. The only way forward is through.”
The words “labyrinth” and “maze” are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings.
A maze is multicursal, meaning ‘many paths’; there are dead ends and choices to make. A labyrinth is unicursal, meaning ‘one path’; with only one way through, the experience of being lost is an illusion.
Greek mythology buffs may remember Theseus using a red thread from Ariadne to find his way in to slay the Minotaur. Esoterically speaking, the labyrinth—Ariadne’s red thread—is the solution to the maze.
Read more about the build process, the elemental stations, and walking a shame spiral.
Did you walk the labyrinth and have a story you wish to share with me? Drop me a note!