2006_11

Indigestion, high blood pressure, stress. Maybe it’s time you put your foot down.

Foot reflexology, the ancient Chinese practice of stimulating internal organs with
pressure points on the soles of the feet, can cost $50 to $75 per hour. But visitors to
Marymoor Park can do it themselves, for free, by walking a path that opened recently.

Made of specially placed stones designed to be traversed in bare or stocking feet, the
$25,000 path was built through partnership between King County Parks and
Recreation and Aegis Living, a health-care company that has its headquarters in
Redmond.

“It can be a little painful. There’s a bit of ouch factor if you’re not used to it.” said
Aegis Chief Executive Officer Dwayne Clark, who first learned of reflexology while
researching spas.

The paths are the first publicly funded facilities of their kind in the United States,
although similar structures can be found in parks and public housing all over Asia, said
King County Parks spokeswoman Jessie Israel. Shiseido, the Japanese cosmetics
company, built one for its employees a few years ago.

Bastyr University in Kenmore has its own such path, which was designed by Elizabeth
Marazita, an acupuncturist who also designed the King County paths and others
through her company Paths of Health.

Like a deep tissue massage, advocates say the array of smooth and jagged stones
can hurt so good. Clark was so impressed by his lowered blood pressure and
improved digestion that he began scheduling home reflexology sessions and had an
outdoor path installed for employees at Aegis’ Redmond headquarters.

Residents at Aegis Senior Living in Redmond use portable plastic reflexology mats
that Clark compares to durable bubble wrap.

“We’re kind of becoming evangelists about reflexology,” Clark said.

In many cases, he’s preaching to the converted. Since it opened in 2004, bus loads
of seniors have flocked to the path at Bastyr’s Bothel campus, Israel said.

They’re on to something. A study by the Oregon Research Institute found that walking
on plastic reflexology paths, sometimes called cobblestones, can lower blood
pressure in people 60 and older.

For 58-year old County Executive Ron Sims, that news was a, uh, shoe-in. Sims
“read about that study, so that’s what piqued our interest,” Israel said.