January 10, 2013 • 34 mins
Having escaped from the confusion of the Minoan maze, it's time to walk the serene, calming paths of the Chartres Labyrinth. Why is this experience so different? Join Robert and Julie as they discuss the calming effects that labyrinths have on the mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
And in our last episode we deal with mazes. We
actually started in a maze and steadily worked our way
out of it. And now we have escaped from the maze.
(00:25):
We are outside of this confusing, confining, perplexing, stressful environment
of enclosing walls, and we have now escaped into the
realm of the labyrinth. Now, as we mentioned in the
previous podcast, and we're gonna rehash here, there's a difference
between a maze and a labyrinth. These terms are often
(00:45):
used interchangeably to a certain extent. It's kind of an
elegant variation where you use use a word to describe
something that is similar but it's not quite the same.
They're often used interchangeably, so he can't get too up
in arms over the distinction, but certainly for modern users,
there is a distinction between labyrinth and mazes. The maze
is a path of it's not even a path, it's
(01:07):
just the space of walls that are confining you in
and you're trying to find your way out. There dead ends,
there are corners, There may or may not be a
minotaur wandering around after you. Uh. It is the stuff
of the hedge maze and the shining. It is the
stuff of everything you see in the movie Labyrinth. Despite
the name Labyrinth, that is uh, it is a movie
in which the individual rooms through mazes. Yeah, it's a
(01:29):
spatial puzzle. And I really think about Labyrinth as more
of the antidote to a maze. Yes, because you're not
engaging the hippocampus as you would in a maze. Because
in a labyrinth, you don't have to really really worry
about the path or your memory or even trying to
stake out a blueprint, because really the blueprint is in
(01:49):
front of you. It may look like a maze, but
really it's one uh, continuing path that just circles around. Yeah.
You there's one entrance, there's one egg it and there
are no choices to make you simply follow the path.
And the path is winding, and the path is slow
going because you're having to take all these turns in
(02:10):
these in these twists, but never do you have to
actually think do I go this way or that way?
Because there are no choices. It is. It is one
curving line from one end to the other. It's like
a ball of string, you know, if you were to
travel through that string on the outside, and it looks
intricate and complicated, but but really it is one path.
And I really think about it as an act of
submission when you enter into this labyrinth, because you are
(02:32):
following a preordained path, right, and you are submitting yourself
to this path, and in doing so, UM, it is
a sort of meditative practice because you are now UM,
I guess you could say you are busying your mind
just with the act of walking. And that's what we're
going to talk about today. We talked about the stress
response with m mazes, but now we're going to talk
(02:54):
about this more meditative quality of the labyrinth and what
it means to us on a logical and physical level.
But first I want to mention that labyrinths are all
over the world, um, and have been for for many
thousands of years. You can find them in the United States,
in Europe and India, Afghanistan, Java, Sumatra, and various sights
(03:16):
in the US left by Pueblo Indians, the Happy and
Zuni and others. Yeah, you see the design of a labyrinth.
You see it on a classic room and flooring, you
see in the remains of labyrinths throughout Scandinavian Northern Europe.
You see it in the graffiti at Pompeii, Ancient Britain's
cut labyrinths into the turf, Bronze Age tombs in Sardinia,
other carvings dating back to three thousand d C. It's
(03:39):
like the maze. We discussed how the maze. It's like
this pure physical or pattern base, but certainly a physical
embodiment of either internal confusion or external navigation confusion. It
is about the state of confusion in the human mind
as a physical reality, and like you said, the the
labyrinth is an antidote to that. Yeah, it really is
(04:02):
the polar opposite. And it's funny that those terms are
used interchangeably because when you think about a labyrinth, you
think about wide open space. It's right, because this is
typically something that is uh cut into the earth or
made with stones or made out of stones, and so
you can still see the vista around you. You're not
your vision isn't impaired in anyway. In other words, there's
(04:24):
not something on your right or left, and uh, you
can see and hear everything right. In fact, some would
say that you're able to pay attention more to these
aspects of being. You're able to really tune into the
sounds around you, the smells, the sites. So it really
is the polar opposite of a maze. Yeah. Yeah, there's
no walls rising up around you. It's a winding course,
(04:46):
but there are no choices to be made, and you
generally find these your You often find them rather uh
in churches, either in or in the serene garden environments.
I encountered one at the Desert Museum in Arizona where
they had and out amid the cacti in this one
little cactus garden, and it was just really serene. You
start at the beginning of the labyrinth and it just
(05:07):
curls you around and you're just walking following the path,
noticing all these beautiful succulent plants growing all around you.
And then eventually you wind your way back out and
you just yesterday sought out a labyrinth within the maze
that is Atlanta. So, especially since there aren't really I mean,
(05:28):
labyrinths don't really make for great movie and fictional storytelling,
you know, because movies and in fiction, and I mean,
it's all about putting you in a situation of drama.
So of course fictional characters wind up in mazes. They rarely,
it seems, wind up in labyrinth. So describe your experience
with the labyrinth. UM. I walked it at St. Barthl
(05:48):
Bartholow mules Uh Episcopal Church, I believe, and it was
an outdoor one and it was really lovely, and I'm
sure I have a psychologically primed for the event, but UM,
I spent minutes walking in a couple of times, and
what I noticed about it is that it does draw
you out of yourself again. The landscape is open, you
(06:10):
can see the sky, you begin to notice things, and
this is really important. I think we'll talk about this
um a little bit later. But it takes you out
of that chattering part of your brain a bit um
and it puts you It gives you a little bit
more stillness. And that's what I noticed. And here's how
I actually tested the level of meditative UH quality to
(06:33):
this experience. I went to the Whole Foods after this.
Now it's a it's late December now and there's a
lot of bustling action at Whole Foods. I despise going
to Whole Foods, even when it's a calm period, because
people seem to me to act very aggressively in Whole Foods,
(06:53):
whether or not just trying to get a parking space
or they're just taking their shopping carts around and jamming
into the aisles. For some reason, I find it to
be a disturbing place to be, even though it has
a sort of holistic vibe about it of health and
wellness and all that stuff. Afterwards, after walking this labyrinth,
I was like I was floating on air. I did
not care. I parked really far away. Who could care
(07:15):
about getting a parking space up close? I didn't um.
But of course all of this again could be psychological priming.
But I think that does speak to this act, that
when you go through this physical act, that there can
be some sort of transformation mentally. And was it circular
basically informed, because it seems like that that is sort
of the standard for the labyrinth, is that looking at
(07:37):
it from above, it's the circular zone of in which
this path twists and turns. Yeah, it was circular, and
at the very center it had symbols had three things
that were a symbol of something. Now, I think you
guys will probably been hipped to the fact that I'm
not a religious person, so I don't know what the
significance of that is. I guess I'm going to make
a guess that it was like the what is it,
(07:58):
the Holy Spirit? The three things, Larry Curly, yes, y, yeah,
those those were the faces. I thought it was just
pattern recognition, but now that you say that, I think
it was Larry feeling it was the holy trend. But
it's interesting that you mentioned how it is this. There's
this feeling of guidance in the labyrinth, so it makes
perfect sense that they would be in holy spaces because
certainly within a church environment is the idea that God
(08:21):
is my co pilot, or you know, I'm gonna I'm
gonna trust in something greater than myself to guide me
through this life life. And therefore, what is the labyrinth?
