Susie Taaffe describes a practice from her Camino pilgrimage: at each junction, she pauses, takes a breath, and asks her body "Do I want to go this way?" then follows the physical yes or no she feels. This lets her ignore guidebook stages and rigid plans, staying present instead of letting her thinking mind decide.
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And a really good example is on the Camino, there's a bunch of different guidebooks and apps that give you suggested stages. So how far you should walk. If you wanna walk the Camino in 35 days, these are the suggested stages. And it's fascinating to watch people follow those stages to the letter. They won't take a single deviation. They won't take the road less traveled. They wouldn't even consider staying in one of the off-stage towns. They just, they're like sheep. This is something I did really well. I'm really proud of myself for doing on the second Camino, is that I, I genuinely listened to my body and my soul and what I actually wanted to do and the type of experience I wanted to have. And I literally saw people— it was one day I was walking next— okay, well, we were walking through the wheat belt of Spain. It's open, it's hot, it's exposed. There's no— there's very few towns, there's no shade, not a lot of respite. And there was a deviation. And I could see this trail of pilgrims walking in the blaring sun. It was mid to high 20s, literally following each other like cows on their way to be milked at the end of the day. You know, it's just a line of people. It's like ants.
It's like, yes.
And I took, I took the deviation route. It was a, it was slightly longer, next to a river with running water, trees, shade, breeze, very few other pilgrims there, and just had the most delightful time. Um, and I, when I asked people about that, you know, are you taking the alternative route? They're like, what alternative route? I was like, oh, you don't even know. But they— had I, had I not listened to what my body wanted and what I actually wanted from the experience, I would have been like an ant following all the other ones down, down the hot path. But I knew that I wanted to.
So did you check it when you— like, I know that Cass, um, checks in with herself a lot, like, what do I want? And I have covered that in some of my other videos, and we'll Cover it a bit now, I think, because you can check— like, we have a guidance system inside of us. Like, this heart knows much more than what this head— like, this head will try and think its way through things, but the heart actually knows. And call it intuition, call it like heart guidance, call it whatever you call it, you can check in. So did you check in at that intersection and just say—
Always. Always.
Always.
And that's probably something that I did more on the second Camino was check in with myself in the morning. Where do— how far do I wanna walk? Do I want to— where do I wanna stay? Um, do I wanna stay in this town or do I wanna stay in this town? And then I, I, I also went into it knowing that if there was a road less traveled, I would take it. But at each junction, I would stop and ask.
Still ask.
And I would still ask because something could have changed. And maybe, maybe my, my soul didn't wanna go on the deviation. So every time I got to a deviation, I would ask.
Yeah, because it's the present moment. Exactly. When the only thing that's real is the now.
Is the now.
Everything else doesn't actually exist, but that's a topic for another day.
That's a whole different conversation.
Um, so if people haven't checked in with themselves before, how would you describe, like, how would you, um, explain a process that they can do to check in with their hearts and like get out of the logical brain?
Uh, I would say, uh, Make it simple.
Mm-hmm.
Don't— make it simple. So, uh, for me, if I got to a section in the Camino where I had the option to take the normal, well-populated road or the road less traveled, I would stop and I would take a deep breath, a really big deep breath, maybe a couple of deep breaths, and I would look at the, the normal path and I would say, do I want to go this way?
And pause.
And then my body— and then I get a response. Like a physical response that says yes or no. And then I would look at the other path and I would say, do I want to go this way? And then I would wait and I would hear what my body actually wanted to do, what my soul wanted to do. And then I would listen to it. And sometimes it would send me on paths that I didn't necessarily think I thought I wanted to go.
Yes.
Yeah. So if I thought I wanted to take— there were some days where—
You were like quite surprised.
I was quite surprised. Yeah. So I went in thinking I will always take the alternative route. And there were some alternative routes that I got to and I asked myself, do I want to take this alternative route? And the answer was no. And instead of going, but no, but I said I was going to do this and I'm going to take all the all the roads less traveled.
I was like, okay, no, my body said allowing it to flow and to change. Like you're allowed to change your mind.
You are allowed to change your mind just because you have one really expectation with no value.
