7 Soul Lessons from A Surfboard.
{Photo via Tumblr}
By Katherine Smith.
The anticipation of the ride entices you — stirs you from your sleep. Full and expectant with desire, the dawn calls you — every cell of your body vibrates in response.
You can already taste the salt water on your tongue. With butterflies in your stomach, your heart beats to the rhythm of your own drum and the pounding breaks on the shore. The air sits heavy with the promise of a brand new day.
In that moment you fall in love with life, every time.
Riding the wave isn’t enough. You have to become the wave — make love to and merge with the ocean, because only when you’re part of something bigger than yourself will you feel satisfied.
Surfing isn’t just about chasing waves and bumming around on the beach. It’s a metaphor, a philosophy, for life that will teach you everything you will ever need to know and grow you in the most powerful way.
“I’m finally free when it’s just the ocean and me.” ~ Jack Johnson
I’ve skied, scubaed, bungeed, posed (Yoga), prayed my way around the world, and played in its oceans, so it’s surprising that surfing has eluded me (so far).
I’ve been wondering what was it that kept surfers returning to their board.
This all started when I watched an awe-inspiring documentary on parkour. I was captivated by the philosophy behind running freely through the environment around you, and the notion that inner peace and happiness come from simple movement and playing with your environment.
As someone who gave up a secure life in London because it sucked (the very life out of my soul), and chose to cast off a predictable future to pursue my love of Yoga, I could not agree more.
Through my work and travels, I’ve come to observe the magic that happens when the body is united with breath. We feel real. Alert. Infinite. Alive. We are lost and found in a confluence of movement and mysticism, dissolved and drenched in a moment of our own profound presence.
We feel connected to something that is simply larger than life.
“You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.” ~ Rumi
It occurred to me that parkour, Yoga, surfing and skiing (and probably a multitude of other disciplines I haven’t thought to mention) have an awful lot in common.
It sparked a curiosity about our relationship to our passions, practices and pastimes, how they make us feel, what they teach us and how they shape our attitudes and perspectives of life.
I caught up with two avid surfer friends — Koji Kotaoka, an acupuncturist and doctor of Chinese Medicine, currently living in Costa Rica, and Dylan Beinke, a Yoga teacher from Adelaide, Australia, to get some insight into the heart and soul of stepping onto liquid.
This is what they told me.
1. Timing is everything.
While the whole universe is made up of waves, the ones made of water are the only ones you can ride. And even then, it’s fleeting, and you need skill and faith to even try.
It’s all about timing; being in the right place at the right time. Trying to put yourself in the right place at the right time takes experience, intelligence and an understanding of the tides and rips and wave sets that will help you decide where you’ll paddle out to.
But there’s never any guarantees what will happen. Everything is in a constant state of change.
When things are a Go, you’re in the sweet spot of the flow. You’re flying, and it’s completely effortless. Few moments in life feel that pure.
2. Trust your intuition, savor the moment.
When you’re up there on your board, you are literally defying the laws of Physics. You need to call upon every resource you’ve got, so you don’t get obliterated. No one out there is going to hold your hand.
So, you’ve got to go your own way, distance yourself from the crowd, keep your focus and tune into what your own gut tells you.
Decisive action is needed. Hesitation could cost you catching the swell or your life. When that wave comes calling, you have a choice — let it pass you by, or drop in. When you drop in, you can never know exactly what will happen because you’ve never done it before.
There’s no pre-planning, but you do it anyway to see what happens. You will never surf the same wave twice, so you have to savor the moment and take that chance, hold your nerve and rely on your body, board and survival instinct. Spontaneously, you somehow do what you need to do.
3. Face your fear.
Sometimes you’ll get it right. Sometimes you’ll get it wrong. Sometimes it will be all you can do to stop yourself being completely crushed, and trust that someone will drag you off the rocks. But there’s no place for fear. You have to face it and believe in what you’re capable of.
You have to jump off the cliff, before the cliff jumps on you. You learn that your state of mind directly influences the outcome. Hold on to doubt and you choke. You can’t let the fear of what could happen hold you back.
4. Commit.
The truth is, there are no more committed people on the planet than surfers. You’ve got to be prepared to fail and fall down a lot, and override the safety mechanism which tells you not to do something that might kill you.
