Temples? Shrines? The mountains or to the islands?
What do you feel when you go there?
I recently traveled to Umbria for a performance and had an experience that made me feel like I was truly in an energy vortex. Umbria is sandwiched between the regions of Tuscany and Marche, making it Italy’s only landlocked province. It’s known for having far more forests and green spaces than its neighbors, which makes many Italians quite fond of it. The landscapes of Umbria feature endless rolling hills and low mountains, its often-photographed pastoral views as soothing as those of Tuscany.
As I entered Umbria and headed towards my destination, a former monastery, a companion told me that the area was full of witches. I was frightened for a moment, until they explained that these weren’t the witches I was picturing (scary, grotesque witches with hooked noses and warts all over their faces, chuckling as they bared their clawed fingers), but friendly, good-hearted witches. I smirked a bit internally, thinking that they could have just avoided the whole “witch” thing and called them fairies…
We finally got to the place we were performing, a monastery dedicated to Saint Blaise on a hill in Umbria that had been turned into a resort hotel. There was still a church there, a relic of its past which was now used for concerts and events.
The owner and staff members came out to greet us with smiles when we arrived at the resort hotel. I had just heard about the witches, so it made me wonder whether there was some magic hiding behind those smiles. I started wondering whether they were really witches after all…
It’s common for Italian monasteries to make and sell signature products, like dairy goods, olive oils, soaps, or beer. This resort hotel took advantage of its beautiful natural surroundings to make and sell its own unique items, including herbal treatments that had been passed down since its monastery days.
One of the interesting spa treatments they offered featured a bed of dried herbs. They start by putting mud packs on your neck and lower back. As you lay on a bed covered with dried herbs, they heat your belly and thighs by putting steamed dried herbs on them, then wrap you in cloth so that you breathe in the delightful smell of the herbs as you relax for 40 minutes. It was amazing how just doing this releases the muscles and eases lower back pain or other aches.
Since it was a resort hotel with a spa, it also had the usual complete massage and sauna facilities as well. In the space where they do yoga, certain people are apparently able to feel a strong energy. Unfortunately I wasn’t sensitive enough to experience it, but now that I think back, it did seem like I felt a little tingling in there…
The most intense thing I heard was that there was a space that nobody was allowed to approach. When they were showing us around the hotel, it definitely looked like there was a space that you could explore beyond the bottom of the staircase, but the staff just turned around, making no move to keep going down. When I asked them about it, they told me there was nothing there. I pushed a little harder, telling them that I had heard there was a forbidden area, but they repeatedly gave me the curt reply that it was “nothing.” But doesn’t it seem strange that they didn’t just say, “there’s nothing there, but you’re free to look anyway”?
It was frightening to think about checking it out but then hearing a witch or something say “gotcha!” and getting trapped in there, so I didn’t end up pursuing it any further.
