Surfing is Meditation

I was a late bloomer to surfing. I started surfing after college. I moved from Riverside, California down to San Diego and one of my best friends from college he had been a surfer from a long time ago when he lived up in San Francisco and just started getting out there with him, paying my dues, falling and all that. Before too long I was able to do it. Some of the things I love about surfing are the meditative aspects of it. There's a lot of downtime when you're waiting for the swells to come through so you just kind of get to sit there with your own thoughts for a little bit. It's a lot like meditation and then when the waves come through and you're able to catch one just you and nature once again seeing how that wave is going to form getting the right speed paddling and popping up and then traveling right down the line on that wave. Great experience to feel. Yoga helps my surfing in the element of patience and in that it's that being able to be there, be patient, waiting for the waves, observation, seeing what's going on around me, where the other surfers, what the swells look like, where's the point going to be for the waves that are breaking. Balance is a huge one. Being on that wave there's always a moving surface so the standing poses, balancing poses, things along those lines, inversions, knowing where your body is in space is invaluable as a surfer. It's kind of like a merging experience where you and the wave, the board, everything all works as one and I think surfing is unique in that aspect to deliver that kind of an experience.