Muddy Care Testimonial 3

Niki’s testimonial

I’ve been a participant on the Muddy Care long term rehabilitation programme mini pilot study.

When you have a chronic health condition your life gets smaller, darker, more anxious. Getting out and about into nature can be challenging and it’s often hard to access, to maintain the motivation and the courage needed to do so. There are so many health benefits, mental, physical and spiritual of being outside and engaged with nature and the outdoors but even knowing that, there are many barriers against doing so.

Muddy Care cuts through these by providing the means, the motivation and the accountability needed. The trips out are important and greatly appreciated, as are the lessons on fieldcraft and education on health and wellbeing; but it’s the encouragement to self-exploration and maintaining a relationship with the outdoors that is very useful. Recognising the vast benefits that good gear makes is invaluable, as is the enjoyment you can gain from even low level species identification, the physical benefits of walking in nature, and the mental benefits of slowing down, immersion in ones surroundings.

Chronic conditions mean you need to develop a huge capacity for courage. But that courage is an internal one, it’s one that allows you the strength to get up each day, to find small positives, small gratitude’s, to move forever forward despite your body trying to drag you behind. But even with this courage you fall in on yourself, you become less physically brave as your mind and brain try to protect yourself. Learning to reach out, to use that courage for external, physical matters, within a supportive and safe system like Muddy Care is invaluable. Doing the activity multiple times means your resilience increases and you see and appreciate the development in that activity, the creation of good habits and confidence in your physical and emotional strength.

I had already begun to do more walking when I started Muddy Care, but being on the mini pilot study has really encouraged me to start to go further afield, into more complex and challenging walks and venues, to appreciate the natural environment far more. It’s also given me so much more confidence in my physical resilience and not to underestimate my capabilities and how best to improve them without over doing it. I appreciate the scheme so much and am enjoying it immensely. I can see it going from strength to strength as it provides a service that is almost entirely lacking in our society, and for a marginalised, forgotten and dismissed strata of the population - but one into whose clutches any single human can fall with no notice or apology.