In Germany I

Dear lovely supporting friends,

its my honor to write to you today. I am sitting in a house of my friend Hans, who did recently marry Susanne. I can use the house and the frigde!! The house is in the very south of Denmark (kollund) very close to Flensburg/Germany, the city I lived, before I started the peace walk. Hans and Susanne recently married each other and have this weekend a little honeymoon time in Arhus, a present from there friends. Next weekend, they have another wedding ceremony at the beach here in southern Denmark. A party without alcohol, which I would love to join, but I already did other plans …..

My knee
Its my issue, to take care of my knee at the recovering time in Germany. Already I went to a healing practitioner in the first week in Germany. Its an acupuncture and acupessure practitioner. She helped me earlier, also with this knee about 10 year ago. Since then everything was gone. Even though the issue is now different, I went again for help. But about a week later, I understood from inside, that I have to take care by myself, to do it by myself, this time. But I did not really know how…. Being on my lovely Island Amrum, so beautiful with dunes and big long and wide beaches, I met one evening a couple. After I while we came across the topic ‚knee‘ and they started talking about there knee issues. Both of them had trouble in the past with there knees. I listened carefully to there stories, found out that there knee troubles where different from mine…. but in the end of the conversation, they both told me, that the doctors always say, building up muscles is the most important for a healty knee. That somehow spoke to me and I started immedately to look at my issue from that perspective.
One of my first impulses have been to ban my old sandals. They are already 3 years old and I walked with them around 7.000 km. They have been from tremendous good quality, a present form Tarald, a Norwegian, I met on the way. During the years, they needed some repairs, so they got a heavy extra sole, very stable, but heavy. I walked with these sandals in 7 countries, two times into the high Himalaya, to Kashmir and Ladakh and Spiti Valley. (I did sent the sandals to a friend in Heiligenhaus, Hartmut, who wants to try a auction….) Because of the front area of my feet, which need to extend widely to the side, to feel free and comfortable, I loosened the front tape around the sandal – I hardly get never a shoe or sandal who fits because of that. Until now that was all ok. No knee trouble ever. Maybe because of having that front tape of the sandal so loose, I started to walk a little bit suboptimal – and because of the heavy weight of the sandal I so caused some problem with the knee, or at least supported the trouble with the knee to develope.
I feel/felt in the last month, that my knee was a bit loose. I reported here before about it. I said, my body wants to find a new structure, so thats maybe the reason of this instability and looseness, and it felt really like it. Also I thought about my meditation praxis, that maybe the looseness came form sitting in lotus position to much??? I tried to understand all the possibilities. But sitting in meditation always gives me joy, sometimes in the beginning of a meditation, my knee hurts a bit, after a while it always disappered.
My worries also appeared, not being able to walk anymore. And here I came back to the inner voice, which told me month ago ‚you can also go in summer 2019 to Germany… after you can walk all the rest of the peace walk towards Myanmar in one blog!‘ And I have decided to relay on that voice, have to trust, will trust. So after the summer I will fly back to India and continue walking. My knee will be fine until then.
Finally I started immediately after the ‚knee-talk‘ with that couple to walk only barefeet, to relearn the most healthy way of walking. Walking barefeet you start walking after a while more and more to use the front part of the feet by touching the earth. This has a perfect effect of the muscles in the feet, legs, knees, hips, bud, iliosacral joint, lower spine, and rest of the body. So every day I train now, to walk barefeet and establish more horn skin under my feet. The only ’shoe‘ which I have now, are flip flops in case of very ruff ground or oversensitivity after a lot of walking during the day. And the knee already got better. It feels more stable.