Mr.Park’s stone paths

The ground of a man’s heart is a rocky road – a man becomes who he can become – and that is what he heads for.
Stephen King

Should you go walking in Las Kabacki some morning, you will probably see him there. Mr Park, slender and barefoot, walks along the paths every morning, searching for inner peace and health. And, he says, this is how he finds high spirits and the peace of his heart each day. Sometimes he is accompanied by a tiny woman with the looks of a twelve-year-old girl. That is Mrs Lim, his wife. She only walks on warm days. In wet and cold weather Mr Park goes walking by himself. In winter, when the wood paths are covered by snow, he uses the path he has had build in his garden. That is a special path for Bare Foot Walking. Walking with one’s feet bare.

At first, neighbours would look at the awkward Korean man with astonishment or irony. Now they have become accustomed to him. Some of them ask what this barefoot walking is about. Maybe they will start walking themselves one day? 'Once they have a reason, they will,’ laughs Mr Park. 'Or they will find their own way.’

A good reason may turn out to be a situation in which a whole organised and planned life falls into pieces. Then you can either be drowned in despair and hostility or see the narrow path that will lead you to another dimension of your own existence. Because despair and hostility damage the soul, and sometimes that is all that is left to you.

Mr Park invites me for a walk. We stroll barefoot around the wood. It is neither too warm or too clean. There are cigarette butts, pieces of glass and paper lying on the paths. Well, in Korea they have special paths for barefoot walking. Mr Park dreams of having one like that built in Kabaty. As we walk, he tells me his story. A sad one, and a terrifying one at the same time, as it is still uncompleted. Mr Park will stay in Poland until he regains his good name and an enormous sum of money for which he had been responsible…

He has just had his book published in Korea. The book deals with the joy of teaching the principles of capitalism to young democracies. He had written it before the crisis came. In the book, there are pictures with the Polish President, with ministers.

Yet before he turned fifty, he had reached the peak of his career and responsibility, the financial institution led by him enjoyed its utmost prosperity. He found joy and pride in his work. He had a sense of a mission, of giving what was best in him. A life like that is somewhat close to a dream: a mansion, receptions, high society etiquette, figures that make your head dizzy. But that life is organised and predictable. Until one night you go to bed a Chairman and wake up a nobody.

Worse than a nobody, actually, as you allowed yourself to be deceived by common swindlers you once took for your friends. You have been deprived of your position, money, honour, friends and trust.

You still have children in foreign universities, though, a wife, who, by tradition, cannot have a job, a mansion to support, and all those things that are now nothing but gadgets from the past. There is also a powerful boss in a faraway country, who says: you have been naive, so now you must pay.

The most difficult thing was to come to terms with the thought there is no one to trust any more. Some lawyers gave him "sophisticated" documents to sign, counting on that he did not know Polish. A detective company he had tried to hire created a draft contract under which it received all the rights, and he – the obligation to pay. It is even not clear what he was supposed to have paid for.

It was then that, for the first time in his life, Mr Park lost control of the situation. And the world crashed right down upon him.

He sat thought, and as he thought, he felt fear. And the day came when he lacked the strength to stand up from the chair and fight. He had no strength and no faith that he would regain his honour at least. And honour is priceless to a man like Mr Park. He had to act yet acting requires energy, and that was becoming more and more scarce.

One day he saw a film about a man whom doctors told to bid farewell to his life. You have three weeks of your life left, they said, so finish off whatever there is to be finished. Facing death, the man had nothing to finish, so he left everything, took off his shoes and started walking. He stopped to eat something and to rest, and then he kept on walking. The soles of his feet grew so thick that he was able to walk over sharp rocks and thorny shrubs. When, after many months, he was examined him again, his lethally ill organ had completely regenerated. That was a Korean programme on Bare Foot Walking, i.e. therapy consisting in walking barefoot.

Mr Park read that story as a message for himself. So he stood up, took off his shoes and started walking. There was no idea to it for the time being, he was simply saving his life, he walked and his breathing got lighter and lighter. He walked the next day and the day after. He began to see things a bit more clearly, and the overwhelming weight on his chest was gone. Food recovered its taste, so Mrs Lim took a sigh of relief.

What pills would not have done occurred by contact with rocky earth.

As I listen to the story, I realise we have already walked many kilometres. We are walking and my impression is the world around me is clearer, full of colours, sounds and smells. My feet feel warm as they touch the cold ground and they do not hurt at all.

Mr Park explains to me how specific points on our feet affect the state of our bodies. Special therapeutic massages of the feet have been used in natural medicine for a long time. Each organ of the body is connected with a specific point on the foot – stimulation of those points has a healing and energising effect. That is why you need to walk over various stones, over grass, over forest litter and cones. Mr Park has a special path in his garden and in his living room he has boxes filled with stones and nuts. Those have to be hazelnuts, no other nuts are good for this purpose. What is astonishing is that they feel like velvet on your feet.

Mr Park is now writing a book on Bare Foot Walking. He wants to promote this kind of self-help also in Poland, because he is experiencing its effects. The vision of special paths for barefoot walking adds him energy, for he has not lost his far-sightedness. When you are healthy, energetic, joyful and peaceful, you will solve all your problems yourself, Mr Park deeply believes in what he says.

And that is what his life is like today: his problems are yet long to be solved, he is facing complicated trials, a fight hard and stressful. But what is most important is that he knows how to gain strength from a source that is simple and easy to reach – the earth.

Mr Park will be happy to contact other "barefoot walkers" and those wishing to learn more about this method. You can write to him in English, at the author’s address: