Your luggage is checked to your destination. But you’re stuck at LAX. There are only so many laps you can take around the food court, right? Give yourself a sweet treat. Grab an Uber, a Lyft or a taxi and make a beeline for a place of peace, such as Peace Awareness Labyrinth & Gardens (PAL&G.)
As a guide of countless tours around the PAL&G labyrinth, meditation gardens, and historical mansion, I’ve yet to figure out the magic of the place. Always a pleasure though to watch shoulders relax and smiles emerge after a dip in the verdant meditation gardens. No matter the mood, songbirds soften my rough edges, too.
Our Australian visitors say I’ve got a “stickybeak.” (Nosy in American English.) I’m fascinated by travelers who are drawn to PAL&G hours before they fly home. Like a mother/son team who love their English labyrinths. They stumbled last minute into our Chartres Cathedral-inspired creation.
Another women from Hawaii was en route to Finland. She was wilting in the shade waiting for the 3 p.m. tour. She may have questioned her choice of spending her layover at PAL&G. Sixty minutes later her body language said something else. Shoulders slightly stooped, deep in contemplation while ambling the eleven concentric labyrinth circles, her posture straightened as she emerged. No elixir did she slip from her purse. Only the willingness to open to Spirit is my guess.
When feeling like Mr. Shakespeare’s Hamlet (in Act 1, Scene 2), “O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!” Run; don’t walk to the PAL&G labyrinth. (All right, walk briskly. Don’t want you slipping into the gorgeous reflecting pools.) Peace can occur when a prayer of surrender is said before twisting and winding through the labyrinth. That’s what someone very close whispered in my ear anyway.
If you’re a flexible type, or a yogi or yogini-in-training, check out Yoga at the Labyrinth. Or if you prefer an er, um less bendy approach, click the Visit tab at PeaceLabyrinth.org. Dare to explore the beautiful environment inside and outside of you.