The Camino de Santiago: A Healing Journey for Body and Soul
The Camino de Santiago. Pilgrims have braved this famed pilgrimage, called “The Way of St. James” in English, for more than 1,000 years. It began as a way for Christians to walk with God and to reverence the sacrifice of the first martyred Apostle, St. James (Santiago). Today, there are many possible routes of varying mileage to take through Spain—but all routes lead to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where St. James’ remains rest to this day.
We (Jackie and Dr. Bridget) began our more-than-300-mile pilgrimage on the feast day of a beloved saint of Reform: Feast of St. Padre Pio (Sept. 23). Padre Pio’s wisdom urges us not to “be afflicted to the point of losing your interior peace,” but rather, we should “pray with perseverance, trust, and a serene and calm mind.” The Camino is truly an interior journey toward peace in Christ—a journey that requires the virtues of faith, trust, surrender, obedience, and patience.
There are few ways more powerful for sharpening these virtues than traveling hundreds of miles on foot with God at your side, rosary beads in your grasp, and your entire life simplified to what you can carry in a pack on your back. While we experienced abundant graces, the struggles would have been difficult to overcome without the best practices we implemented through Reform’s Wellness Pillars.
As we walked, the framework of the nine pillars helped us maintain an overall rhythm. These tried-and-true practices helped us stay healthy in body and soul during one of the most humbling challenges of our lives! We were also blessed with a special pilgrim who joined us along the way - Jackie’s sister Ashley! The Lord took us on an unforgettable journey beyond ourselves and the world to walk closer to Him. Ultreia!
As we share our walk of faith with you through the lens of the Wellness Pillars, we invite you to continue the journey with us so you can put the lessons we learned from this beautiful experience into practice, no matter where you are.
Faith: The Rosary, God-Reliance, and Offering It Up
Offer it up: Our bodies are not accustomed to walking 15 – 20 miles every single day with 20 pounds of gear on our backs. But suffering and pain are inevitable on the Camino. Offering our pain to the Lord for the sake of those who are suffering and for our intentions made a world of difference and reminded us that this, too, shall pass.
Reliance in the Lord: There were many days where the path was clear, but the road we were to tread was not. We were given the opportunity to increase our trust in Jesus, surrender our self-reliance, and allow Him to lead us where He wanted us to be. Our obedience in following His lead affirmed for us that, while we didn’t know where we were going, we knew we were on our way.
The Holy Rosary is Our Fuel: The Camino led us to new heights, physically and spiritually. When the road proved most difficult and climbing seemed endless, it was devotion to Our Lady and the strength we obtained through the Holy Rosary that allowed us to persevere.
Sleep: Moving to Sleep, Lights Out, and Rising with the Son
Movement’s role in sleep: Sleep is essential to our well-being and recovery, and adequate movement supports deeper and more restful sleep. We experienced in a new way that moving our bodies sufficiently throughout the day helped us to get quality sleep wherever the Lord guided us.
Sunrise and Sonrise: We had the gift of watching the sunrise as we walked with God and other pilgrims. The sunrise allowed us to reset our circadian rhythm and align our internal clock with nature. Gazing at the sunrise also gave us the chance to reflect on keeping our gaze on the Son, Jesus, and centering ourselves in Him.
Schedule and Utility: As a general rule, most hostels (called albergues) on the Camino had lights out by 10 pm and expected pilgrims to be out the door by 8 am the next morning. This enforced schedule created a daily rhythm conducive to winding down in the hours before sleep and rising at the same time each morning—a critical practice for maximizing our sleep cycles.
Stress Management: Sabbath, Simplicity, and Lighten Your Load
Lighten Your Load: It is difficult to pick up the cross for Christ when we carry excess weight or unnecessary things. We realized that the extra weight in our backpacks and minds would make completing the Camino more difficult and us less available to the present moment. We simply lightened our load physically and spiritually and had more capacity to receive.
Daily Sabbath: The Spanish traditionally implement a daily siesta–which we embrace and love! After a long day of walking, that time was vital to rest in stillness and get off our feet. A daily sabbath allows us to be more present, reflect on the day, and reconnect with God.
Living Simply: The Camino called us to a new level of simplicity, walking from town to town with all our belongings in tow. We committed to living simply by following a daily rhythm, alternating two outfits, and minimizing possessions. We were amazed at its effects on our overall stress levels!
