James Byrne, Saint Michael's College, Vermont 05439, USA. Open Panel: Religion, Health, and Wellbeing (Proponent: Oviedo, L., et al.). Paper Title: Walking and Wellbeing: Towards a Holistic Hermeneutic of Body, Mind, and Soul. Keywords: Hermeneutics, Ricoeur, walking, health, spirituality, holistic, theology. As the guide for this panel suggests, a bridge between empirical/scientific research and traditional humanistic approaches to religion and wellbeing is urgently needed. This paper - using walking as its focus - applies Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic of suspicion and retrieval to bring together the scientifically established health benefits of walking with the religious and spiritual dimensions of experience. A significant challenge for a theological understanding of exercise and wellbeing is how to bring together the obvious health benefits of exercise with the religious spiritual (r/s) dimension of experience. Studies which attempt to show a direct correlation between religion and health are ambivalent (Faries, et al., 2024). For example, it is difficult to discern or separate the r/s dimension from other factors such as social or community benefits that could be gained by membership in any group. Using Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical circle (first naivety… hermeneutic of suspicion… hermeneutic of retrieval… second naivety), this paper suggests that by bringing a hermeneutic of suspicion and retrieval to bear on the separate categories of "medical/secular" (m/s) and "religious/spiritual" (r/s), a bridge can be developed between the scientific/empirical on the one hand and the more traditional theological/humanistic on the other. This results in what Ricoeur calls a "second-naivety" in our theological understanding of exercise (and walking in particular), as a holistic activity bringing together body, mind, and soul. Byrne CV:. STB (1983), STL Fundamental Theology (1985), Gregorian University, Rome. PhD. (1990) Trinity College, Dublin.