But it is allowing the path to guide you and
in freeing yourself of the worries about which way did
you go this, this way or that way. One of
the most famous labyrinths that is this in a church
(08:41):
setting is Chartress and Um, an archaeological excavation has shown
that the cathedral this is in France overlies the alignment
and foundations of earlier Roman buildings. And this is built
in twelve sixty and around today. This is really cool.
If you visit the labyrinth on the summer solstice, you'll
see that at exact actually at noon, a sunbeam falls
(09:01):
directly on a nail that was placed in the floor,
you know, And there's something beautiful about the I mean,
it's still there because there are no there are no
walls to fall down inside a labyrinth. You construct a maze.
We mentioned the Maze of Minos in the podcast about mazes.
You know, whether that actually existed in any way, shape
or form, you know, that's that's an area of discussion
(09:22):
among historians. Most seem to think it did not. We
certainly cannot find evidence of a vast subterranean maze in
which a monster lived. Uh. There's some speculation that the
palace itself there on crete, was kind of like a maze.
It had big, thick walls, and it was very intimidating
and a little confusing. But a lot of that has
fallen down and we've had to, you know, sort of
(09:43):
to to piece things back together. So a maze not
only the confusing, but it can fall and change due
to the weathering of the world. Whereas, uh, it's kind
of beautiful to think of a labyrinth that's something that
that is persistent because there's nothing that can be eroded.
It can be covered up, but it's still there underneath
the turf if you know to look for it. You
know what's interesting about that too, I was I was
(10:03):
thinking about the Nazca lines, and these were lines drawn
by the Nasca people. And this is a civilization living
in modern Peru. Yeah, we're talking four between four hundred
and six d Yeah, and uh, this civilization actually disappeared
about hundred years ago, but you can still see the
traces of these lines, these labyrinths that were designed by
(10:25):
scraping away red dust and rock and revealing the white
ground underneath it. And um, and they're in the shape
of of of animals. Yeah, it's so cool, like animals,
the monkeys, monkeys, some humans. Birds and fish are represented
humming birds, sharks, lizards. Yeah, and and these are huge.
We're talking about six hundred and sixty feet across and
(10:49):
so ancient aliens people love these. They the idea it's
like they would tell on aliens about monkeys, that's what
this was about. Well, actually, what they think is that
the was a rite of passage in that it was
a contemplative act done by small groups of the civilization
that they walked these labyrinths in order to get to
(11:10):
the end of Um. What was largely this metaphorical ritual.
For not only the idea here is not only is
this uh a line that creates the shape of a
monkey as visible from a spaceship, this is also this
is a line that you traverse. You're traversing the shape
of the monkey or the lizard or what have you. Yeah.
(11:32):
So again, you know, this is probably more meditative practice
that was done by the civilization UM, and not communication
to ancient aliens. UM. But I think that it points
to this idea that throughout history there has been this
sort of walking meditation done in different ways. Yes, and
we'll get more into the idea of walking meditation shortly. Yeah,
(11:54):
particularly when you consider it being used as a healing
practice and and actually in medical well um centers. Yeah,
you set around the world, you see them pop up
again and again, and as we mentioned in the last podcast,
a great source for these two episodes was a book
by esther In Steinberg titled The Science of Healing Places.
She devotes one chapter to labyrinth and mazes, but the
(12:14):
whole book is about how physical environments affect us both
in body and mind effectively, how they affect the mind
body through our you know, and this can be negative,
this can be positive. And and how if you're building
something like a hospital, you want to take that into account.
You don't want to build a hospital it feels like
a maze, if anything. You want to build a hospital
that feels like a labyrinth, that it's open, right, And
(12:35):
failing that, you just build a labyrinth in the courtyard,
which many places do, right, because you have this idea
of opening space metaphorically and physically so that your brain
can sort of acclimate itself to that space. Um. As
you had mentioned the book Healing Spaces, there is a
Harvard cardiologist that Sternberg author talks about. His name is
(12:57):
Harvey Goldberg, and he says that a lot of the
meditative practices meditative walking, our yoga, or tai chi um
is really about gaming the relaxation response through breathing. And
he says, quote, I think of it as an unclenching.
When the system gets overly tense, it's like a tight fist.
(13:18):
It's locked somehow. By focusing your attention elsewhere, there is
an unlocking and unclenching of the fist. Now this is
really important when you think about an act of walking meditation,
but as in a labyrinth, when you're walking around like that,
because you are focusing on something other than yourself and
yet you're allowing your thoughts to unfold naturally, and this
(13:40):
is that contemplative act that labyrinth's encourage. Yeah, so think
of this when you're actually walking on the path of
the labyrinth. What are you doing? Why are you feeling relaxed?
First of all, you're focusing on the path you're having.
You're looking down. Maybe you're looking up a little bit too,
but then you're you're kind of looking down and watching
the path that you're walking. There are no walls to
head you in. It's about following this path on the ground. Secondly,
(14:04):
because of this, you're moving slower, and because you're moving slower,
you're breathing slower. Also, unlike a maze, your vision is
not obstructed. You're able to hear and see the world
around you like you mentioned, and you're you're not having
to depend on you know, landmarks or what have you,
just kind of on autopilot, Yeah, which allows you to
get into that mental space that is healing. As Sternberg
(14:24):
and Goldberg and Herbert Benson, who is very much an
authority of meditative thoughts and actually meditation itself. We will
talk more about this. We're gonna take a quick break.
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(16:18):
All right, we're back and we're continuing to explore the
idea of labyrinth, which again is the calm, singular path
that winds you through a space and uh and takes
you to the other side, as opposed to a maze,
which is chaotic and confusing and full of stress and
anxiety because you don't know if you're going this way
or that way, and then you run into dead ends.
(16:38):
But there are no dead ends in a true labyrinth.
It's true. And when you look back at some of
these more ancient labyrinths, like the Nasaca lines, again it
comes up why why did people make these? What why
were they built? Why were they created? And certainly a
spiritual reason is present. It's um much possibility for some
(17:01):
of them. Some people think there are astrological reasons behind them.
And if you look again at Chartreu, which is the
cathedral in France, again you see evidence that it was
designed in conjunction with the summer solstice, so that maybe
it had something to do with that. Um. I tend
to think that if the sunlight is beaming down in
(17:23):
the middle of a labyrinth on the summer solstice at noon,
that that would be very powerful to churchgoers, particularly if
they're walking the labyrinth, because it's the idea that this
path is in tune with celestial dynamics, with the mechanics
of the universe, right, and that you are in unity
with nature. Yeah. Like it makes me think back to
Dante's Inferno again, particularly Dante's Paradise. Paradise is a very
(17:46):
strictly ordered thing, like the cosmos, whereas when Dante's actually
in Hell, it's an ordered system, but it's it's a
lot more confusing. Yeah. And then there's this I like
this one. There's the dancing theory. Oh yes, this is great.