Functional Movement: Learning How to Walk Again
Recover Harder than you Train: St. Augustine is known to have said “Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever.” When your daily progress truly depends on taking care of your body, recovery becomes a vital part of your daily life. We intentionally dedicated time to recover daily through stretching, hydration, and sleep.
In Tune With Your Body: Listen to your body; it is constantly signaling to us what we need. When not in tune with our bodies, we experience dis-ease and begin to tolerate symptoms unnecessarily. If we ignored what our body was telling us on the Camino, we suffered. What is your body in need of today?
Learning How to Walk Again: Walking is one of the most powerful and healing ways to move our bodies—though in our average day-to-day, we don’t consciously think about how we walk. We just do it. While on the Camino, we had to be mindful of each step we took and maintain proper form to avoid injury or overworking certain muscles. In our walk with Christ, we likewise want to mind our steps and walk intentionally on the path before us to avoid sin and keep pace with Him.
Nutrition: Hydration, Consistency, and Eating with Gratitude
Consistency in Sustenance: Keeping a consistent schedule with meals was essential to recharge during our breaks and to maintain energy each day. Our bodies depended on regular nourishment and rest, and if a meal was rushed or a break was cut short, we felt it. We learned to take our time, enjoy the gift of each meal, and eat our meals at the same time each day.
Eat What is Served: When we’re outside of our daily routine or cannot access various options, we are forced to be creative in nourishing our bodies. Each day, we had to navigate building our plates with what food was available—which varied from city to city. We made the healthiest choices possible while also embracing the opportunity to try new foods and surrendering to what was provided for us with gratitude.
Hydration as an Imperative: Hydrating with fresh, clean water was imperative while on the Camino. Our bodies were very quick to tell us when we needed to rehydrate. That is not always the case in our daily lives, but we should never wait until we are thirsty to rehydrate. As a starting point, we encourage you to drink half your body weight in ounces each day.
Personal Growth: Move Forward, Overcome, Stay in Your Lane
Stay in Your Lane: The Camino welcomes countless pilgrims, which creates a tempting opportunity to measure yourself against others. Everyone is moving in the same direction at various speeds; everyone is carrying something on their back. It’s easy to compare the size of one’s backpack to yours. Remember: We’re all carrying something, and we’re all going at different speeds through our journey. Yours is your own, and we have no idea how heavy a load someone is carrying, regardless of how small their load looks to us. We invite you to stay in your lane.
Keep Moving Forward: One thing you are compelled to do on pilgrimage and in life is to keep moving forward. If you’re not moving forward, not going, or growing—you’re moving in the wrong direction. The best place to start is to ask God where He wants you to go. God’s path is the path of greatest love; He always lays it before you if you’re willing to walk it. Take the next best step; keep going, keep growing.
We Grow in our Discomfort: Each day on the Camino, we experienced discomfort. A challenge. A difficult decision. Something to overcome. Sore muscles and feet. Part of the experience is journeying into another day knowing there will be discomfort and pain ahead. It’s important to remember that, when we’re uncomfortable, we tend to grow the most.
Play: Real Presence and Radical Dependence
Get Your Stamps: To get the “Compostela” certificate in Santiago (attesting your successful completion of The Way of St. James), you must get stamps from each place you stop and/or stay. This was not only a fun way to hear the stamping sound reminiscent of a passport, playfully signaling our “completion” for the day, but it also offered us the opportunity to reflect on how far we had come and recall our experiences in each place. This stamp collection made the journey more meaningful simply because it was playful. Play is essential!
Presence—The Here/Now: It’s easy to be present when your one and only task for the day is to walk to the next town. We had nothing else to distract us: no internet, phone, or work access. How do your daily goals get in the way of being present in the moments that make up that day? Can we find the fun in being present?
Radical Dependence: Radical dependence requires being childlike before the Lord. When you fully trust that He will get you where you need to be (as we had to be on the Camino), that opens up a lot of space for being childlike. It opens up space for fun and laughter. Joy is even greater when we share it with others, even those we don’t know or have only just met.
