Poster Presentations

2024 POSTER PRESENTATIONS 
Saturday Morning 11:15am - Noon
Walters' Chapel
 

How to Create Excitement for Exploring Labyrinths in Your Community
Presenter: Sarah Gish
Learn how to create an exciting labyrinth community in your city! Because of our efforts, more people are interested in labyrinths than ever before. Learn the steps we have taken (literally!) to inspire curiosity. Our use of labyrinths in many different ways & settings has healed our city while also changing its energy.

Sarah Gish is a Certified Veriditas Labyrinth Facilitator and an artist, writer, teacher who believes in the power of the labyrinth path to return people to their soul with every step. She has been leading labyrinth walks for over 2 decades and has created a strong labyrinth community within her city. Her portable labyrinth has traveled far and wide and she has created weekly & monthly walks on labyrinths around her city. She has owned her business since 2000 and is a marketing pro who also writes a weekly blog. Her greatest joy is seeing people ignite their lives.

Paths of Wonder
Presenter: Shannon Hays-Truex
Explore how five-foot segments of rope can be used to create temporary labyrinths of many designs for events, gatherings, and sacred practice. Labyrinth designs can be tailored to a specific theme, which may enhance the experience of the occasion and elicit reverence, wonder, and delight in people of all ages.

While studying in France in 2007, Shannon Hays-Truex walked the Chartres labyrinth. This inspired her to create labyrinths for her own sacred practice and to eventually share the experience through her work with children and in the community. Out of this work, she developed a process for building temporary labyrinths using five-foot segments of rope. As a labyrinth artist, she has created hundreds of unique non-traditional designs and has been invited to build more than 40 rope labyrinths for special gatherings, education programs, and public events. Many of these labyrinth designs are tailored to the theme of the event.

The Effects of Labyrinth Walking Compared to Mindful Walking and Sitting Quietly
Presenter: Melissa Powers
This poster will describe the results of a research study comparing three mindfulness activities: labyrinth walking, mindful walking, and sitting quietly. Using variables from the Labyrinth Walk Questionnaire, all mindful experiences demonstrated change, while labyrinth walking showed the most change with the greatest differences being in feelings of “Clear” and “Peaceful.”

Melissa Powers, Ph.D., is Professor in the Dr. Virginia Peters Department of Kinesiology & Health Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is a Veriditas Certified Labyrinth Facilitator and serves as the Campus Labyrinth Coordinator. Dr. Powers has collaborated with students to conduct research on the labyrinth and uses the labyrinth as a tool for reflective learning in her physical activity and aging courses.

Forest Home Woodlands’ Labyrinth: Spirit of the Land
Presenter: Stephen Shibley
This Poster Presentation provides a comprehensive overview of a labyrinth build that was literally co-created with Nature. The poster summarizes a family’s legacy of stewardship with their forest woodlands and chronicles the woodland labyrinth construction process. This labyrinth leaves the walker with a heightened sense of awe and wonder in true celebration of life and land.

Stephen Shibley is a retired landscape architect and registered landscape contractor living and working in Oregon. With more than 30 years of design and construction experience, Shibley has specialized in labyrinth design and construction for the last 17 years. With a learned and intuitive ability to “read” the landscape, Shibley enjoys sharing insights into design principles useful when placing labyrinths within our built landscapes. As an avid outdoor enthusiast, Shibley gardens, recreates, explores, works, and learns in the Awe-inspiring great outdoors of the Pacific Northwest – he is constantly inspired by Nature.