11- Homeward Bound: After Your Camino

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SPEAKER_00 0:46

Homeward bound, continuing your creativity pathway. You've reached Santiago or wherever you chose to end your Camino this time, and you're heading home or going on with further travels. You've had an experience like no other. It has awakened parts of you that you'd forgotten or didn't even realize existed. Creativity has a role in your new beginning, in your Camino of life. Once you leave the Camino, you'll be full of that creative pilgrim energy. You want to make the most of it. Most likely you're going to be returning to familiar people, places, routines, and habits. You may feel the changes within you, but your world you go back to has not likely changed at all. Post Camino blues can be very real for some people. The experience of feeling energized on the Camino, yet within weeks, even days of returning to daily life, that feeling shifts to something more akin to grief and a longing for just one thing, to return to the Camino where life felt good. But is that longing a desirable path forward? Perhaps it's better to give ourselves a way to carry our Camino within us and experience parts of it in everyday life. The benefits of a regular creativity practice are too many to list, but I will try to list some. Research has shown that creativity can reduce stress, boost mental well-being, improve cognitive flexibility, and creative activities enhance your motivation, emotional regulation, all supported by mindfulness, while also strengthening brain health and delaying cognitive decline. Engaging in creativity is also a means of self-care and self-love. It fosters self-discovery, builds resilience, deepens, can deepen social connections. And when you make that space for yourself for the creative expression, you are showing yourself love and care. And over time, this is a habit that not only enriches your daily life in the moment, but also supports long-term mental and emotional well-being. So as you transition back home, think about the rhythm of your typical day. You wake up, you have breakfast, perhaps you exercise, walk the dog, maybe you have to commute, or maybe it's just a string of tedious daily tasks. Ask yourself where can I carve out just 10 to 15 minutes for creative practice? Longer is better, and perhaps over time that time will build up. But even a few moments spent sketching, doodling, writing, or reflecting can make a difference. With the Camino creativity prompts, you practiced observation, increased awareness, and engaged in some playful explorations. And some of those exercises may have felt natural, some weird, others may have stretched you. But consider which parts or which ones felt they sparked something in you and how can you continue some of that practice in your everyday? Time to get off autopilot. Take time to give some thought to those things that you have always done on autopilot. Can you now approach them wholeheartedly as a creative act? So make a list of some of those things. See where being attentive and tuned in might benefit you. For instance, when you're cooking, can you be more spontaneous or experimental? Can you switch out ingredients? Can you um just look at a recipe as a starting point and see what's in your fridge? Perhaps you've wanted to redecorate a room or change the way you present yourself in terms of your hair or clothing. Perhaps you just need bright colored shoelaces or socks. Just something that you can peek at and say, yeah, that's me. You can now also think about the movement of your body and your interactions with others as creative acts. And if making art or working on projects with your hands is something you recognize gives you joy, yet you haven't been intentional in carving out space for it, this is your time. As soon as you get home, keep that creative energy flowing by designating a space, a time, a set of tools and materials that support that creative activity. And even if it's just committing to a daily sketchbook session or just having a pad of paper where you sit and have your coffee to draw or doodle or write, get yourself that sketchbook or journal or pad of paper. Find a marker that writes or draws with a line that feels like it's flowing straight out of you. Now, how will you stay on track? There is a very good chance that getting yourself set up and sticking to it will require you to have very strong intention. There will be external forces working against you. There will be people demanding of your time and energy. You will return home to a different morning routine from the Camino and to your familiar habits. And some of those may very well undermine the clarity that you had on the Camino and the good, sincere intentions that came out of that. It may also be hard to keep up a walking routine. So if you can make it the first thing you do each day, even if it's just a five minute walk, and if you can allow yourself to relax during that time and not think about the tasks for the day that are ahead of you, that will help you get your divergent and creative thinking in flow. And that will help you in myriad ways throughout the day. If you can get out again later, that's great, but even if you can't, you have done that five minutes. And if you can't get out of your house, perhaps put on some music and take ten minutes to dance in your kitchen, or perhaps put on some nature sounds, because it is ideal for you to get out in nature if you can. Going for a walk in a busy urban street and crossing, you know, busy roads and hearing traffic is not ideal. It might even just be better, if that's your only option, to find a corner of your home that has maybe some plants in it, um, and put some nature sounds on a speaker or on your earbuds, and just walk in circles, just kind of like gently focusing on the green and the pleasant areas of your home and just move and relax your mind. And repeat, repeat, repeat. If you can, do it deliberately at the same time each day. Pair your creative time with another activity so you are more likely to remember it. We don't want to be regimented, but we also don't want to postpone, procrastinate, and forget either. Here's just a little quote from James Clear, who is the author of Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits. By linking your new habits to a cycle that is already built into your brain, you make it more likely that you will stick to the new behavior. So things that you do each day pretty reliably, such as sitting and having your coffee or tea, um, brushing your teeth, uh, taking your dog out for a walk, um those are those are pretty common ones. And if you say, I will spend five minutes doodling while I have my coffee, or I will do a dance before I brush my teeth, that's the kind of pairing that we're talking about. Because going forward, you won't have the support of the Camino, the structure, the rhythm. You're gonna have to be intentional. Guard yourself against distracting sounds, traffic being a big culprit, of course. For me, even the calls of birds can be distracting if I'm out if I'm out on a walk. That uh raucous twittering can really set me on edge and or just kind of take my focus out of my own mind and out into what are they talking about? So I often walk with earplugs in just tightly enough to muffle the sound. I use loop brand uh calm. I think that's the uh model of the earplugs. They just muffle the sound, they don't block it out, so I can still hear if somebody is speaking to me and any emergency sounds, uh, or I will put on my earbuds with some ambient music, very low volume, so it's kind of in the background. Popular studies also say that upbeat classical music, such as Vivaldi's Four Seasons, are the way to go, but um, but and I feel that for me, that's a very motivational, kind of energizing piece. And if I'm trying to just sort of settle my focus, I want something a little bit more steady, I think. And um my suggestions are try searching for a focus soundtrack or music for divergent thinking or binaural beats on on YouTube or Google. So binaural beats is spelled B-I-N-A-U-R-A-L, that is oral being hearing. Um, and and just try those out and see what works for you. Very low volume, so it's kind of in the background, just a bit of a almost like a little pulse in the background. That can be very calming and just drown out other noises. So um that's a little trick that I'm sharing with you. And we have to talk about the inner critic too, because that's something that comes up for many of us when we want to do something that might feel like it's frivolous, but you need to take time for yourself and play. So coming up with responses to say to your inner critic when it's voices in your head can be a very nice trick. So something like, Hey, you're not welcome here right now, is one that works well for me. So I have that inner voice, and I just kind of say, you know, I don't actually really need to hear that right now. And I'm doing this is kind of I make that statement, and that is me kind of speaking out against those voices that were sort of established in me long before I had the choice. Um, and remember, you can return to the prompts anytime too, and use them to inspire you to go out for walks and to rediscover your surroundings with new eyes and to explore your own voice of self-expression. Perhaps take a 15-minute walk, either observing and interacting with nature, using the nature as your guide, or zooming in and zooming out prompt. And when you're out in the world among other people, you might consider the prompts about interactions with others. So if you commute, for example, silent encounters might be a great way to make the time pass and shift the experience of commuting, perhaps for someone else too. And of course, explore the public art where you live, and maybe you'll feel inspired to create some of your own, or maybe you'll just learn something about your community that you didn't know. So now that you have linked creativity and walking and your camino, you can conjure up some of that camino spirit in you any day, anytime, anywhere you are. I wish you buen Camino wherever this finds you.