As Kalia and I have been connecting with folk who are curious about walking with us in April, one question keeps coming up: why would I walk a pilgrimage? Here’s some insight into how we think about that.

And if you’d like to catch up on editions 1, 2, and 3 of Seinoza Walks, just click on through.

These stones? I wanted to scream at them. Each one, slick with drizzle and still sharp-edged in spite of the millions of pilgrims that had gone before me, threatened to break an ankle or rupture a ligament as I battled my way up the path they described. Magose was the first big pass we’d encountered on the Iseji and I was determined to boss it. I was determined to show the world I was the fucking boss. 

So up I scrambled, lungs heaving, legs aching, sweat pouring as I ground out a begrudging konnichiwa to the happy, smiling septugenarians making their way down past me. But there, struggling up this hill, Kalia many steps behind me, it occurred that there was no one there to see me. No one to validate my efforts. No one to congratulate me for fighting a war that I was fighting only against myself. Whimpering, I stopped dead.

A few days earlier, we’d not long finished lunch in Kii Nagashima. Over a hamburger setto, Kalia watched me crumble as ABBA’s Waterloo brought back a flood of complicated childhood memories. As we left town, our conversation turned to how one might try and explain these sorts of serendipitous events. Because being an engineer, Kalia loves an explanation.

I talked about my experiences of psychedelic therapy, and how a web of stars caught me as the medicine offered me the chance to face my fears. I delighted in how my cat’s little sniffs about my face as he welcomes me home transport me back to that place of universal safety. And Kalia’s eyes rolled so hard they almost fell over backwards. Surely there’s a rational explanation for all of this, they wondered aloud, positing some plausible-sounding but entirely cold-hearted theories.

Then, bubbling up from my gut, through my heart and into my mouth, a question: what space is there in your life for magic?

Friends, you could have heard Kalia’s brain scramble like breakfast eggs as a set of long-held beliefs were blown to smithereens before their very eyes.

The next morning, we settled into a little pavilion overlooking the sea. Warm canned coffee in hand and cool breeze breaking the sun’s heat on my face, a muscle in the back of my neck let go. That tension that comes with looking at the world relaxed into allowing myself to just let it in. And over my shoulder, Kalia’s heavy sobs sighed over the sound of the waves and the fishing boats below.

This is what happens when you stop fighting an uphill battle with yourself. When you walk alongside someone long enough that your armour breaks. When you receive the world as it is, rather than grasping it tight as you try in vain to control it. We walk a pilgrimage because it does something that sitting still cannot. It breaks you open, sure, but being held in connection makes it safe, and the movement helps you metabolise what pours out.

If you’d like to walk too, consider joining us on our April 2026 Ise-ji Pilgrimage.

Applications close December 31.

Details at www.seinoza.com