Adventure Mind X EDA - Richard Chapman

A Cornishman living deep undercover in Robin Hood country, Richard Chapman is the founder of Climbing Matters, a structured program of lived experience coaching and climbing for people living with trauma and severe mental illness. The program supports people to confront, immerse in and overcome the psychological and emotional barriers climbing presents, equipping them with new perspectives and mindsets which they can then take away and embrace in their daily lives.

This episode is part of a mini series with Adventure Mind - a collaboration of researchers, practitioners and organisations in the outdoor adventure space. Adventure Mind offers a grant, an annual conference and access to resources and evidence to support adventure practice.

Each episode shines a light on a current/ former speaker at the Adventure Mind Conference, their reasons for being involved and the benefits they have personally experienced from living life adventurously.

To find out more about Adventure Mind, visit:
Adventure Mind

To find out more about Climbing Matters visit:
Climbing Matters
Instagram: @climbingmatters
Twitter/X: @climbingmatters

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Instagram: @everydayadventurepod @resilienceatwork
Linkedin: @Nicki-bass
Website: www.resiliencework.co.uk
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Transcript

NICKI (00:03):

Hello and welcome to the Everyday Adventure Podcast. My name is Nicki Bass and I'm a business psychologist, army veteran, and everyday adventurer. I will be sharing my conversations with some truly incredible guests who are weaving adventure into their daily lives. And I really hope that these conversations inspire you to undertake your own everyday adventures too. So today I am really delighted to welcome Richard Chapman to the show as part of the Adventure Mind miniseries, which I've mentioned. This is one of the episodes in the series of six, which is designed to showcase the incredible array of speakers and contributors to the Adventure Mine community. We are leading up to the Adventure Mine Conference, which is going to happen at the end of November. So Richard is the founder of Climbing Matters, which is a structured programme of lift experience of coaching and climbing for people living with trauma and severe mental illness.

(01:04):

And I'm not going to say too much from my side because I'd much rather that you hear it from Richard himself. I was fortunate enough to hear Richard speak at the Last Adventure Mind Conference, and I can honestly say it was one of the most moving, compelling and inspiring talks I have ever heard, and I've heard a lot of adventure related and other speakers in my time. So it is such a privilege and a pleasure to have him here on the podcast for the next 15 minutes to share his story as well. So Richard, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for agreeing to join me. I was wondering, we are starting this series by asking everybody the same question really, which is how do you define adventure?

RICHARD (01:45):

Well, thank you very much for the invitation and thanks for those kind words as well, Nick. I really appreciate it. I think I've got a fairly clear understanding of what I think adventure entails, and there are, there's three elements to it. One is there has to be an element of the unknown. There has to be exploration of something you don't know about. With that. Then there has to be a level of uncertainty of outcome. You dunno quite how it's going to go. And then the third thing is there has to be a level of discomfort in the process of finding out those things. So those three things, the unknown, uncertainty and discomfort, those are fundamental principles within adventure. And I know they sound quite negative, but I think that's absolutely the point. It has to have that level of challenge and you have to have all three. You could have a bit of uncertainty and a bit of the unknown, but it's not uncomfortable. So it's kind of easy without one of those season. It's like a three-legged stool. It'll just fall over. It's not adventure.

(02:55):

The idea that it is about challenge and pressure and discomfort is quite well known, quite well discussed. I'm a big fan of, there's a psychologist called Susan David, she's a Harvard medical psychologist. She wrote a book called Emotional Agility and she has a lovely quote, which I always kind of come back to, which is discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. Now, I think that's a really lovely idea because if we believe our life is supposed to be full of just happiness and joy and peace and tranquillity and love, when we find that it's not that we are doing it wrong somehow, that it's some sort of failure on our behalf or it's someone else's fault that we're not having these things. And actually what Susan David and what all these ideas of adventure mean is life is messy and there are challenges and pressures and there are negative emotions and there is anger and fear and all those sorts of things, but actually being able to recognise them and respond to them appropriately is what allows you to live in a more sort of balanced life.

(04:00):

And so when we talk about uncertainty and unknown and discomfort with an adventure, we can recognise those and we can say, well, if it is unknown, you don't know, have some curiosity. Go and find out. And curiosity is a really important mindset. If it's really uncomfortable, well you're going to have to have a bit of commitment and sort of really take it on. If it's uncertain, you need some courage. And some of these things like courage and commitment and curiosity and stuff like that, those are the things that we need to reveal about ourselves, and that's what adventure can bring to the fore. And that's how you live in Susan David's words to live a meaningful life.

NICKI (04:39):

Gosh, what a wonderful quote that is. I was just thinking about as you were saying, this expectation that life is going to go along a certain happy uncomplicated path. And then when that messiness inevitably takes a hold that actually that is something that we should be fearful of or that we should be pushing away or that is somehow wrong as you said, that we failed because that's happened rather than because that's life. And that actually that in a way, practising that discomfort, being able to sit alongside that enables us to deal and to embrace those uncomfortable moments, even if embrace may not seem the right word in terms of it's got so that positive, I love this. But I think it's embracing in terms of that acceptance in terms of this is, as you said, this is adding meaning. This is adding a depth and a richness. And it may not be comfortable, it may be very difficult, but it's a way of seeing life, I guess, in its full colours in some way.