This takes me back. There was there were like a
couple of old goofy cartoons. I'm sure Holly would tell
you could tell me exactly when and where they occur
(18:08):
in the long list of Disney productions. But there were
a couple of goofy cry of pop stuff. There are
a couple of goofy cartoons and one he quit smoking
and another he was trying to lose weight, I think,
And they dealt They were really cool. They dealt with
like an adult goofy like dealing with like the demands
of being like a bachelor. It was weird stuff. I
(18:29):
have checked it out again. But but there's one where
he's like trying to learn how to dance, and there's
this kid he gets where you listen to a record,
and you place these cutouts of feet of on the
on the floor and then you dance by moving and
he has like a mannequin with him and you move
from one these steps to this step, and this teaches
you how to dance by following the patterns on the floor.
(18:49):
It's this so that he could now in his bachelorhood
a woman. Yes, okay, so this is helping kids who
are seeing their their father who's now a new bachelor.
I think these were and again pop stuff will have
to clear me up in this. I think these were
aimed at These were These were kind of like an
early Simpsons in a way, because they were they were
kind of aimed at maybe a little bit of kids,
but more at the adults. But anyway, that the dancing ritual. Yeah,
(19:14):
and the idea so, so the idea here is that
labyrinths were potentially not merely this thing that you walk
on and serenely follow, but you dance through. Because think
about what dances and I'm not talking like you know,
grinding booty shaking necessarily, but but think of something like
like square dancing, some sort of ritualized dance. Certainly the
(19:36):
whirling dervishes where there is a pattern that you're following,
and you're you're giving yourself up to the pattern of
the dance, to the rhythm of the beat, to the
You're giving yourself over body and soul to the music
and the movement, and and and that is in a
sense of labyrinth you were becoming. You kind of become
(19:58):
the labyrinth. You become the dance, to become the music.
In that becoming, you cannot be this bundle of worries
and and in troubles that you are the rest of
the time. Yeah, it's the rhythm of the night. You
leaven all your cares behind right hythm of the night. Yeah,
I won't do that anymore. So what's interesting about that
(20:19):
too is that this is uh, not just something that
is again an act of submission, but perhaps some sort
of right of passage. This is perhaps something that young
men who had proved themselves as warriors would go through
this dance. This is also a fertility right for women
who would go through these um the labyrinth dancing. And
(20:42):
again you're talking about syncopated rhythm. We're talking about a
group activity that would line everybody up. And we talked
before when people are singing together. It's like their their
neurons are all firing on the same pattern. And uh,
some more thing with these movements, right, think about it
as the first Congo line. Is it cong or congo?
I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. In the book, Steinberg
(21:05):
points out that this is possibly why like early in
church history, like certainly churches came to embrace their labyrinths. St.
Bart's here in Atlanta is not ashamed of their labyrinth.
They're rather proud of it. But in the old days
there's maybe a little suspicion where the older members of
the church, especially like I don't know about these labyrinths.
There's something kind of not right about them, fancy about them,
you know why, because they have found all sorts of evidence.
(21:31):
In fact, an intrust can vase from six BC depicts
not just the dance in the labyrinth, but sexual acts
going on. So the church kind of was like, m
I'm not sure about showing the positions, the sexual positions, um,
you know, overlaid on the labyrinth here. Maybe we could
kind of cover that up a little bit, but there's
(21:52):
a little bit of that involved with it, and that,
you know, and that of course hints paganism, right, So
let's talk about the way that it affects the Okay,
so you talked about this idea that when you're walking,
you began to slow down your breath, right, and you
began to relax. So your breathing slows, your heart rate downshifts,
and this is when your body gets the queue that
(22:13):
it's time to slow down and relax. And this is
the opposite of the stress response. This is the relaxation response. Yeah.
The slow breathing activates the vegas nerve that counters the
adrenaline like sympathetic nervous system response of stress. Yeah. And
what's really cool about this nerve is that we've known
(22:34):
that it has it's workings with stress and counteracting stress,
but it also regulates the immune system, in particular in
fighting inflammation. So when we start to talk about this
in the stress response, we start to talk more about
the immune system as a whole, because we know that
if your body is in a constant state of stress,
that this can be destructive at a cellular level. So
(22:56):
this is why it's important to try to uh promote
as much of this relaxation response that you can. Yeah,
and it's really crazy to think about it about the
mazes and labyrinths in this sense the idea that a
maze in physical space can physically harm you, like on
a cellular level, and likewise a labyrinth can heal you.
Because when we talk about healing spaces, it's easily to
(23:16):
think of it in terms of some hippie dippy nonsense,
has some some spiritual talk. And maybe I'm not that
into the idea that a space has all these magical
properties about it, But as we've discussed, a space does
have an effect on the body and mind, and and
we see that in a way in their purest forms
in the maze and the labyrinth. Yeah, because again I
will bring up the default mode network. This is that
(23:37):
part of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex and medial
parialtial cortex in the metal medial temporal lobe. This is
that part that is the mid line chatter, the me,
me me, the fear response. This is all this is
concerned with the ego and the seat of consciousness that
really helps to inform. This is supposed to balance our
sense of self. But when we have too much of
the chatter, there's hyperactivity. That's when to russion sets in
(24:00):
that is stressful, right, And as we discovered in our
podcast The Shaman and the Scientist, it is meditation that
is one of the things that can quiet this part
of the mind. And this was really important in helping
to relieve depression. And I wanted to just bring up
once more that Dr Judson Brewer used f m R
(24:20):
I to scan experienced meditators and he found this decreased
activity in the default mode network. Now, meditation really is
just about again gaining your breath and because if you
do that, obviously that your body is going to get
these cues that it needs to relax. So this walking
meditation through a labyrinth is very much a type of meditation.
(24:45):
So when you think about that, then then as you say,
it's no longer just like this hippie dippie, like hey,
meditate and you will fill one with the world. It's
that it is changing you at a cellular level. And
we talked about this too, with meditation changing you um
your genes as well your stressed genes, being able to
actually turn those off through stress responses. Steinberg pointed out too,
(25:07):
with resuscitation, when you're resuscitating an individual, you're you're talking
about one breath every six to seven seconds once the
hardest started back up again, and that is the optimal
breathing pattern to get the optimal amount of oxygen and
carbon dioxide into the body to nourish tissue and keep
the brain working. So it makes sense to me that
(25:27):
you would begin to see some of these labyrinths popping
up in medical centers because no doubt, those are some
of the most stressful places to be in because either
you or a loved one um is in this medical
center of being treated, or you're someone who works there.
It's a high stress job, right um to be in
the medical professions. So if you had this labyrinth there
(25:50):
and you had patients walking it, that could or you
had family members or friends who are walking in these
times of despair and stress, then it could help you.
