By Jamie Friddle

Solvitur ambulando… “It is solved by walking,” Saint Augustine ofHippo said. “Man is ill because he is not still,” countered orneryRenaissance physician and alchemist Paracelsus.

But the real secret may lie in an ancient combination of the two. Aspracticing Buddhists have known for centuries, walking meditation is aprofound prayer modality. Still, short of marathon mall walks orafter-dinner thigh burners, most Westerners haven’t quite matriculatedinto the tradition of meditation in motion.

Rev. Lauren Artress would like to change that. A psychotherapist and anEpiscopal canon at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, Artress is founderof Veriditas: The Voice of the Labyrinth Movement. In 1991, sherecreated a medieval labyrinth at her church, a copy of a 13th-centuryterrazzo labyrinth that had languished unused at France’s ChartresCathedral for some 250 years.

Some say labyrinths are living metaphors for life itself, a physicalarchetype of one’s relationship to the individuated Self of Carl G.Jung, or a symbol and reminder of one’s spiritual journey toward God,enlightenment and wholeness. Says Artress: “I think the labyrinth worksby drawing attention to anything that’s in our way of connecting to thedivine or higher power. It’s pre-Descartes. The design is anchored in aworldview before we divided it up into mind, body, spirit.”

A labyrinth, the origins of which are unknown, is not a maze. A maze is“multicursal,” entertaining and frustrating those who enter with trickyturns, dead-ends and multiple paths. A labyrinth is “unicursal,” withone path that leads inexorably to the pattern’s center, in spite ofmany circuits and switchbacks. One moment you are within spittingdistance of the labyrinth’s “rose” (center), the next a 180-degree turnon the path whisks you away to its extremities, all while the labyrinthreels you imperceptibly to its center.