It is crunch time again for students at the University of Victoria. Like gladiators going into the ring, students will stream into lecture halls and gymnasia to confront final exams. In a few hours of focused effort, they will either succeed or fail. Much time, money and effort hangs on these few hours, and a great deal of stress and anxiety. Of course, a little stress can be good and help motivate students toward excellence. But for many students, stress is debilitating and some feel paralyzed by their anxiety.
Multifaith Services at UVic offers an ancient spiritual tool to help students effectively ease their stress reaction. Simply by walking the labyrinth at the chapel and by applying meditation principles of letting go and cultivating inner calm, students build the capacity to write their exams in a more centred and grounded way. By helping to shift awareness first on mindful walking and then on the spacious awareness of being, the labyrinth drains the mind of excess anxiety and builds the ability to respond to life stressors with inner calmness.
Unlike the gladiator arena of the exam hall, the chapel offers a peaceful environment that, in its very nature, promotes inner calm. Surrounded by the verdant Finnerty Gardens, the calming green of the gardens visually flows into the chapel by means of the tropical plants that are a feature of the interior of the building. The labyrinth on the floor of the chapel further accents the green, with its design traced in green to reflect the sacred colour of the heart chakra.
The design of the labyrinth at the UVic chapel is based on the one found in the magnificent 11th-century cathedral in Chartres, France. The design itself is patterned on the four seasons and the lunar cycle and is suffused with symbolism emphasizing the sacred feminine. But none of this is obvious to the first-time observer of the labyrinth.
The symbolism functions more on a subconscious level, and walking the labyrinth inspires the intuitive part of the brain. All this helps students shift attention from the surface stresses of their minds to deeper inner calm as they meet the demands of their exams.
The labyrinth is available to students and the public for walking from Monday to Thursday and Dec. 10 to 13, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The labyrinth is available for walking by candlelight on Dec. 6 and 13 from 6 to 8: 30 p.m.
For more information, email [email protected] or call UVic Multi-faith Services, 250-721-8338.
Henri Lock is the United Church chaplain at the University of Victoria. He is part of a religiously diverse team offering spiritual resources to the UVic community through the office of Multifaith Services.
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Welcome to a community forum on faith, spirituality and religion.
We invite you to write about the nature of faith from an individual point of view, to share experiences about your own tradition and practice, while respecting others' opinions and religions.
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