That relaxation wants to open you up a little bit
more in your mind and to sort of tamp that
down again at the mental level, at the cellular level. Yeah,
it has a lot in common with walking meditation, which
(26:12):
is a form of meditation you do walking being and
remaining conscious of your steps and your breathing. But it
is also as Steinbroup points out it has a lot
in common with tai chi as a gentle exercise. You
might not think of walking a labyrinth as exercise, but
essentially it is. It's a gentle exercise. But even this
has a positive effect on the body. Yet does There
(26:32):
is a small study that finds that mindfulness meditation and
moderate exercise have protective effects against cold and flu, with
people who engage in the practices having less severe, shorter,
and fewer symptoms of acute respiratory infection. So what we're
talking about is a study that was published in the
Annals of Family Medicine, and it included a hundred and
(26:54):
forty nine people and average age of fifty nine. Fifty
one of them were a signed to have mindfulness meditation
training for eight weeks, forty seven did moderate exercise for
eight weeks, and fifty one they didn't have to do anything.
And what they found is that those who went through
the mindfulness training were linked with a forty decrease in
(27:17):
symptoms fluid symptoms, while exercise was linked to a thirty
decrease in symptoms. So, in other words, again what you're
seeing here is that this act NTI achieving a moderate
exercise in walking being a moderate exercise does have real
ramifications on your health. All right, I'm going to close
(27:37):
out here with just a brief little bit of quotation
from Kick not Hahn, who is of course a zen
master in the Vietnamese tradition, and he wrote a book
called Walking Meditation that came with like a DVD in
a c D. It's still out there if you want
to learn more about walking meditation. It's a good source.
So this is the Welcoming Path by Ticknahan. The empty
(27:57):
path welcomes you, fragrant with grass and flowers, the path
paved with paddy fields, still bearing the marks of your
childhood and the fragrance of mother's hand. Walk leisurely, peacefully,
your feet touch the earth deeply. Don't let your thoughts
carry you away. Come back to the path every moment.
The path is your dear friend. She will transmit to
(28:18):
you her solidity and her peace. And I think that
applies beautifully to the idea of labyrinth. I think so too,
And it's very nice. If you're interested in finding a
labyrinth in your city, you can actually go online and
there is a database of them. I believe it's called
Worldwibeh or hold wide Web LABYRINTHUM or something along those lines.
(28:41):
Just google it and you'll find it UM and it
will actually give you all the locations. That's how I
found the one near our work here in Atlanta. All right, well,
let's call over the robit here. You couldn't find us
in the maze, but the labyrinth it's pretty easy for
him to get here. All right. Just one comes to
us from Jerick Jareck its and it says, Hi, Robert
(29:01):
and Julie. I just finished listening to the Tongue Parasite podcast,
truly the stuff of nightmares. I had a question that
I can't seem to find an answer to. If the
parasite is still eating blood and available food, then it
has to be producing waste too. I didn't think having
something eat your tongue could get any worse, but then
it uses your face as a bathroom crazy stuff. Thanks
(29:23):
again for the great podcast, Jerry, and thank you Jarek
for taking an already disturbing concept and making it just
a little more disturbing by bringing up this biologic for reality. Now,
if the parasite had sexy time in your mouth, you
can then rename your mouth or not your mouth but
the fish's mouth a cloaca, right, I mean really, because
it's got to be able to function in those three
(29:44):
different ways. I guess, so cloake a mouth for fish.
We also heard from a listener by the name of
John John Writeston and says, at the end of your
Dark Side of Creativity show, Robert puts mathematical thought and
creativity into distinct back baskets. Roughly, if you're not really creative,
if you are more the logical mathematical type. Unquote, he continues,
(30:08):
I believe you drastically missed the point. You can find
the following in various places. Quote. One of hilbert students
stopped showing up to classes. On inquiring the reason, Hilbert
was told that the student had left the university to
become a poet. Hibbert said, I can't say I'm surprised.
I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.
Um and uh. And then John suggested that we explore
(30:30):
the connection between mathematics and creativity. As it turns out,
we have explored mathematics and to a certain extent, of
link with creativity in some past episodes. So I apologize
if I came off like I was dismissing mathematic or
certainly science as a whole, as anything less than creative,
because certainly you don't have to be dealing with art
(30:50):
or fiction to use creativity, to to make any of
the great leaps and science that humanity has benefited from
these have It has come down to creativity, to finding
the creative answer to a perplexing problem, and that, of
course is the same way with mathematics. We did a
podcast about the nature of mathematics is mathematics human creation
or human discovery? And so that one was really good.
(31:12):
And then we did one music Math and Mayhem, where
we talked about the interconnection between between mathematics and music,
both of course very creative disciplines with some overlap, but
maybe not as much as we we think. So certainly,
I'm I'm glad John raised the point because I don't
want anyone to get the wrong idea that mathematics is
not a creative endeavor. And then here's one more from Sean.
(31:35):
Shawn writes in in response to the same episode, The
Dark Side of Creativity, says I just finished listening to
your podcast on the Dark Side of Creativity and listening
to this podcast I asked myself several questions. As I
am a blogger who shares book reviews and some of
my own short stories online, I often find myself writing
in the horror genre, So at first I was very
interested in the dark side. As I listened to the
(31:55):
podcast and heard how some with this mindset are liars
and thieves, something came to mind. It is the same
by P. T. Barnum on how quote there is a
sucker born every minute unquote. It explains to me how
those with a creative mind can easily take advantage of
those who do not engage that side of their mind.
It explains how so few can steal and lie to
so uh to so many, as some just don't bother
(32:17):
to use rational thinking. At the same time, I think
of the thousands of writers out there in the world.
Those who tell story to entertain and enrich others through
their words are not lying, but sharing their creative mind.
They use their talent as a means to entertain and
not to trick. Then, of course, there are those who
write songs, movies, et cetera, and use their minds for
so much more. It's not the creative mind that is dark.
(32:38):
In my thoughts, but that part of the ego that
decides how a person uses that creativity and puts it
to use. So to me, it's up to the individual
on how they use this gift, much like the force.
Will they be a Jedi for good or a scythe
for evil? And that's from Sean a k A. Night
Missed And if you want to check out his blog,
it is night miss dot WordPress dot com. Huh So,
(33:00):
thank you Sean for those thoughts. Certainly worth pondering over
the idea of the dark side of creativity and to
what extent creativity is a neutral force that has been
employed by the ego. Well, I like this idea of
bringing the ego into it because if you are a
literal thinker and you're not so into abstract thinking, you
still have an ego obviously as well that you tap
into to make decisions about your life, which means that
(33:23):
you could also go to the dark side. It doesn't
necessitate that you be creative in order to why I
love this idea of looking at the ego as being
the center of this problem. All right, So there you
have it. If you would like to get in touch
with us, we'd love to hear people's thoughts on mazes
and labyrinths, about the difference between the two, about how
mazes and labyrinths match up with our experiences of the
(33:44):
world abroad and our our inner turmoil or at times
inner peace. Let us know about your experiences with mazes
and labyrinths, walking a maze, how it made you feel,
walking elabyrinth, how it made you feel uh In any
additional listener feedback, we can get on that all the
better as far as conveying the idea. So you can
find us on Facebook and you can find us on tumbler.
