When the Mind Can’t Save You: What My Camino Taught Me About Coming Home to My Body

There are moments in life when an experience gives us insight we could never have reached simply by thinking about it. As a psychologist, I understand this intellectually. As a human being, I am learning it in my body. My recent Camino journey gave me one of those moments.

I began this journey thinking I was going to test my physical endurance. I knew it would be challenging. I knew there would be miles when my legs were tired, my feet hurt, and my mind would begin negotiating with me about whether I really needed to keep going. What I didn’t realize was that the Camino was going to challenge something much deeper: my relationship with my own body.

For much of my life, my mind has been my greatest survival tool. When life felt uncertain, I analyzed. When something was frightening, I anticipated. When I couldn’t control circumstances, I tried to understand them. When I felt vulnerable, I became more observant, more strategic, more psychologically aware.

My mind became the place where I found safety.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, those capacities served me incredibly well. They helped me survive experiences that required enormous emotional and psychological strength. But there is a difference between having a powerful mind and believing that your mind is the only thing that can keep you safe. I didn’t realize how deeply I had internalized the latter.

The Nightmare

After completing the Camino de San Francisco, I had an extraordinarily vivid nightmare. I woke feeling terrified and physically shaken. I won’t go into the details of the dream. What matters is the emotional experience: I was trapped, unable to physically protect myself, unable to access outside help, and unable to find a safe way out. My usual resources seemed to disappear. And there I was, trying desperately to figure out what to do.

My mind immediately went into survival mode.

Think.

Analyze.

Strategize.

Find another way.

It was exactly what my mind has always done. But something about the timing of this nightmare felt significant. Because just hours before, I had been experiencing almost the exact opposite emotional reality.

I had just walked 25 miles. And I had been feeling incredibly proud of myself. Not just proud that I had completed the distance. Proud of my body. For perhaps the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking at my body primarily through the lens of what it needed to improve, fix, change, or overcome. Instead, I was appreciative, grateful and impressed… Look what you just did.

I Thought It Was a Psychological Game

During the last few miles of each day, my mind does what it usually does. It tries to find excuses, any excuse, to stop, quit and get the hell out of there. I had to redirect my attention.

I played little psychological games with myself.

I broke the distance into smaller pieces. I distracted myself. I focused on the next landmark, the next conversation, the next few minutes.

At one point, I even told my friend that the Camino felt more like a psychological game of endurance for me than a physical one.

I believed my mind was overcoming my body.

But after waking from that nightmare, I realized something profound: I had it completely backward. My mind wasn’t carrying my body. My mind was trying to keep up with my body.

My thoughts were complaining. My thoughts were negotiating. My thoughts were asking how much farther. But my body? My body just kept walking. One foot. Then the other. Then the other.

My body didn’t need to know whether I could finish the entire journey. It only needed to take the next step.

The Body Was Never the Problem

This realization brought me to tears. Because I suddenly understood something about myself that I don’t think I had ever fully understood before. I have spent so much of my life relying on my mind to save me that I didn’t recognize how much strength was already living inside my body.

My body wasn’t something I needed my mind to constantly manage.

It wasn’t a fragile thing I had to protect. It wasn’t an obstacle standing between me and what I wanted to accomplish. It was the thing carrying me forward. My mind could encourage it. My mind could redirect my attention. My mind could help me regulate.

But my body was doing something my mind couldn’t do.

It was experiencing the journey. It was feeling the terrain. It was adapting. It was enduring. It was balancing. It was breathing. It was moving. And it kept going even when my thoughts were telling me I was tired.

That distinction matters. Because trauma can teach us to live primarily from the neck up. We become hyperaware. We analyze. We anticipate. We scan for danger. We become exceptionally good at reading people, situations, environments, and potential outcomes. Sometimes the mind becomes our safest home.

But healing isn’t necessarily about getting rid of those skills. It’s about expanding our definition of safety. It’s about discovering that safety can also exist inside the body.

The Protector Who Was Always Saving Everyone Else

There is another realization that came to me after the nightmare. I noticed something about my nightmares that I had never fully put together before.

So many of them involve one of my dogs being threatened, harmed, lost, or in danger—and me desperately trying to save them.

That pattern makes sense. My dogs are my family. I have always been fiercely protective of them. When one of them needed me, there was never a question about whether I would show up. I would do anything, everything for them. But this nightmare was different.

None of my dogs were there. For once, there was no vulnerable being for me to rescue. There was no dog I needed to protect. There was only me. And that changed everything.

For someone who has spent so much of her life being the protector, there is something profoundly uncomfortable about becoming the person who needs protection. My mind immediately tried to do what it has always done:

Think.

Analyze.

Strategize.

Find a way out.

But there was a deeper question underneath all of it:

What if I am someone worth saving, too?

The Dogs Who Taught Me How to Love

Perhaps this is another reason the Camino carried such significance for me. I was walking in honor of my beloved Spirit.

Spirit’s Saint Francis medallion had always been on his collar. At the end of this Camino, I left that medallion at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi, also known as the Patron Saint of Animals. I also left a pink rose beside it. The rose has its own little story.

