The Barefoot Trail
What is it about? How does it feel?
How often do we ask ourselves this question every day? Which path leads us to an answer? Our barefoot walk begins either at the exit of the gondola or in the middle of Hexenwasser by taking off shoes and socks. Shoes off, feel on! The “freed” feet reach for sand, stones, wood, forest, and meadow floors with the whole sole and toes… we step into a stream and experience the coolness of the water, or we invigorate our skin in the peat and stone oil pools. The feet find their natural position again, all muscles are evenly engaged, the longitudinal and transverse arches gain strength and support, which then relaxes the entire body. A treat and a thank you to your feet, after all, they carry you day in and day out through life.
Witch’s Advice:
We have a shoe museum for “barefoot experienced” visitors at the exit of the gondola. Here, you can store your shoes if you feel comfortable. We recommend that everyone else (especially children) bring shoes along on their first explorations and carefully find out how the surfaces feel.
“Gentle stimuli provoke, moderate stimuli increase, strong stimuli suppress, and excessive stimuli destroy.” ~ Hugo Kükelhaus
When we speak, phrases like “What’s going on” roll off our tongues so easily.
In reality, though, we sit more and more often these days. Instead of asking for a standpoint, we could be asking about our sitting point. Or even cursing, “Ugh, I’m sitting in such an awkward position.” The Hexenwasser witches knew long ago: We feel good when we walk. Sometimes, they would take the farmers’ shoes away when they had back pain. This forced them to walk barefoot across the cool, damp morning meadow.
Every morning. For 14 days. After that, almost always, the pain was gone. And when you saw them walking, they moved as gracefully and delicately as never before. Create your own picture of the barefoot path. You can even draw it in the sand with your feet. Walking can be so exciting and varied. And on the barefoot route, there are endless little treasures to discover.
Barefoot Walking, Barefoot Thinking
Lifting, Carrying, and Placing. In this three-step process, we take a step – a step forward, a step backward, or step aside. This is what barefoot walking in Hexenwasser is all about. The simplest experiment: Stand with your legs closed and try to take a step forward, but not in your usual way, with a swing of the leg—do it millimeter by millimeter, in slow motion. Lift, Carry, Place. We observe attentively what happens with and through us as we place one foot in front of the other.
How we temporarily lose our balance and our center of gravity shifts forward. Walking is a continuous cycle of falling and catching ourselves, securing and unsecuring, activity and passivity, exertion and letting go. When we consciously focus on this automated movement process and forget everything else, we call it ‘barefoot thinking’.
The witches described it this way: Prejudices are the shoes, and assumptions are the socks or stockings. When you take them off, thinking becomes liberated, and new ideas emerge. However you approach it, barefoot walking becomes a journey of discovery, a walk through your own body.
Hexpedition barefoot trail (contribution towards costs)
On the Barefoot Trail
