How Surfing Changed My Life Pt. 2: After One Year In the Waves

It’s been a full year since I started surfing and wrote this essay. After surfing for the last year, I would like to update some of the things I have learned from this amazing “sport.” To me it has not been a sport at all but a quest - a rich journey into myself as a part of nature.

The ancient Greeks actually developed competitive sport as a way of expression through the body. From their understanding, you were to participate in the sport to discover the soul. The highest potential or quality of expression, through challenges and all. This resonates with my experience of surfing.

I never planned on becoming a surfer. As I said in my first essay, it kind of just happened to me. One of those things that life beautifully places in your path at the perfect timing. I think if we are sincerely asking for life to reveal its deeper dimensions to us, it will come. Unattached to how this may reveal itself, we open up to the possibilities of something so surprisingly deep.

The depth doesn’t necessarily come from the activity itself, but the way in which we approach it. On the surface, surfing isn’t a self-discovery discipline. I could easily be going out to the lineup with a competitive mindset, needing to progress faster and be better than every other surfer out there. I could also go out there as a fun and enjoyable exercise.

However, I choose to go out there to be fully with my process, whatever that may be. I admit that sometimes my process is competitive, but understanding how that process is created gives me an awareness I can bring into daily life. It may show me where I’m being unnecessarily competitive in my life based on an outdated pattern.

The structure of my personality reveals itself in the fast-changing environment of the ocean. With awareness, I have an opportunity to change patterns, the habits of my past, into a creative and innovative expression. I have found this to become a deep practice for me. It has given me a deep sense of safety within myself and an access to my future, which I believe are the two things that create wholeness.

I have learned many things in the past year of riding waves and they have, in my opinion, helped me to enrich my life.“Ocean therapy” my partner calls it.

Given my approach, everything I experience in the ocean is information. Information for me to see how my mind is working, where my mind and body are disconnected, and to discover things in myself that I was absent to before.

As you could imagine, this is an eternal well because each moment is new and therefore revealing something. It is harder to recognize this in our day-to-day, but in the ocean it becomes quite apparent. No wave is the same. The set timing, wave position, wind speed and direction are constantly in flux. Such a great place to practice how to adapt to what becomes a little more subtle on land.

The process of learning something new has been incredibly invigorating for me. I have taken a lot of time and effort to learn how to surf, but also to work through the reflections I have found in my surf sessions. The following is the distillation of what I have learned from the ocean in the last year.

1. You Can’t Catch a Wave by Thinking.

It’s impossible.Trust me, I’ve tried. Many times.

I’ve come up with what I thought were the best strategies to catch a wave. All within the 10 seconds between seeing the peak of an oncoming wave and my position in the water. But it’s all fear. My mind strategizes in the moments where action is needed because I am scared. The energy rises from my body to my mind and I am no longer in contact with the embodied impulse that knows what to do.

Surf without your mind. The body knows it better.

This is relatable to the ways in which I live my life. If I’m asking what’s next or strategizing about the solution to my problem, I’m already disconnected from the current moment process. So, when I can stay sensing my experience I will naturally know what to do next. The insight will come in the perfect timing for the action.

Put simply, if something is unclear in my life, I can’t think my way into clarity. I must tune back into the energy of the experience.

2. Refinement Happens Naturally When You Slow Down.

Speaking of the body knowing what to do. Repetition creates mastery.

If I’m slow enough to be with the process of learning, the refinement happens on its own. Again, I don’t have to think about how I can improve or what step comes next.

This takes humility because it means I can’t rush my learning process. I can’t try to skip steps so I can be there faster. And I not only have to be willing to fail but also to do so in front of others. Slowing down allows me to become aware of how I can improve. The development comes as a revelation.

If I’m in a rush, I’m missing a lot of information that will help me on my path to growth. There’s a lot more time than I think, when I’m present.

What’s the rush anyway?

3. Don’t Sacrifice Becoming for Belonging.

Until I started surfing, I didn’t know how big of a thing it was. There are a LOT of people that surf.

You are likely to find yourself with at least a few others out there in the lineup (i.e. where the wave is breaking). I was lucky enough to have been shown a few off the map spots that don’t draw too heavy of a crowd and a lot of the time I’m surfing alone.

However, I’ve noticed that when there is a crowd the energy becomes quite tense in the water. I feel this tension as a need to belong. When I feel the need to belong to a group I start to feel like I need to prove myself. Pressure creeps in, I end up freezing and not being able to access my authenticity.

There can be so much machismo out there. You know, the cold hearted, muscle flexing, “stay out of my way” vibe. When I started, I felt the strong need to prove myself to the local surfers and “earn” my place in the lineup.

Overtime, I realized this was limiting me in my own progression because I was so focused on the external. I was enrolling in the subtle competition. I wanted to belong.

Finding belonging creates safety or a strong foundation. While I think it is a necessary part of creating harmony in our lives, it should not be at the cost of our future. When we enroll in patterns that are not supportive of our evolutionary impulse- in this case it would be affirming the arrogant and competitive surfer- we are stuck in them.

What I learned was that I confirmed a lot of nonsense just in order to belong or be accepted by a group. Even if I didn’t support or believe in it. Taking this lesson into my daily life has helped me develop a sense of belonging in myself when entering a group space.

4. How to Down-regulate My Nervous System.

In other words, how to create safety or belonging in myself.

The ocean is intense. Sometimes it has no mercy on its patrons. When the waves are pumping there’s a level of excitement and adrenaline, but it also comes with fear.

There’s something about being in the ocean that shifts the psychology. Being so intelligent and adaptive, we sometimes think we have a grasp on or control over life. Going into the ocean strips this illusion away immediately. You’re no longer in a territory that you control and that’s scary.

The body knows this and starts to react in fight, flight, or freeze mode. So, a major part of surfing is gaining control over the neurobiological fear response. Basically, staying calm when the experience becomes overwhelming.

There are moments in my daily life where my experience becomes overwhelming and I can numb myself to that overwhelm. In the ocean, that’s not possible. I have to keep moving.

I have found the ocean to be a good training ground to understand the process of the fear response and how to nurture the body back to balance.

This has helped me tremendously in areas of my life where my fear response is triggered, but I am in no danger at all.

5. My Pulse and the Pulse of Life are Connected.

There is this inside-outside relationship between me and life. Life reflects me and I reflect life.

The ocean has shown me this mirror-like quality and how it's a journey of finding the pulse, the rhythm, in which we can dance together. I can’t be too focused on the external and I can’t be too focused on the internal. The balance of the two actually makes it one, where the internal world and the external world meet.

If I can get out of my own way there is a natural flow that I can ride endlessly. And it’s effortless.

6. Joy is My Natural State.

I have learned how to be with the joy that is ever present. To really hold it and allow myself to be happy. This has come with an awe and wonder for life. A curiosity.

I can’t help but smile after catching a wave. The ocean’s energy floods into my nervous system and I experience the euphoria of having been in the flow of life for a few eternal seconds. This is the simplicity of life. That we can experience something that feels so good without having to give anything other than our full participation.

I can find this same joy in the simplest moments of my life. They are simple because I am fully relaxed and surrendered to what is happening.

I have no idea where this journey into surfing will take me, but that seems like the point of it in the first place. A step into the unknown. Therefore, a newfound depth and richness to life.