Earlier in the journey, after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and hiking along the beach, I came across the rose and picked it. I didn’t know why. I wasn’t thinking about the church. I wasn’t thinking about the medallion. I simply picked it and put it in my hair. Only later did I realize that I would place that rose beside Spirit’s medallion.

I don’t need to decide whether that was coincidence, synchronicity, or something spiritual. I only know what it meant to me. I had carried Spirit’s memory with me. And when I left his medallion at Saint Francis, I wasn’t leaving my love for him behind. I was honoring it. The rose became part of that offering. And perhaps there was another layer I couldn’t see at the time.

My dogs have taught me an extraordinary form of unconditional love. They never needed me to earn their love. They never cared whether I was strong enough, productive enough, successful enough, or having a good day. They simply loved me.

And I have spent years giving that same fierce, unconditional love to them. But perhaps now I am learning to turn some of that love inward.

Maybe I Am the One I Need to Protect

This may be one of the deepest realizations the Camino has given me.

I have spent so much of my life proving that I can protect the people and animals I love. I have been the one who thinks ahead. The one who anticipates.

The one who solves. The one who figures things out. The one who keeps going. The one who makes sure everyone else is okay.

But what happens when I apply that same fierce protection to myself?

What happens when I treat my own fear with the same compassion I would give a frightened dog?

What happens when I listen to my body instead of overriding it?

What happens when I don’t require myself to be strong before I allow myself to be cared for?

What happens when I recognize that I am worthy of protection simply because I am me?

That may be the lesson I am finally beginning to learn.

Coming Home to the Body

Walking is incredibly simple. There is nowhere to hide from your body when you’re walking mile after mile. You feel your feet. You feel your breathing.

You feel your muscles. You feel fatigue.

You feel the sun. You feel the terrain change beneath you. You are constantly receiving information from the body. And eventually, you have a choice:

Do I fight those sensations?

Do I fear them?

Do I interpret every uncomfortable sensation as evidence that I can’t continue?

Or can I listen?

Can I adjust?

Can I trust?

Can I allow my body to tell me what it needs?

That is a very different relationship with the body. It isn’t about forcing. It isn’t about conquering. It isn’t about proving anything. It’s about partnership. My mind and my body don’t have to fight for control. My mind can guide. My body can lead. And together, they can move forward.

Perhaps This Was the Real Camino

I thought I was walking a trail. Perhaps I was walking toward a new relationship with myself. I thought I was testing my endurance. Perhaps I was learning to trust something I had spent years overlooking. I thought I was proving that I could push through.

Perhaps I was discovering that I didn’t have to mentally overpower myself at all.

My body already knew how to keep going. And maybe that is what made the nightmare so meaningful. The nightmare presented the ultimate experience of being physically powerless and psychologically trapped. But waking life had just given me evidence of something entirely different.

I had just watched my body carry me 25 miles.

So the question wasn’t really:

“What happens when my mind can’t save me?”

The deeper question was:

“What if I don’t need my mind to save me in the same way anymore?”

What if my mind can stop being the sole protector?

What if my body gets a seat at the table?

What if I can trust my physical sensations instead of automatically overriding them?

What if I can inhabit my body instead of simply managing it?

What if I can love my body—not because it looks a certain way, not because it performs perfectly, and not because it meets some external standard—but because it is the extraordinary vessel that has carried me through every experience I’ve ever had?

I Am Not Leaving My Mind Behind

This isn’t a rejection of the mind. My mind has saved me. My intelligence has served me. My ability to understand psychology, recognize patterns, think strategically, and make meaning from difficult experiences remains a profound part of who I am. But perhaps I don’t need my mind to do all the work anymore.

Perhaps my mind can become less of a fortress and more of a companion. Perhaps I can stop living exclusively from the place that analyzes life and start experiencing it more fully through the body that is actually living it.

The Camino gave me 25 miles of evidence.

My body is capable.

My body is resilient.

My body is adaptable.

My body is stronger than I realized.

And perhaps most importantly:

My body is worthy of my trust.

That realization feels bigger to me than completing a 25-mile hike. Because this isn’t really about walking. It’s about coming home.

Coming home to the body that has been here all along.

The body I am finally learning to listen to. The body I am finally learning to love. The body I am finally proud of. And perhaps Spirit’s medallion and that unexpected pink rose gave me one final reminder:

I can honor the souls I have loved and protected without forgetting myself.

I can carry their love forward without carrying their burdens. I can be the protector and still allow myself to be protected. I can love fiercely without abandoning myself.

And instead of asking:

“How much more can I make myself endure?”

I find myself asking a very different question:

“What else would I love to experience with this body?”

Maybe that’s the real beginning of the journey. Not becoming someone stronger. Not becoming someone more resilient. Not becoming someone who can endure more. But finally recognizing the strength, resilience, and love that were already here.

Maybe the Camino wasn’t teaching me how to keep going. Maybe it was teaching me that I was never as powerless as I believed. And perhaps, after a lifetime of relying on my mind to save me, I am finally learning something my body has known all along:

I can carry myself home.