Mazes have been used for the past 2000 years, through the Romans and medieval monks, among others, to locate calm and relieve stress. Now that the pandemic is expanding people’s anxiety levels, business is booming. People are rediscovering how mazes (which are other mazes) can feel bigger and take a step back.
There are many vital cultural references to the mazes: how the Minotaur was kept in a labyrinth designed through Daedal, from which it can only escape with the thread provided through Ariane.
Or the 1986 film Labyrinth, where David Bowie’s Goblin Jareth King threatens to seize a child unless his sister, Jennifer Connolly, can solve the maze in thirteen hours.
However, contrary to popular belief, mazes are riddles that need to be solved. As the Smithsonian reports, mazes offer dead end and deception, designed to trap the user inside, but mazes offer only one front and one exit, at a set time. Way.
The University of Edinburgh explains that mazes can be classified according to their existence. The trend of ancient mazes existed more than 2000 years ago in cave and ceramic engravings in Europe, Asia, South Africa and America.
The Roman labyrinths were discovered in mosaics on the grounds of the public baths and in medieval times were much more complex, being the maximum noticed on the grounds of Chartres Cathedral in France. In fact, from the 12th to the 17th century, the mazes were remodeled into roads intended to be routed.
Sometimes walking the path through the labyrinth was meant to be a devoted or magical experience; for the northern heathens, it was to ease the tension and bring good luck. In Chartres, the scholars who the priests created the labyrinth in 1205 to form the human path of sin to redemption.
There are other well-known mazes in the world. It is imaginable to walk through the laviarinth of the Summer Palace of the Qing Dynasty, built in 1709 in Beijing, China, although the surrounding lawn was destroyed by British and French forces in the 1860s. foot and The Edge in South Africa’s Amathole Mountains, it’s a mile long.
In the age of GPS, it can be hard to get lost. As CNN explained before the pandemic, “It’s complicated in those days, with our ultra-planned tours, arrangements and 4G service, disorienting properly. However, mazes can remind us. ” How it’s done.
Mazes must have fitness benefits. Many hospitals and prisons have established mazes in their parks.
WedTM reported that the positive has an effect on the patient’s physical condition after traversing the maze. Lorelei King, former director of surgery at Mercy Hospital in Grayling, Michigan, says: “You can see them visually relaxing. Then, when I take his pulse, it slows down dramatically. Many patients have also told me that their pain has subsided after passing through the maze. “
Quoted in The Atlantic, inmates at The Atlantic County Jail in Massachusetts, enrolled in the categories of mazes with skepticism, found that walking through the maze helped them become more patient, emotionally conscious, and more self-sufficient.
The repetitive nature of following the path, the low concentration required to do so, produces a calming effect, as reported through The Atlantic, which “can do everything from reducing anxiety to combating chemotherapy-induced nausea. “This makes it very better for a pandemic.
Bloomberg reported on Lars Howlett, one of America’s largest maze brands whose institutional clients disappeared with the pandemic, but the business is booming with personal clients, who have built mazes in their luxurious gardens. Chartres in a Bel Air domain.
Quoted in Bloomberg, Howlett is confident that the pandemic has more concerned other people in the long run and are an answer. “The labyrinth is a path for dubious times,” he said. It puts order in a sense of chaos. “
They also have no association with a specific religion, so they are perceived as too religious.
For others who don’t have the area or cash for a giant maze, sales of mazes with hand fingers have increased.
Lisa Gidlow Moriarty, owner of Minnesota-based maze manufacturer Paths of Peace, has noticed that sales increased by up to 300%. Made of wood or canvas, other people can hint at the course with their hands, which has helped other people who run in the fitness sector and especially the first to respond.
Use the global maze locator to the nearest one – there are over 4,977 in over 80 countries.
The annual World Maze Day takes place on the first Saturday in May.