(34:06):
On both of those we go by the name stuff
to Blow Your Mind, and then on Twitter we use
the handle blow the Mind. And you can also drop
us a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, Is
it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
And in our last episode we deal with mazes. We
actually started in a maze and steadily worked our way
out of it. And now we have escaped from the maze.
(00:25):
We are outside of this confusing, confining, perplexing, stressful environment
of enclosing walls, and we have now escaped into the
realm of the labyrinth. Now, as we mentioned in the
previous podcast, and we're gonna rehash here, there's a difference
between a maze and a labyrinth. These terms are often
(00:45):
used interchangeably to a certain extent. It's kind of an
elegant variation where you use use a word to describe
something that is similar but it's not quite the same.
They're often used interchangeably, so he can't get too up
in arms over the distinction, but certainly for modern users,
there is a distinction between labyrinth and mazes. The maze
is a path of it's not even a path, it's
(01:07):
just the space of walls that are confining you in
and you're trying to find your way out. There dead ends,
there are corners, There may or may not be a
minotaur wandering around after you. Uh. It is the stuff
of the hedge maze and the shining. It is the
stuff of everything you see in the movie Labyrinth. Despite
the name Labyrinth, that is uh, it is a movie
in which the individual rooms through mazes. Yeah, it's a
(01:29):
spatial puzzle. And I really think about Labyrinth as more
of the antidote to a maze. Yes, because you're not
engaging the hippocampus as you would in a maze. Because
in a labyrinth, you don't have to really really worry
about the path or your memory or even trying to
stake out a blueprint, because really the blueprint is in
(01:49):
front of you. It may look like a maze, but
really it's one uh, continuing path that just circles around. Yeah.
You there's one entrance, there's one egg it and there
are no choices to make you simply follow the path.
And the path is winding, and the path is slow
going because you're having to take all these turns in
(02:10):
these in these twists, but never do you have to
actually think do I go this way or that way?
Because there are no choices. It is. It is one
curving line from one end to the other. It's like
a ball of string, you know, if you were to
travel through that string on the outside, and it looks
intricate and complicated, but but really it is one path.
And I really think about it as an act of
submission when you enter into this labyrinth, because you are
(02:32):
following a preordained path, right, and you are submitting yourself
to this path, and in doing so, UM, it is
a sort of meditative practice because you are now UM,
I guess you could say you are busying your mind
just with the act of walking. And that's what we're
going to talk about today. We talked about the stress
response with m mazes, but now we're going to talk
(02:54):
about this more meditative quality of the labyrinth and what
it means to us on a logical and physical level.
But first I want to mention that labyrinths are all
over the world, um, and have been for for many
thousands of years. You can find them in the United States,
in Europe and India, Afghanistan, Java, Sumatra, and various sights
(03:16):
in the US left by Pueblo Indians, the Happy and
Zuni and others. Yeah, you see the design of a labyrinth.
You see it on a classic room and flooring, you
see in the remains of labyrinths throughout Scandinavian Northern Europe.
You see it in the graffiti at Pompeii, Ancient Britain's
cut labyrinths into the turf, Bronze Age tombs in Sardinia,
other carvings dating back to three thousand d C. It's
(03:39):
like the maze. We discussed how the maze. It's like
this pure physical or pattern base, but certainly a physical
embodiment of either internal confusion or external navigation confusion. It
is about the state of confusion in the human mind
as a physical reality, and like you said, the the
labyrinth is an antidote to that. Yeah, it really is
(04:02):
the polar opposite. And it's funny that those terms are
used interchangeably because when you think about a labyrinth, you
think about wide open space. It's right, because this is
typically something that is uh cut into the earth or
made with stones or made out of stones, and so
you can still see the vista around you. You're not
your vision isn't impaired in anyway. In other words, there's
(04:24):
not something on your right or left, and uh, you
can see and hear everything right. In fact, some would
say that you're able to pay attention more to these
aspects of being. You're able to really tune into the
sounds around you, the smells, the sites. So it really
is the polar opposite of a maze. Yeah. Yeah, there's
no walls rising up around you. It's a winding course,
(04:46):
but there are no choices to be made, and you
generally find these your You often find them rather uh
in churches, either in or in the serene garden environments.
I encountered one at the Desert Museum in Arizona where
they had and out amid the cacti in this one
little cactus garden, and it was just really serene. You
start at the beginning of the labyrinth and it just
(05:07):
curls you around and you're just walking following the path,
noticing all these beautiful succulent plants growing all around you.
And then eventually you wind your way back out and
you just yesterday sought out a labyrinth within the maze
that is Atlanta. So, especially since there aren't really I mean,
(05:28):
labyrinths don't really make for great movie and fictional storytelling,
you know, because movies and in fiction, and I mean,
it's all about putting you in a situation of drama.
So of course fictional characters wind up in mazes. They rarely,
it seems, wind up in labyrinth. So describe your experience
with the labyrinth. UM. I walked it at St. Barthl
(05:48):
Bartholow mules Uh Episcopal Church, I believe, and it was
an outdoor one and it was really lovely, and I'm
sure I have a psychologically primed for the event, but UM,
I spent minutes walking in a couple of times, and
what I noticed about it is that it does draw
you out of yourself again. The landscape is open, you
(06:10):
can see the sky, you begin to notice things, and
this is really important. I think we'll talk about this
um a little bit later. But it takes you out
of that chattering part of your brain a bit um
and it puts you It gives you a little bit
more stillness. And that's what I noticed. And here's how
I actually tested the level of meditative UH quality to
(06:33):
this experience. I went to the Whole Foods after this.
Now it's a it's late December now and there's a
lot of bustling action at Whole Foods. I despise going
to Whole Foods, even when it's a calm period, because
people seem to me to act very aggressively in Whole Foods,
(06:53):
whether or not just trying to get a parking space
or they're just taking their shopping carts around and jamming
into the aisles. For some reason, I find it to
be a disturbing place to be, even though it has
a sort of holistic vibe about it of health and
wellness and all that stuff. Afterwards, after walking this labyrinth,
I was like I was floating on air. I did
not care. I parked really far away. Who could care
(07:15):
about getting a parking space up close? I didn't um.
But of course all of this again could be psychological priming.
But I think that does speak to this act, that
when you go through this physical act, that there can
be some sort of transformation mentally. And was it circular
basically informed, because it seems like that that is sort
of the standard for the labyrinth, is that looking at
(07:37):
it from above, it's the circular zone of in which
this path twists and turns. Yeah, it was circular, and
at the very center it had symbols had three things
that were a symbol of something. Now, I think you
guys will probably been hipped to the fact that I'm
not a religious person, so I don't know what the
significance of that is. I guess I'm going to make
a guess that it was like the what is it,
(07:58):
the Holy Spirit? The three things, Larry Curly, yes, y, yeah,
those those were the faces. I thought it was just
pattern recognition, but now that you say that, I think
it was Larry feeling it was the holy trend. But
it's interesting that you mentioned how it is this. There's
this feeling of guidance in the labyrinth, so it makes
perfect sense that they would be in holy spaces because
certainly within a church environment is the idea that God
(08:21):
is my co pilot, or you know, I'm gonna I'm
gonna trust in something greater than myself to guide me
through this life life. And therefore, what is the labyrinth?