You just have to have the courage to commit to your game — to relentlessly keep returning and trying time and time again.
You can’t prepare for every situation you’ll ever be faced with, but practice and experience help. Just dedicate yourself to the things you love, and together you’ll weather any storm.
“There is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shore, no matter how many times it is sent away.” ~ Sarah Kay
5. Surrender to, and respect, Mother Nature.
Surfing demands that you cultivate the closest connection and deepest respect for Mother Nature. Playing in the face of a force, one that is so life-giving and yet so fierce, will change your perspective on the interconnection and balance of all things.
After that, you understand that we alone cannot possibly hold all the power over what happens. So you learn to listen to what life has to reveal to you, and follow the path of least resistance in order to discover the path that was intended for you.
You don’t surf for your own glory, you surf because you’re caught up in a great act of nature. You learn that there’s no value in forcing. It’s the deepest surrender that gives you the sweetest sense of who you really are. Surfers hand themselves over to the ocean every time they step in the water.
6. Move beyond your mind.
You have to let your heart rule your heart. When body, mind, breath, movement and intuition bind you to a wall of water, and there is no difference between action and reaction, you’re in bliss. It’s that simple. Your thoughts are silenced by the intensity of it all. Nothing else exists.
You’re not thinking, only doing, and it’s mind-blowing and beautiful.
7. Find your edge, that’s where the transformation happens.
As a surfer, you’re living life on the edge. To surf, you have to find your edge, and ask yourself how far you are willing to go.
A wave begins far away, probably as a cloud or mountain mist, before it turns to precipitation and finally ends up as a collection of little drops that form a vast and predatory sea. When the wave is close to breaking point, it’s close to the end of its life cycle.
It is at the point of transformation, from the active solar Yang energy to the passive and feminine Yin energy. We all know than Yin and Yang work in harmony together, and one could not exist without the other. When the time is right, the Yang energy yields to the Yin, and life is renewed and reborn.
In terms of that wave, you’re right there on the very edge of transformation, riding re-birth and creation. It’s always this way when we’re on the edge: if it challenges us, it will change us.
“Every experience of love, bliss, belonging, inspiration and insight provides a stepping stone back to your true self.” ~ Deepak Chopra
It seems to me that all of these experiences — whether we’re running and jumping, bending our body into shapes, making music, or gliding on water — reveal something about our true nature. They bring us back to who we really are and strip away the everyday crap.
Somehow it’s a self-reflective process, a mirror, a tool, that takes us on a journey into the depths of our soul. Because we’re passionate about them, because we love them, we don’t give up. They give us something we can’t live without, and so we begin to see sides of ourselves we couldn’t before.
We see who we’re capable of becoming.
It seems to me that we’re instinctively drawn towards the things we love, that our passions are intrinsically connected to our true nature.
And it made me wonder what society would be like if we focused our attention on doing the things that motivate us most, rather than doing the things that will just pay the bills. Would we be a happier, more fulfilled, more conscious and connected culture?
Is there something out there that is intended for us, if we just listen? We all know what happens when we try to go against what makes our heart sing. It makes us sad. When we feed your soul, are we really saving ourselves?
When we test our mettle, aren’t we really challenging ourselves to discover what we’re really made of?
*****
Katherine is a global nomad, a free spirit, a wild warrior yogi on a quest for her own truth. She is part of a new generation of women who are wild, wise, authentic and free. She has chosen to dismiss what society has dictated and instead pursue her own destiny. She is a devoted student of yoga with a travel addiction, a yoga teacher, an Ayurvedic chef, a life coach, a self-confessed foodie and an adrenaline junkie, with a healthy thirst for margaritas and moving her body in rhythm with a banging bassline. Besides writing two cookbooks, she is also the co-pilot of ‘Rebel Yogis’ who specialize in running yoga retreats and adventures in inspiring locations worldwide, and ‘Satya Creative’ — a brand development agency. She writes at Wild’n’Whole, a blog dedicated to inspiring change in you, through yoga, nourishment and unchained, unapologetic flourishing fabulousness and fun, so you too can live a luscious, luminous life of plenty. You could contact Katherine via her website.
{Life Surfers}
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