The Difference Between a Retreat and a Pilgrimage
Retreats Prepare Us. Pilgrimages Transform Us.
There comes a moment on every spiritual path when we begin to understand that rest and transformation are not always the same thing.
Over the past few months, whilst travelling through sacred lands in France and the United States, this truth has settled into my body in ways I could never have understood through theory alone. Somewhere between the Mary Magdalene pilgrimage through France, snow-covered mountain roads in Colorado, ancient Pueblo ruins and the vast red earth of the American Southwest, I realised that retreats and pilgrimages, whilst both profoundly sacred, serve very different purposes upon the soul’s journey.
A retreat restores us.
A pilgrimage rearranges us.
And yet, looking back now, I can see how every retreat I have ever undertaken was quietly preparing me for pilgrimage long before I fully understood what pilgrimage truly meant.
The Child Who Retreated Into Nature
I have been drawn toward retreats and sacred immersions for most of my life, long before I had language for what I was truly seeking.
Even as a small child I would disappear into hidden corners of our garden, creating little sanctuaries amongst the trees and plants where I could sit quietly for hours. When I found the default world overwhelming, I instinctively retreated from it, seeking refuge in silence, nature and imagination. There was something in me that longed for spaces where the nervous system could soften enough for deeper truths to become audible again.
Whilst other children played loudly, I often found myself building tiny hermitages from branches and blankets, retreating into prayerful spaces where sunlight through leaves, birdsong and the rhythm of the wind became my first teachers.
Looking back now, I realise I was already learning how to step away from the intensity of the external world in order to reconnect with something quieter and more essential within myself.
As I grew older, what had once been instinctive became conscious.
By the age of seventeen I had already begun actively seeking retreat spaces, sensing that certain environments carried the capacity to restore something modern life slowly erodes. In adulthood I learned how to consciously retreat, not as a form of escapism, but as a sacred practice of returning to myself.
Retreats as Spiritual Preparation
Over the years these journeys carried me into many different traditions and landscapes.
I spent time on Buddhist retreats in South Africa and in the quiet countryside of the south of Holland, where long periods of silence and contemplation revealed just how restless and defended the human mind can be before it finally begins to surrender.
Yoga retreats and spiritual immersions followed across different parts of the world, each one slowly teaching me that healing is less about becoming someone new and more about remembering who we were before fear, performance and survival hardened around the heart.
India — Devotion Made Tangible
India opened something ancient within me that has never fully closed again.
There are places there where devotion hangs in the air so thickly that even the dust beneath your feet feels consecrated. The sounds of temple bells at dawn, prayers drifting across the Ganges, incense smoke curling through crowded streets and the profound intimacy between suffering and surrender all left indelible marks upon my spirit.
Bali Before the Wellness Boom
Then came Bali in 1999, long before the island became saturated with wellness culture and social media performances of spirituality.
At that time it still felt deeply raw, devotional and mysteriously alive. Ceremony was woven naturally into daily life, and spirituality was not something curated for consumption but something breathed quietly into the ordinary rhythm of existence.
The Opening of Indigenous Pathways
By the early 2000s, South American and Native American pathways also began opening themselves to me in unexpected and deeply humbling ways.
I was not seeking to collect traditions or identities, nor to become a spiritual tourist chasing exotic experiences. Rather, certain lands, practices and people seemed to appear precisely when my soul was ready to encounter another layer of itself.
Looking back now, I can see that all of these retreats were preparing me for something much larger than temporary healing or spiritual inspiration.
They were preparing my nervous system, my body and my heart for pilgrimage.
What Retreats Actually Do
Retreats teach us how to become present.
They strengthen the nervous system and cultivate awareness, devotion, discipline and discernment. Through meditation, yoga, prayer, silence, breathwork, sound healing and sacred community we slowly develop the capacity to remain conscious inside discomfort rather than immediately fleeing from it.
Retreats become spiritual training grounds where we learn how to listen more deeply, soften more honestly and meet ourselves with greater humility.
A retreat nourishes the soul.
A pilgrimage asks something more of us.
Pilgrimage Dismantles You
Pilgrimage is not a holiday, nor is it always beautiful in the ways we imagine beforehand.
Pilgrimage dismantles the familiar structures through which we maintain identity and control. It interrupts routine, strips away certainty and exposes the attachments we did not realise were quietly governing our lives.
You do not passively receive transformation on a pilgrimage.
You walk with it.
You wrestle with it.
You carry it through airports, deserts, ancient churches, mountain roads and sleepless nights.
You meet yourself repeatedly in unfamiliar terrain until the masks begin falling away.
Sometimes sacred lands seem capable of surfacing buried emotional, ancestral and historical material in ways that can feel both profound and overwhelming. The body remembers. The nervous system responds. Ancient sites often carry echoes that are difficult to explain until one experiences them directly.
Without preparation, grounding and consistent practice, these experiences can become destabilising.
This is why I have come to believe that retreats matter so deeply.
They prepare us to remain embodied when the pilgrimage truly begins.
The Mary Magdalene Pilgrimage
After the Mary Magdalene pilgrimage and Camino through France, I entered a deep season of Christ Consciousness integration that required far more silence than speech.
Something within me had shifted through those sacred landscapes of devotion, prayer, exile and remembrance, and I sensed that the journey was far from complete.
What surprised me completely was that the next chapter would unfold in America.
America Was Never the Plan
America had never truly been on my bucket list.
Somewhere along the way I had quietly let go of an old dream of driving Route 66 across the country, assuming it belonged to another version of myself.
And yet, through years of sacred site work, certain places had begun softly entering my awareness. Sedona. Mount Shasta. Ancient lands carrying a resonance I could not fully explain.
So when the opportunity unexpectedly arose, I listened.
I trusted God’s guidance and took the leap.
What I did not expect was how deeply this land would move me.
Somewhere Between Denver and the Rockies
After arriving in Denver, our luggage disappeared somewhere between continents. Six months of belongings simply gone.
Yet instead of panic, I found myself sitting in a park in the spring sunshine in borrowed clothes, aware of something extraordinary happening within my body.
For the first time in years, my nervous system fully relaxed in a public space.
There was no scanning, no subtle hyper-vigilance, no instinctive bracing against danger. Just sunlight upon my skin, soft grass beneath my feet and an unfamiliar sense of safety softening something ancient within me.
The long drive through middle America into the Rockies felt strangely cinematic, as though I had somehow stepped into an old Hollywood film stitched together from forgotten childhood memories.
Snow-covered mountains, winding roads, roadside diners and hot choc-chip cookies stirred memories of old cowboy movies I used to watch with my father as a little girl.
Then came Steamboat Springs.
A warm hearth.
Quiet mornings.
A log cabin tucked into the mountains.
Snow and pine and the quiet simplicity of rural life.
And somewhere between Colorado and the red earth of the Southwest, something in me began to remember itself.
The Moment I Realised
Later, amongst the ancient Pueblo lands and sacred sites of the American Southwest, another layer of pilgrimage began unfolding entirely.
I realised then that I had not come to America for a retreat.
I had entered a pilgrimage.
A retreat allows us to step away from life for a moment in order to reconnect with ourselves.
A pilgrimage asks us to walk directly into life with greater presence, devotion and responsibility than before.
A retreat may open the heart.
A pilgrimage asks the heart to remain open whilst crossing thresholds.
And perhaps this is why sacred journeys have existed throughout every ancient tradition on Earth.
Not to help us escape life,
but to remember how to fully inhabit it.