But it is allowing the path to guide you and
in freeing yourself of the worries about which way did
you go this, this way or that way. One of
the most famous labyrinths that is this in a church
(08:41):
setting is Chartress and Um, an archaeological excavation has shown
that the cathedral this is in France overlies the alignment
and foundations of earlier Roman buildings. And this is built
in twelve sixty and around today. This is really cool.
If you visit the labyrinth on the summer solstice, you'll
see that at exact actually at noon, a sunbeam falls
(09:01):
directly on a nail that was placed in the floor,
you know, And there's something beautiful about the I mean,
it's still there because there are no there are no
walls to fall down inside a labyrinth. You construct a maze.
We mentioned the Maze of Minos in the podcast about mazes.
You know, whether that actually existed in any way, shape
or form, you know, that's that's an area of discussion
(09:22):
among historians. Most seem to think it did not. We
certainly cannot find evidence of a vast subterranean maze in
which a monster lived. Uh. There's some speculation that the
palace itself there on crete, was kind of like a maze.
It had big, thick walls, and it was very intimidating
and a little confusing. But a lot of that has
fallen down and we've had to, you know, sort of
(09:43):
to to piece things back together. So a maze not
only the confusing, but it can fall and change due
to the weathering of the world. Whereas, uh, it's kind
of beautiful to think of a labyrinth that's something that
that is persistent because there's nothing that can be eroded.
It can be covered up, but it's still there underneath
the turf if you know to look for it. You
know what's interesting about that too, I was I was
(10:03):
thinking about the Nazca lines, and these were lines drawn
by the Nasca people. And this is a civilization living
in modern Peru. Yeah, we're talking four between four hundred
and six d Yeah, and uh, this civilization actually disappeared
about hundred years ago, but you can still see the
traces of these lines, these labyrinths that were designed by
(10:25):
scraping away red dust and rock and revealing the white
ground underneath it. And um, and they're in the shape
of of of animals. Yeah, it's so cool, like animals,
the monkeys, monkeys, some humans. Birds and fish are represented
humming birds, sharks, lizards. Yeah, and and these are huge.
We're talking about six hundred and sixty feet across and
(10:49):
so ancient aliens people love these. They the idea it's
like they would tell on aliens about monkeys, that's what
this was about. Well, actually, what they think is that
the was a rite of passage in that it was
a contemplative act done by small groups of the civilization
that they walked these labyrinths in order to get to
(11:10):
the end of Um. What was largely this metaphorical ritual.
For not only the idea here is not only is
this uh a line that creates the shape of a
monkey as visible from a spaceship, this is also this
is a line that you traverse. You're traversing the shape
of the monkey or the lizard or what have you. Yeah.
(11:32):
So again, you know, this is probably more meditative practice
that was done by the civilization UM, and not communication
to ancient aliens. UM. But I think that it points
to this idea that throughout history there has been this
sort of walking meditation done in different ways. Yes, and
we'll get more into the idea of walking meditation shortly. Yeah,
(11:54):
particularly when you consider it being used as a healing
practice and and actually in medical well um centers. Yeah,
you set around the world, you see them pop up
again and again, and as we mentioned in the last podcast,
a great source for these two episodes was a book
by esther In Steinberg titled The Science of Healing Places.
She devotes one chapter to labyrinth and mazes, but the
(12:14):
whole book is about how physical environments affect us both
in body and mind effectively, how they affect the mind
body through our you know, and this can be negative,
this can be positive. And and how if you're building
something like a hospital, you want to take that into account.
You don't want to build a hospital it feels like
a maze, if anything. You want to build a hospital
that feels like a labyrinth, that it's open, right, And
(12:35):
failing that, you just build a labyrinth in the courtyard,
which many places do, right, because you have this idea
of opening space metaphorically and physically so that your brain
can sort of acclimate itself to that space. Um. As
you had mentioned the book Healing Spaces, there is a
Harvard cardiologist that Sternberg author talks about. His name is
(12:57):
Harvey Goldberg, and he says that a lot of the
meditative practices meditative walking, our yoga, or tai chi um
is really about gaming the relaxation response through breathing. And
he says, quote, I think of it as an unclenching.
When the system gets overly tense, it's like a tight fist.
(13:18):
It's locked somehow. By focusing your attention elsewhere, there is
an unlocking and unclenching of the fist. Now this is
really important when you think about an act of walking meditation,
but as in a labyrinth, when you're walking around like that,
because you are focusing on something other than yourself and
yet you're allowing your thoughts to unfold naturally, and this
(13:40):
is that contemplative act that labyrinth's encourage. Yeah, so think
of this when you're actually walking on the path of
the labyrinth. What are you doing? Why are you feeling relaxed?
First of all, you're focusing on the path you're having.
You're looking down. Maybe you're looking up a little bit too,
but then you're you're kind of looking down and watching
the path that you're walking. There are no walls to
head you in. It's about following this path on the ground. Secondly,
(14:04):
because of this, you're moving slower, and because you're moving slower,
you're breathing slower. Also, unlike a maze, your vision is
not obstructed. You're able to hear and see the world
around you like you mentioned, and you're you're not having
to depend on you know, landmarks or what have you,
just kind of on autopilot, Yeah, which allows you to
get into that mental space that is healing. As Sternberg
(14:24):
and Goldberg and Herbert Benson, who is very much an
authority of meditative thoughts and actually meditation itself. We will
talk more about this. We're gonna take a quick break.
We're gonna talk about why labyrinths were built and how
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All right, we're back and we're continuing to explore the
idea of labyrinth, which again is the calm, singular path
that winds you through a space and uh and takes
you to the other side, as opposed to a maze,
which is chaotic and confusing and full of stress and
anxiety because you don't know if you're going this way
or that way, and then you run into dead ends.
(16:38):
But there are no dead ends in a true labyrinth.
It's true. And when you look back at some of
these more ancient labyrinths, like the Nasaca lines, again it
comes up why why did people make these? What why
were they built? Why were they created? And certainly a
spiritual reason is present. It's um much possibility for some
(17:01):
of them. Some people think there are astrological reasons behind them.
And if you look again at Chartreu, which is the
cathedral in France, again you see evidence that it was
designed in conjunction with the summer solstice, so that maybe
it had something to do with that. Um. I tend
to think that if the sunlight is beaming down in
(17:23):
the middle of a labyrinth on the summer solstice at noon,
that that would be very powerful to churchgoers, particularly if
they're walking the labyrinth, because it's the idea that this
path is in tune with celestial dynamics, with the mechanics
of the universe, right, and that you are in unity
with nature. Yeah. Like it makes me think back to
Dante's Inferno again, particularly Dante's Paradise. Paradise is a very
(17:46):
strictly ordered thing, like the cosmos, whereas when Dante's actually
in Hell, it's an ordered system, but it's it's a
lot more confusing. Yeah. And then there's this I like
this one. There's the dancing theory. Oh yes, this is great.