Community: We’re All On the Same Path
We Are All On the Same Path: On the Camino, we walked alongside many other pilgrims all moving toward the same destination. As we walked together, we experienced the joys, pains, graces, and sufferings with one another. The same is true of our journey through life alongside fellow Christians. Though it’s not always spoken aloud or shared, we all experience the joys, pains, graces, and sufferings along the way to wholiness. Though it was easy to tell when someone was limping in pain on the Camino, it’s not always so easy to recognize it when someone is in pain in everyday life. Remember that we may not know what someone is going through or how heavy the weight is on their backs.
Love Your Neighbor: The spirit of giving was in abundance on the Camino. We experienced early on the generosity of other pilgrims, hosts, and local communities; as we walked, we found countless opportunities to extend that same generosity to those we met along the way. In life, we sometimes forget or even ignore the gifts we have and why God gave them to us. One very important thing we must do with these gifts is share them generously with others. Being more attentive to those in need affords us the grace of opportunity to shower those gifts upon those around us.
The Camino Provides: A popular phrase you hear on the Camino is, "The Camino Provides." Whether we were in need of food, water, or a bed, we always found exactly what we needed. But the Camino only provides because God provides. God provides for the entire community. May we remember to give thanks to Him for his providence and care in our daily lives and show our gratitude through our care for one another.
Space: God’s Golden Language
Quality > Quantity: We often talk about “essential” and “nonessential” in regard to our belongings. How would our perception of what is essential change if we had to carry all of our belongings on our backs? Would you start to look at the quality of what you had over the quantity? Would making space for more quality in your life become more essential? Reducing our load to those few quality things creates the space needed to focus on the one thing truly necessary.
Time in the Space of Nature: Spending the majority of our days outside reminded us of the ability of nature to heal the whole person. We were designed to interact with the natural world and to experience the beauty of God’s creation: warm rays of the sun, a cool breeze, the wind whispering through the trees. the ocean breaking on the beach. The mind, body, and soul desire the type of healing that only God, through nature, can provide.
Gold Tones: We’ve all heard the saying, “silence is golden.” That silence isn’t just golden; it’s divine. St. John of the Cross said, “God’s first language is silence.” We often resist silence because we’re afraid of what we might hear. The long days on pilgrimage, sometimes with hours of silence (whether welcomed or not), was a perfect place to have the space to really communicate and, more importantly, listen to the Lord and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
On the eve of the Feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, the patroness of Reform, we finally arrived in Santiago de Compostela showered in graces (and rainfall). God’s grace and the framework of the Reform Pillars proved essential to overcoming all of the challenges the Camino presented us. As St. Teresa herself once shared, “The closer one approaches God, the simpler one becomes.” Our journey was a slow, internal journey toward peace and greater simplicity—and as we returned home to the U.S., we hoped to continue our pilgrimage in the guise of everyday life so that we may successfully arrive at our life’s true pilgrim destination: eternity with our Lord.
The Camino can be characterized as an entire lifetime lived in only a few weeks. Pilgrims experience all the joys, sadness, pains, and beauty common in our daily lives (sometimes all simultaneously). We’d be joyful one moment, feeling all the graces the Lord had given us, and the next moment we just had to stop and let ourselves be overcome with tears. We would sometimes begin the day feeling energetic and optimistic, and others we would suffer from fatigue and soreness. We found strength in community and friendships that normally take lifetimes to build in only a few days. The goodbyes were frequent and never easy. If by God’s grace, you finish your pilgrimage, you feel 30 years older in mind but years younger in body. That’s the Camino in a (scallop) shell. This is why the Wellness Pillars were so essential for our success on Camino, just as they are for living fully alive in our daily lives.
The last lesson from the Camino can be summed up in one word: Ultreia. This was a regular salutation we heard on the Camino, and it comes from Latin meaning “Beyond.” Similar to Bl. Pier Giorgio’s favored phrase “Verso L’alto,” the word “Ultreia” for us is about going beyond the “you” of the world—beyond your life in the world, where you live, where you’re from, where your comfort zone is—so that God and others can truly see you. All of you. Simple. Uncomplicated. No worries. No schedules. No distractions. Whether you ever have or ever will walk the Camino, today you can take the next step to go beyond what you were, beyond the person you left behind, and take all of who you are now to those who need God—and who need you. Let’s continue to walk together with one another every day, closer to Him—one step at a time.
