Deceleration on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Over the last few months, I have become very interested in the idea of ” deceleration” in the context of the Camino.

This has been mainly as a result of reading the work of Katharine C. Husemann – Lecturer of Marketing and Giana M.Eckhardt,Royal Holloway University of London, in an article published by the Confraternity of St James, March 2018, No 141 and by attending a presentation they made on Saturday,8 th December 2018 at Southwark Cathedral, again organised by the Confraternity.

The presentation was a distillation of the article, notes from which I made some time ago and attach at the end of this blog.

The presenters were very engaging and quite rightly made us aware that they had walked sections of both the Portuguese and Frances Caminos, interviewing a range of people and making their own field notes – I suppose that’s what I had been doing all these years on the Camino, too! But not coming to any definitive conclusions.

My own notes from the presentation are what now follow:-

Feeling immersed by contemporary culture.

Need to escape.

Space ant time to self process

Camino not sole escape route – Slow Food, Travel movements and growing popularity of Yoga, health retreats.

Diminishing Time resources in era of Ever increasing demands on time

As life goes faster we increasingly feel “ Time poor”

A Camino can be an “ Oasis of deceleration “

How do people achieve this?

Christian devotion

Sin remission

Self fulfilling experiences

Transcendent spirituality

Tourism

Physical adventure

The Camino is mainly populated by well educated, middle class people,

from urban areas.

Pilgrims experienced a slowed down experience altering, adopting, eschewing forms of consumption.

Things happening in their own time – freedom from deadlines, tyranny but not that’ll rejection of technology

We get the when we get there – speed impt in daily life not essential.

EMBODIED DECELERATION

Travel per day – walking is the ultimate slow mode. Natural rhythm

Experience of physical discomfort / pain

Listening to what your body tells you

These inhibit…slows you down, more reflective more likely to engage face to face with others

TECHNOLOGICAL DECELERATION

Controlling technology not following it/ ruled by it.

Less Facebook , more face to face, even with people who a day ago were complete strangers.

Quality of conversation

EPISODIC DECELERATION

Decrease in number and variety of actions per day

Simplicity of experiences

Reduction of consumer choice Eg Menu Del Dia / Pelegrino Eg lunch is not Pret A Manger with 30 different sandwiches/ soups

Walk, Eat, Sleep

You have only to consider what time you start, where you are going to finish

What to have for breakfast

Where/when to have a break

Albergue or hotel

Dinner?

TRANSITION

Gradually you let go of the impulse to race/ rush

Walking becomes therapeutic

Adjusting to a rhythm

Questions for Pelegrinos

Did you experience Deceleration?

All three forms?

Was it difficult to slow down?

Was it a holiday?

Were you able to hold on to Slowness on re- entry into everyday life back home?

Religious or Spiritual experiences?

Were they Slowing down related?

A lively question and answer session ensued as you would imagine with an audience of experienced Pelegrinos.

ATTACHED NOW ARE SOME MORE EXPANSIVE NOTES FROM THE MARCH ARTICLE.

CAMINO PRESENTATION NOTES

SPIRITUAL QUEST CULTURE  – A generation of seekers is looking for encounters with something bigger than they are –forces at work here, the nature of contemporary modernity, social fragmentation, secularisation, individualism and asccelerati on. And people are finding it more and more difficult to create…

MEANINGFUL  BONDS – Little opportunity to stop, reflect and connect –  yearning to re-connect. Perhaps best understood as a quest for spirituality, endeavours to to explore and connect deeply with one’s inner self and to the known world and beyond. Since its inception the camino has been a place of …

INTERCONNECTIONS AND MEANINGFUL ENCOUNTERS – with God, the sacred, nature, fellow pilgrims and troubadours.In fact, Finisterre, located along the Spanish coastline was long thought to be the end of the world – no place you could be nearer to God than at the end of the world. Today the motives for walking are manifold as the pilgrims themselves. Christian devotion and sin remission are still relevant concepts for some pilgrims, but equally or more so , are self transformative endeavours, tourism, physical challenges or one of those 100 things to do before you die.

RESONANCE AND TOP UP – Despite the changes and extension of motives, pilgrims still talk about meaningful encounters – to a friend, to a stranger, to the beauty in nature, to the self, or to a greater power. What a writer, Hartmut Rosa calls the experience of “resonance” – it pulls pilgrims in, and quite often makes them come back – repeaters like me that need a “Top UP” on this experience after being back in the “real world”. Finding unity, wholeness and interconnectedness is seldom found in contemporary modernity.

But if found, people want to preserve it and hold on to it. The camino fosters meaningful encounters, what has been called …

SPIRITUAL MAGNETISM – with its rich religious history,impressive historical monuments, magical [ especially in Galicia { and to some extent inaccessible geographies – it reminds us of pre-modern times, radiating a sense of nostalgia.The caminom is situated in the midst of rurality as well as urbanity, sacredness and profanity, the ordinary and the extraordinary. But the WOW factor is its slowness, its relevance to today –

AN EXPERIENCE OF DECELERATION –its the slowness that provides pilgrims with the time and mindset to deeply connect. Allowing you to slow down in 3 ways – physically, technologically & episodically.

PHYSICALLY – walking, what used to be the norm but is not so nowadays.

TECHNOLOGICALLY – not so much about throwing away your I Phone, but rather a feeling of gaining control, eg checking for e-mails once a day at a time of your own choosing.

EPISODICALLY – only engaging in a few decisions each day eg when to stop for a beer, what time to go to bed. EAT, SLEEP WALK – REPEAT.

BONDING – the camaraderie, sharing of pain and stories, face to face, rather than online – core experiences. Pilgrims get attached to their equipment, the gear they use – Your boots and walking  poles epitomize the pilgrimage as no other objects do. PLUS walking for dasys, weeks even slowly, thru the countryside, via fields, forests, and wine growing regions: following rivers, climbing mountains, along busy roads, thru industrial areas, at the mercy of the elements such as wind, cold and sun – a strong bond with nature and surroundings in general. Lastly, pilgrims sometimes feel strongly connected to the…

SACRED – which can take different forms and shapes on the camino.

According to Myth the camino de Santiago is a place where the gap between heaven and earth is particularly thin.

Encounters can be religious services [ Vespers] or rituals, but a decelerated and …

NON – EXPECTING MIND – which can facilitate an experience of meaningful connections..

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL SPIRITUALITY- not necessarily sought after,  EG some of my SC Rambleros were looking forward to a nice hike in nature connected with themselves, others materially, nature or the sacred in ways they had not anticipated.

The challenge of the camino comes after its completion – to try and remain mentally on the camino when one gets back to daily life.

Apologies for the small font!

I hope what I have included goes some way to doing justice to the concepts shared by the two lecturers – I just felt that the ideas were very interesting and deserving of as wide an audience as possible.

The suggested need to ” top up” has a special resonance for me as I think back to the times on the way when I have said to myself ” what the hell am I doing this for?”

Or, ” that’s it, that’s the last one!”

Only to find myself on Ryanair’s website a weeks after returning home, planning another one!