This takes me back. There was there were like a
couple of old goofy cartoons. I'm sure Holly would tell
you could tell me exactly when and where they occur
(18:08):
in the long list of Disney productions. But there were
a couple of goofy cry of pop stuff. There are
a couple of goofy cartoons and one he quit smoking
and another he was trying to lose weight, I think,
And they dealt They were really cool. They dealt with
like an adult goofy like dealing with like the demands
of being like a bachelor. It was weird stuff. I
(18:29):
have checked it out again. But but there's one where
he's like trying to learn how to dance, and there's
this kid he gets where you listen to a record,
and you place these cutouts of feet of on the
on the floor and then you dance by moving and
he has like a mannequin with him and you move
from one these steps to this step, and this teaches
you how to dance by following the patterns on the floor.
(18:49):
It's this so that he could now in his bachelorhood
a woman. Yes, okay, so this is helping kids who
are seeing their their father who's now a new bachelor.
I think these were and again pop stuff will have
to clear me up in this. I think these were
aimed at These were These were kind of like an
early Simpsons in a way, because they were they were
kind of aimed at maybe a little bit of kids,
but more at the adults. But anyway, that the dancing ritual. Yeah,
(19:14):
and the idea so, so the idea here is that
labyrinths were potentially not merely this thing that you walk
on and serenely follow, but you dance through. Because think
about what dances and I'm not talking like you know,
grinding booty shaking necessarily, but but think of something like
like square dancing, some sort of ritualized dance. Certainly the
(19:36):
whirling dervishes where there is a pattern that you're following,
and you're you're giving yourself up to the pattern of
the dance, to the rhythm of the beat, to the
You're giving yourself over body and soul to the music
and the movement, and and and that is in a
sense of labyrinth you were becoming. You kind of become
(19:58):
the labyrinth. You become the dance, to become the music.
In that becoming, you cannot be this bundle of worries
and and in troubles that you are the rest of
the time. Yeah, it's the rhythm of the night. You
leaven all your cares behind right hythm of the night. Yeah,
I won't do that anymore. So what's interesting about that
(20:19):
too is that this is uh, not just something that
is again an act of submission, but perhaps some sort
of right of passage. This is perhaps something that young
men who had proved themselves as warriors would go through
this dance. This is also a fertility right for women
who would go through these um the labyrinth dancing. And
(20:42):
again you're talking about syncopated rhythm. We're talking about a
group activity that would line everybody up. And we talked
before when people are singing together. It's like their their
neurons are all firing on the same pattern. And uh,
some more thing with these movements, right, think about it
as the first Congo line. Is it cong or congo?
I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. In the book, Steinberg
(21:05):
points out that this is possibly why like early in
church history, like certainly churches came to embrace their labyrinths. St.
Bart's here in Atlanta is not ashamed of their labyrinth.
They're rather proud of it. But in the old days
there's maybe a little suspicion where the older members of
the church, especially like I don't know about these labyrinths.
There's something kind of not right about them, fancy about them,
you know why, because they have found all sorts of evidence.
(21:31):
In fact, an intrust can vase from six BC depicts
not just the dance in the labyrinth, but sexual acts
going on. So the church kind of was like, m
I'm not sure about showing the positions, the sexual positions, um,
you know, overlaid on the labyrinth here. Maybe we could
kind of cover that up a little bit, but there's
(21:52):
a little bit of that involved with it, and that,
you know, and that of course hints paganism, right, So
let's talk about the way that it affects the Okay,
so you talked about this idea that when you're walking,
you began to slow down your breath, right, and you
began to relax. So your breathing slows, your heart rate downshifts,
and this is when your body gets the queue that
(22:13):
it's time to slow down and relax. And this is
the opposite of the stress response. This is the relaxation response. Yeah.
The slow breathing activates the vegas nerve that counters the
adrenaline like sympathetic nervous system response of stress. Yeah. And
what's really cool about this nerve is that we've known
(22:34):
that it has it's workings with stress and counteracting stress,
but it also regulates the immune system, in particular in
fighting inflammation. So when we start to talk about this
in the stress response, we start to talk more about
the immune system as a whole, because we know that
if your body is in a constant state of stress,
that this can be destructive at a cellular level. So
(22:56):
this is why it's important to try to uh promote
as much of this relaxation response that you can. Yeah,
and it's really crazy to think about it about the
mazes and labyrinths in this sense the idea that a
maze in physical space can physically harm you, like on
a cellular level, and likewise a labyrinth can heal you.
Because when we talk about healing spaces, it's easily to
(23:16):
think of it in terms of some hippie dippy nonsense,
has some some spiritual talk. And maybe I'm not that
into the idea that a space has all these magical
properties about it, But as we've discussed, a space does
have an effect on the body and mind, and and
we see that in a way in their purest forms
in the maze and the labyrinth. Yeah, because again I
will bring up the default mode network. This is that
(23:37):
part of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex and medial
parialtial cortex in the metal medial temporal lobe. This is
that part that is the mid line chatter, the me,
me me, the fear response. This is all this is
concerned with the ego and the seat of consciousness that
really helps to inform. This is supposed to balance our
sense of self. But when we have too much of
the chatter, there's hyperactivity. That's when to russion sets in
(24:00):
that is stressful, right, And as we discovered in our
podcast The Shaman and the Scientist, it is meditation that
is one of the things that can quiet this part
of the mind. And this was really important in helping
to relieve depression. And I wanted to just bring up
once more that Dr Judson Brewer used f m R
(24:20):
I to scan experienced meditators and he found this decreased
activity in the default mode network. Now, meditation really is
just about again gaining your breath and because if you
do that, obviously that your body is going to get
these cues that it needs to relax. So this walking
meditation through a labyrinth is very much a type of meditation.
(24:45):
So when you think about that, then then as you say,
it's no longer just like this hippie dippie, like hey,
meditate and you will fill one with the world. It's
that it is changing you at a cellular level. And
we talked about this too, with meditation changing you um
your genes as well your stressed genes, being able to
actually turn those off through stress responses. Steinberg pointed out too,
(25:07):
with resuscitation, when you're resuscitating an individual, you're you're talking
about one breath every six to seven seconds once the
hardest started back up again, and that is the optimal
breathing pattern to get the optimal amount of oxygen and
carbon dioxide into the body to nourish tissue and keep
the brain working. So it makes sense to me that
(25:27):
you would begin to see some of these labyrinths popping
up in medical centers because no doubt, those are some
of the most stressful places to be in because either
you or a loved one um is in this medical
center of being treated, or you're someone who works there.
It's a high stress job, right um to be in
the medical professions. So if you had this labyrinth there
(25:50):
and you had patients walking it, that could or you
had family members or friends who are walking in these
times of despair and stress, then it could help you.
