A sense of connectedness, transcendent experiences, and insights for compassionate action emerge through an international collective labyrinth walk with a shared intention during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2023 Jocelyn Shealy McGee, Christine Katzenmeyer, Stephanie Clintonia Boddie et al.
Collective labyrinth walking with a shared intention, a social contemplative practice, cultivated multiple forms of connectedness—intrapersonal, interpersonal, transpersonal, and with the labyrinth itself—among 461 participants from 19 countries who walked on World Labyrinth Day 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Practitioners reported transcendent qualities such as boundlessness, ultimacy, and positive emotions, and gained insights for compassionate action. The findings suggest that this practice can contribute to individual and group flourishing during times of distress. Most participants were women in middle to later life from the United States.