Three steps in, three steps back

The Amidah is entered and left on foot. Yoma 53b gives the departure: three steps back, then a bow to the left and the right, in the manner of someone withdrawing from a king rather than turning and walking off. The three steps forward at the start are the later mirroring of it, codified in the medieval halakhic literature.

What the pair of them does is convert a prayer into a place. You step into it and you step out of it, and in between you are standing somewhere you were not standing before — although the floor has not changed and nobody watching sees you go anywhere. The app can draw this as footprints, which is the whole of it: six steps, three in and three out, and a room built out of nothing but the difference between them. Layer: Talmudic for the withdrawal, medieval for the approach.