That relaxation wants to open you up a little bit
more in your mind and to sort of tamp that
down again at the mental level, at the cellular level. Yeah,
it has a lot in common with walking meditation, which
(26:12):
is a form of meditation you do walking being and
remaining conscious of your steps and your breathing. But it
is also as Steinbroup points out it has a lot
in common with tai chi as a gentle exercise. You
might not think of walking a labyrinth as exercise, but
essentially it is. It's a gentle exercise. But even this
has a positive effect on the body. Yet does There
(26:32):
is a small study that finds that mindfulness meditation and
moderate exercise have protective effects against cold and flu, with
people who engage in the practices having less severe, shorter,
and fewer symptoms of acute respiratory infection. So what we're
talking about is a study that was published in the
Annals of Family Medicine, and it included a hundred and
(26:54):
forty nine people and average age of fifty nine. Fifty
one of them were a signed to have mindfulness meditation
training for eight weeks, forty seven did moderate exercise for
eight weeks, and fifty one they didn't have to do anything.
And what they found is that those who went through
the mindfulness training were linked with a forty decrease in
(27:17):
symptoms fluid symptoms, while exercise was linked to a thirty
decrease in symptoms. So, in other words, again what you're
seeing here is that this act NTI achieving a moderate
exercise in walking being a moderate exercise does have real
ramifications on your health. All right, I'm going to close
(27:37):
out here with just a brief little bit of quotation
from Kick not Hahn, who is of course a zen
master in the Vietnamese tradition, and he wrote a book
called Walking Meditation that came with like a DVD in
a c D. It's still out there if you want
to learn more about walking meditation. It's a good source.
So this is the Welcoming Path by Ticknahan. The empty
(27:57):
path welcomes you, fragrant with grass and flowers, the path
paved with paddy fields, still bearing the marks of your
childhood and the fragrance of mother's hand. Walk leisurely, peacefully,
your feet touch the earth deeply. Don't let your thoughts
carry you away. Come back to the path every moment.
The path is your dear friend. She will transmit to
(28:18):
you her solidity and her peace. And I think that
applies beautifully to the idea of labyrinth. I think so too,
And it's very nice. If you're interested in finding a
labyrinth in your city, you can actually go online and
there is a database of them. I believe it's called
Worldwibeh or hold wide Web LABYRINTHUM or something along those lines.
(28:41):
Just google it and you'll find it UM and it
will actually give you all the locations. That's how I
found the one near our work here in Atlanta. All right, well,
let's call over the robit here. You couldn't find us
in the maze, but the labyrinth it's pretty easy for
him to get here. All right. Just one comes to
us from Jerick Jareck its and it says, Hi, Robert
(29:01):
and Julie. I just finished listening to the Tongue Parasite podcast,
truly the stuff of nightmares. I had a question that
I can't seem to find an answer to. If the
parasite is still eating blood and available food, then it
has to be producing waste too. I didn't think having
something eat your tongue could get any worse, but then
it uses your face as a bathroom crazy stuff. Thanks
(29:23):
again for the great podcast, Jerry, and thank you Jarek
for taking an already disturbing concept and making it just
a little more disturbing by bringing up this biologic for reality. Now,
if the parasite had sexy time in your mouth, you
can then rename your mouth or not your mouth but
the fish's mouth a cloaca, right, I mean really, because
it's got to be able to function in those three
(29:44):
different ways. I guess, so cloake a mouth for fish.
We also heard from a listener by the name of
John John Writeston and says, at the end of your
Dark Side of Creativity show, Robert puts mathematical thought and
creativity into distinct back baskets. Roughly, if you're not really creative,
if you are more the logical mathematical type. Unquote, he continues,
(30:08):
I believe you drastically missed the point. You can find
the following in various places. Quote. One of hilbert students
stopped showing up to classes. On inquiring the reason, Hilbert
was told that the student had left the university to
become a poet. Hibbert said, I can't say I'm surprised.
I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.
Um and uh. And then John suggested that we explore
(30:30):
the connection between mathematics and creativity. As it turns out,
we have explored mathematics and to a certain extent, of
link with creativity in some past episodes. So I apologize
if I came off like I was dismissing mathematic or
certainly science as a whole, as anything less than creative,
because certainly you don't have to be dealing with art
(30:50):
or fiction to use creativity, to to make any of
the great leaps and science that humanity has benefited from
these have It has come down to creativity, to finding
the creative answer to a perplexing problem, and that, of
course is the same way with mathematics. We did a
podcast about the nature of mathematics is mathematics human creation
or human discovery? And so that one was really good.
(31:12):
And then we did one music Math and Mayhem, where
we talked about the interconnection between between mathematics and music,
both of course very creative disciplines with some overlap, but
maybe not as much as we we think. So certainly,
I'm I'm glad John raised the point because I don't
want anyone to get the wrong idea that mathematics is
not a creative endeavor. And then here's one more from Sean.
(31:35):
Shawn writes in in response to the same episode, The
Dark Side of Creativity, says I just finished listening to
your podcast on the Dark Side of Creativity and listening
to this podcast I asked myself several questions. As I
am a blogger who shares book reviews and some of
my own short stories online, I often find myself writing
in the horror genre, So at first I was very
interested in the dark side. As I listened to the
(31:55):
podcast and heard how some with this mindset are liars
and thieves, something came to mind. It is the same
by P. T. Barnum on how quote there is a
sucker born every minute unquote. It explains to me how
those with a creative mind can easily take advantage of
those who do not engage that side of their mind.
It explains how so few can steal and lie to
so uh to so many, as some just don't bother
(32:17):
to use rational thinking. At the same time, I think
of the thousands of writers out there in the world.
Those who tell story to entertain and enrich others through
their words are not lying, but sharing their creative mind.
They use their talent as a means to entertain and
not to trick. Then, of course, there are those who
write songs, movies, et cetera, and use their minds for
so much more. It's not the creative mind that is dark.
(32:38):
In my thoughts, but that part of the ego that
decides how a person uses that creativity and puts it
to use. So to me, it's up to the individual
on how they use this gift, much like the force.
Will they be a Jedi for good or a scythe
for evil? And that's from Sean a k A. Night
Missed And if you want to check out his blog,
it is night miss dot WordPress dot com. Huh So,
(33:00):
thank you Sean for those thoughts. Certainly worth pondering over
the idea of the dark side of creativity and to
what extent creativity is a neutral force that has been
employed by the ego. Well, I like this idea of
bringing the ego into it because if you are a
literal thinker and you're not so into abstract thinking, you
still have an ego obviously as well that you tap
into to make decisions about your life, which means that
(33:23):
you could also go to the dark side. It doesn't
necessitate that you be creative in order to why I
love this idea of looking at the ego as being
the center of this problem. All right, So there you
have it. If you would like to get in touch
with us, we'd love to hear people's thoughts on mazes
and labyrinths, about the difference between the two, about how
mazes and labyrinths match up with our experiences of the
(33:44):
world abroad and our our inner turmoil or at times
inner peace. Let us know about your experiences with mazes
and labyrinths, walking a maze, how it made you feel,
walking elabyrinth, how it made you feel uh In any
additional listener feedback, we can get on that all the
better as far as conveying the idea. So you can
find us on Facebook and you can find us on tumbler.
(34:06):
On both of those we go by the name stuff
to Blow Your Mind, and then on Twitter we use
the handle blow the Mind. And you can also drop
us a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, Is
it how stuff works dot com
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