Don’t get lost in the L.A. maze. Find yourself in these 12 hidden labyrinths

Chances are you’ve stumbled across a labyrinth sometime in your life. Perhaps it was at a public garden, a nature center, or a church. Perhaps you‘ve spotted one tucked in some corner of a canyon or retreat center — an intricate circular path, constructed of stones or laid in concrete, that leads nowhere in particular, except to its own center and back out again.

Labyrinths resemble mazes, but they serve a different purpose. Mazes ask you to problem-solve, to get lost and then find your way out again. Labyrinths offer up only one path — no decision-making necessary.

What they provide instead is a space — sacred space if that’s your thing — to slow down, to walk, to contemplate, to receive.

“It’s a meditation for the restless meditator,” said Katie Bull, a certified labyrinth facilitator who leads group walks at labyrinths around the city.

Chantel Zimmerman, founder and director of Art and Soul Lab, who also facilitates labyrinth walks in L.A., said they can serve as a gateway to seated meditation. “In meditation it always helps to have an anchor. The anchor can be the breath, a mantra or a candle you are gazing at,” she said. “With labyrinths, the anchor is the path.”

There is no one way to walk a labyrinth, but there are strategies that can make your experience more meaningful. Bull offers up the idea of “the three Rs” on her labyrinth walks: Thinking about what you want to release as you walk toward the center, receiving as you stand at the labyrinth’s heart, and then considering what you want to return with as you make your way out and back into the world.

It can also be helpful to hold a stone or another symbolic object as you walk. You might leave it in the center, or take it with you after you exit to serve as a reminder of whatever you discovered in the labyrinth that day. Bull also recommends journaling after walking a labyrinth, to help absorb whatever insights you may have gained from your experience.

And if spiritual metaphors do not appeal to you, you might still enjoy labyrinth walking anyway.

Labyrinths appeal to a wide variety of people, said Lauren Artress, canon emeritus at Grace Cathedral Church in San Francisco, and the woman credited with bringing walkable labyrinths to the United States.

“You can be religious and say ‘I’m walking with God,’ you can be metaphysical and new age and say ‘I’m walking with source,’ or you can be scientific and say ‘I’m walking to be meditative and induce the relaxation response,’” she said.

However you plan to use the labyrinth, here are 12 in the L.A. area that you might enjoy.