Labyrinth Walks and Journaling with Deborah Burand
Week of July 4, 2026
CIRCLING THE RANCH: UNFURL THE CREATIVE POWERS OF LABYRINTH WALKING AND JOURNALING
Step into the power of labyrinth walking and journaling to capture new insights and spark your creative spirit.
As we walk the labyrinth together, we will look for the ancient symbols incorporated into the Ranch’s labyrinth to help set our creative intentions and reveal new insights. We will navigate the labyrinth’s twists and turns to find paces and places that can give shape and texture to the pages of our sketchbooks and journals. We will celebrate our creative gifts and talents, in all their stages of becoming. And we will forge paths for incorporating labyrinth walks and journaling into an ongoing meditative, creative practice – at the Ranch and beyond.
Meet at the Labyrinth in Emily’s Forest of Dreams.
Each session will begin with a labyrinth walk. Then we will journal together.
Materials: You are invited to bring a sketchbook or journal to each session to capture your labyrinth walk experiences. You can bring your own pencils, pens and paints, or use those that we’ll have ready to share with you at the labyrinth.
Day One’s Labyrinth Walk: Releasing Old Ways of Seeing
Invitation: You are invited to bring a question or concern that you are pondering. This is a chance to release old preoccupations and discover pathways to new ways of seeing and being. Then you can bring those insights to the pages of your sketchbooks and journals.
Day Two’s Labyrinth Walk: Receiving New Ways of Filling the Well
Invitation: You are invited to draw on all of your senses to deepen your experience of the labyrinth and its surroundings. This is your time to fill the well that waters your unique, creative spirit. Then you can give voice and color to that creative spirit through journaling.
Day Three’s Labyrinth Walk: Returning Home with a Refreshed Creative Spirit
Invitation: You are invited to use this labyrinth walk to plan how you will carry your refreshed creative spirit home. This is an opportunity to take stock and reflect. Then you can create journal reminders of the labyrinth paths that have stirred your creative spirit into action.
Labyrinth Facilitator: Professor of Law Emerita Deborah Burand has shared the powers of labyrinth walking with fellow travelers in the United States, France, Singapore and here in Mexico at Rancho La Puerta. When not circling the globe to walk labyrinths, she teaches law in Paris for New York University and creates art of all kinds at her cottage in Saugatuck, Michigan.
Deborah Burand has walked labyrinths from Europe to North America, including the labyrinth designed by her father in their hometown of Anderson, Indiana. She also facilitates labyrinth walks for law students at New York University’s School of Law where she is a tenured professor of clinical law. Deborah began facilitating labyrinth walks after accompanying her father to France where together they walked the Chartres Cathedral’s labyrinth and began studying under Lauren Artress, founder and creative director of Veriditas (a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring personal and planetary change and renewal through the labyrinth experience). Deborah’s essay, Circling the Ranch, which was published online by the Ranch to commemorate its 80th anniversary, describes how she brought her then 86- year-old father to walk the Ranch’s labyrinth. The Council on Foreign Relations recently named Deborah as one of its Higher Education Ambassador Fellows for 2024-2025. In May 2024, Deborah was presented with NYU Law School’s Distinguished Teaching Award in recognition of her inspirational and innovative pedagogy and outstanding contributions to the legal academy. The Financial Times also has recognized her multi-disciplinary teaching materials for their creativity and innovation in sustainable finance education.