RICHARD (05:51):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there is a tendency to, as you say, try and downplay or avoid or squash the negative feelings and emotions and experiences we have in our lives. There's stress or it's grief or it's whatever it is because we shouldn't be having them. Well, actually you should, and it's not your fault, nobody else's fault. It's just life. It's just stuff that happens. And the more we practise or acknowledge at least acknowledge these things and recognise them, the more we can become better able at responding to them appropriately. And that's kind of a key.

NICKI (06:31):

Brilliant. So I'd love with that in mind for you to share a little bit more about your work, your very powerful work that you do, and also sort of how that connected you into Adventure Mind and the Adventure Mind community.

RICHARD (06:46):

Yeah, sure. So the course I started last year, it's called Climbing Matters as you said. And it is a structured programme five weeks at an indoor climbing centre where we invite people who live with severe mental illness or a mental challenge in their lives to a structured session where we discuss some of the challenges that climbing's going to present them. And we talk about things like fear and isolation and vulnerability and whatever else they might be feeling. And we talk about, well, what we can do about it fear, we talk about is it dangerous? Is climbing dangerous? And people think, well, of course it's you're going up really hide. And they do it. And of course they find out it's not dangerous at all. The danger and the fear is completely imagined. So if we know it's imaginary, well, we can just change our perspective and we can imagine something different.

(07:41):

So we talk about particular emotional challenge and then we experience it in real time in the climbing wall. And you'll be amazed to see the different ages and body shapes and mental challenges people arrive at the sessions with. We get everybody up the ball given the right level of support and the right environment. And we do work quite hard to make sure it's a comfortable environment for people. Everybody can find themselves up the wall and at the end of each session we have a bit of a decompression, we have a little bit of a reflection, we have a little bit of a habit, let's think about what happened and a little bit of transition point if you like. And then they come back the next week and we do it five weeks and of course, and then at the end of that five weeks, anyone who wants to is then invited to come out to the peak district where we live not far from where I live, to do a day of real climbing out with some local instructors on one of the gritstone edges.

(08:37):

And again, not everybody wants to, but those who do come along and experience an additional level of challenge because you've got to walk into the cliff and the rock is really hard and it hurts your hands and the holes aren't brightly coloured and you can't see where you all are and it's completely different kettle of fish, but with the same levels of support and challenge and kind of coaching people find themselves doing things that they're just think, what did I just do? So that's the course that we run. We've been running it since last year. I'm about to launch it for a slightly broad audience for people who might not have quite such severe mental health challenges. It's being done through what's called the Green Social Prescribing Programme here in Nottingham, which is a programme funded a little bit by central government, so DEFRA and the NHS England and organised through a thing called the Nottingham Community Voluntary Services, which is our NCVS, our local charity sector here, charitable body here.

(09:35):

They organise it. And there's lots of groups like myself doing this for people's mental and physical health. I think the NHS has recognised that caring for people and their health and their physical and their mental health, not everything can be solved for the tablet. And actually if you shift the focus from what's the matter with someone to what matters to someone, you completely change what a care pathway might look like. And that's where social prescribing and green social prescribing, which is the use of the outdoors, has been making huge amounts of process and our progress for people's health.

NICKI (10:12):

Gosh, yeah, I love that idea about what matters to someone. And like you said, that sort of shifting the focus away from what needs to be fixed in a way and shifting it back to actually what motivates you to find a different lens and your own different focus, potentially not wanting obviously to speak for any of your participants who I can imagine have gone through some very traumatic or difficult or challenging events in their lives.

RICHARD (10:50):

Yeah, it's a bit of a powerful movement within the NHS at the moment, this move to more personalised care. And actually the idea that treating a particular symptom or particular element of somebody's body and mind because it's all a little bit siloed or a little bit breaks it down into individual sections which don't talk to each other. Personalised care is about thinking about the person as a whole and saying, okay, well yes, you might have a mental health challenge, but actually what do you want to be able to do with your life? What really matters to you? The people coming to our sessions, we run them 10 till 12 in the morning because that's when the climbing wall is closed to the public. So it's a closed sessions ourselves. Simply getting up, getting dressed and getting across the city for 10 o'clock in the morning can be a massive challenge. And we acknowledge that right day one, they've come to somewhere they've never been before to meet someone they've never met before and do something they've never done before. That takes an enormous amount of courage for some people. And setting the level of adventure, if you're going to use the word to the level that it's appropriate to the people coming through the door, that's job one. I guess,

NICKI (12:04):

Like you said, the showing up. I think that's something that's so under acknowledge, particularly when we talk about accessibility to adventure, whatever that adventure might be. I did some volunteering the Wave project, and I always remember that on the first day, quite a few of the kids might not show up, and the reason they didn't show up wasn't because they didn't want to go surfing or because they were being difficult. It was that just the sheer overwhelm of the newness and like you said, the getting out of the front door and how do you get across that. So I can imagine that discomfort. It's interesting when we talk about discomfort in adventure because discomfort can often be in the very act of finding a way to show up less alone taking on the adventure itself.

