Embodied Learning.
Psycho-Somatic Education for Trauma & Nervous System Resilience.
Lauren’s research on long distance walking and resilience became the foundation for her graduate work, her 2025 TEDx talk, “What Are You Willing to Walk 500 Miles For,” and the body of work behind This Walk Will Change You. Her writing and teaching ask a central question: what becomes possible when healing moves out of the mind alone and into the body, the family, the road, and the way we keep walking.
This Walk Will Change You
When Lauren Duke sets out to walk the Camino de Santiago with her family, she is searching for a connection that has always felt just beyond reach. Years of unspoken trauma have shaped the patterns between them-but as the miles unfold, she begins to wonder whether those patterns can change.
Across 500 miles of ancient pilgrimage routes, the family moves through changing landscapes, long days, and the quiet discipline of putting one foot in front of the other. Along the way, Duke begins to explore a deeper question: why does walking-especially over long distances-have such a powerful effect on the human mind and body?
Interweaving her family's experlence with research in neurosclence, psychology, physiology, and the history of pilgrimage, she traces how sustained movement regulates the nervous system, sharpens attention, and opens space for reflection. Over time, she comes to see that long-distance walking does more than provide clarity —It offers a form of narrative reorganization, allowing us to revisit old stories and respond to them differently. Through walking, we not only change our relationships with others but also with ourselves.
The Insight Is both simple and hard-won: we cannot change the people in our lives, but maybe we can change the patterns we carry into those relationships. The Camino becomes not Just a physical journey, but a lived experiment in how change actually happens-slowly, repetitively, and through the body.
At once personal and expansive, often humorous and deeply reflective, This Walk Will Change You offers a new understanding of why we walk-and what becomes possible when we go the distance.
Sh!thouse: A Memior
Sh!thouse, is not just my story. It's an archetypal tale outlining the level of dysfunction we're born into, learn from our caregivers, and the world we grew up in. The characters in this story, might be my own family, but I have a feeling you will relate to the messy + human qualities each of them possess.
I began this writing journey as an outlet for the old, hidden ghosts living in me, making me sick. I'd been having chronic panic attacks, was diagnosed with P.T.S.D., couldn't drive a car, and had a slew of other health problems. What was happening inside, needed a healthier outlet. So, I put it on the page, and didn't stop for seven years.
Writing my own story helped me physically, mentally and spiritually heal. It also helped me better understand myself and the people around me. This is Sh!thouse's call to action: to encourage people to examine their own lives. To be bold, in an effort to be better. Will you join the movement?
