Donde confluyen los Caminos de Santiago y de la vida

The Camino de Santiago has been a pilgrimage and a journey of healing and transformation for thousands of years. It is imbued with a sense of the ancient and the presence of the millions who have walked before us. Not only is it a physical journey requiring effort, it is an interior journey, a journey to the self. 

Walking the Camino is many things to different people. It is a pilgrimage, a long walk in nature, a long hike with new and old friends, a, meditation a physical challenge.  It is also a learning of how little we need to be happy and a place where we get to know ourselves more intimately.

What is it for you?

The purpose of Castellito Ricardo is to bring together  the lessons from the physical Camino de Santiago with an individual's life journey, their Camino de la Vida. This will be a refuge and resource for some where recovery and healing can take place. For others, it will be a place to spend the night, enjoy a good meal and good company, and to soak their sore feet with healing touch. For others, it will be a starting point for several weeks of walking on the Camino which will include three days or so of practice to help them embody presence and establish their intentions for the walk to Santiago and on to Finisterre (the end of the earth) which for thousands of years has been a point of transformation for the pilgrim. In effect, the peregrino will be participating in a "rite of healing, or passage or transformation."

The embodiment of presence will include the practices of massage, dance, yoga and meditation and is derived from the Gestalt practice at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. These are all modalities which will bring the individual into the now as s/he starts to integrate body with heart, mind and spirit. I suspect this will not always be a conscious experience for all but will certainly result in a deeper and more profound experience which is about to take place for them on the awe-inspiring Camino.