RICHARD (12:50):

Oh, absolutely.

NICKI (12:51):

Yeah. So I was just wondering then obviously you've been part of the Adventure Mine community since its inception and since I know Belinda has been working with you or speaking with you about that, a lot of the work that you do. And yeah, I was just wondering what that community, what the principles of Adventure Mind, how they resonate with you?

RICHARD (13:13):

Well, I first spoke to Belinda, I think it was early 2023 when we suppose she'd seen what I was doing. And we talked about the idea of small adventures, big impact, which was the theme last year, and the idea that if you make the size of the adventure appropriate to the audience, you can actually have quite a big impact from doing something for what some people might think is easy, but fairly accessible. And I read a book and I thought that, again, I recognise some of the very powerful ideas in there around, I think she uses the sort of victim of convenience, I think is one of her kind ideas that we are kind of disconnected a little bit because of the way we live our lives, but disconnected to me means disconnected from our bodies and what it can do from ourselves and from our own inner strength.

(14:02):

And so actually, again, there was a clip went around recently of Alex Holt, the guy that soloed El Capitan talking about if you never experienced genuine fear, then your mind creates fears where they don't exist. And if you don't experience genuine discomfort, you'll find discomfort in things that you don't really need to be finding uncomfortable. So the sort of ideas within Adventure Revolution around how important the discomfort was became, well, that's what I think is happening. And there's some other work from a US psychiatrist called Bessel Van Der Kalk who talks about the use of things like yoga and all the rest of it in overcoming traumatic feelings in the brain and how that works because you have to put yourselves in those uncomfortable positions. You have to go and try singing in a choir or go climbing or do whatever it is. And so the idea that adventure has a benefit beyond just some, the kind of classic associations of middle class blokes like me going off rambling or Victorian explorers trying to dominate the Alps or whatever the kind of associations you have with exploration, adrenaline junkies, all those sorts of things, adventure at the right level has a really, really powerful role to play in uncovering some of our own inner strengths and our inner capabilities that at the moment with our lifestyles and the way the sort of things we value in today's society just kind of get overlooked.

NICKI (15:39):

I love the point you raised about the disconnect, like you said, the disconnect between our mind and our bodies, but also that fear, how that fear can manifest. As somebody who joined a choir last year and has literally never been so terrified and having been in lots of physical situations, which should technically be more terrifying, standing up in front of a room full of people and singing solo, that was immense. And so it's like you said, it's finding the ways in which we can push our own discomfort as well. Actually what might look like something immense to one person actually might be their sort of day-to-Day. What I do, I climb large mountains. That's fine. It might be a bit scary at times, but I'm relatively comfortable with that. Put me in front of room full of people. That's terrifying. So yeah.

RICHARD (16:30):

Yeah, Bob bad that I would never sing solo in front of a large group, and they wouldn't want that. They wouldn't

NICKI (16:35):

Want, no, I'm not sure they did want it, if I'm honest. But I dunno how I find myself there. Anyway, I have, but I'm just wondering with that in mind, and we're thinking about what that level of discomfort can look like differently for different people, if anyone's listening to this and they think, do you know what? I'd like to try something new, or I really resonate with this idea of either this disconnect or I've become too comfortable and I want to try challenging myself. I mean, what's the one piece of advice you would give?

RICHARD (17:11):

I think there's a couple of questions that I would just maybe start with asking yourself and then a sort of mindset which we can talk about. And I think one of the questions is, well explore why you want to connect with this inner challenge or this inner strength that you think you have. Just what do you think has led you to the point where you might be asking why to go on adventure? And then the second question would be, what do you expect it's going to be like from a expectation to reality? And just explore some of those questions a little bit because I think the most important piece of advice that I try and come back to is you need to be honest with yourself. Now, being honest with yourself is a very, very pure form of courage because it doesn't have any other witnesses.

(18:08):

You're not doing it for anybody else's benefit. You're not trying to win anything or show off or be it only when you're being honest with yourself and being honest with yourself about your level of discomfort that you can expect, that you think you can tolerate the level of challenge that you are happy to take on the level of uncertainty and unknown. You don't need to go and do something really, really crazy. You just need to look at what is your motivations for doing it, why you think this is important to you, what do you think it's going to be like? And be really honest with yourself because it's a really, really powerful place if you can be honest with yourself. As I said, it's the purest form of courage.

NICKI (18:47):

Absolutely. Love that. What a great place to end, Richard. If people want to know more about the work that you do, where can they find you?

RICHARD (18:54):

So I'm on Twitter, X and Instagram at Climbing Matters, and I've also got a website, which is climbing matters.co.uk.

NICKI (19:03):

Brilliant. So I'll pop all those links in the show notes as well so people can go out and find you and find out more about your work too. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been such a pleasure to chat to you, and I wish you all the best with climbing matters going forward. I can see so much potential with it too. So yeah,

RICHARD (19:17):

Thank you so much for the invitation. It's lovely to speak to you.

NICKI (19:20):

Take care. Bye bye.