Week 3 Mini Pilot Study
Written and created by Muddy Care participant N
Week three of the Muddy Care Pilot was surfing again. Here we could build on our progress of last week and start to think about goal setting.
It was lovely to reconnect with everyone and it’s amazing how rapidly we have become a cohesive and caring group. One thing became obvious, most of us had overdone it last week, either physically, emotionally, or both. However, given our appreciation of the “Alignment strategy” we had all looked at ways of making this a positive and in what ways we could adapt and adjust to make this have less of an impact. Personally this week I came out of the water sooner than I might have done, ending on a positive note and not pushing myself as much as I had last week. I’ll then be able to judge from my reaction during the week and adapting as I go on. Everyone was making similar adjustments.
Surfability again were brilliant, caring and instilling maximum confidence. This week they had the extra large surfboards out which allowed a Muddy Carian and an Instructor to surf together. We mostly stayed with the instructor we had last week and built on our gains and consolidated our progress. I’d manage to stand last week and this week I was still more confident and progressed to starting to steer the board and improving my balance and “form”. The waves were as big as last weeks and again often coming in doubles. There was less wind and more sun and the water was still almost balmy! I continue to be amazed at how warm one feels in a good wet suit and vest! There was also a veritable army of golden retrievers out!
Before surfing we continued our discussion about the interconnectedness of nature and how we can use this to consider how everything depends on everything else in nature and how imbalance in one area causes imbalance in others. We then considered how to work with anxiety and how to make adaptions and strategies to make a positive outcome more likely. To be creative and seeking rather than giving up when things seem hard. This is far easier in a positive, supported and understanding group environment but this helps us to make this a habitual way of thinking and thus segue it into everyday life. When you have a chronic condition you do become less physically, mentally and emotionally brave and your world becomes smaller and it’s harder to initiate action.
We discussed the sea and allied it to how knowledge of the environment we were working in helped to reduce anxiety itself as things made more sense to us. And again how interconnectedness matters.
The sea worked its healing magic on all of us. I think we all felt a real sense of accomplishment, achievement and success today. We also felt much joy and exhilaration- feeling alive! Even when we had a few complications and not so perfect moments the focus was very much on providing future solutions to these issues. We are really building on our achievements now and looking at goal setting and how that can encourage and sustain progress. And most of all, we had FUN!