Riding the tiger

'It feels like riding on a tiger!' 

So said my five year old, when he stood up and caught his first wave many years ago. It was one of his most natural outbursts. Pure elation. 

At that stage, I had never surfed, and his descriptions seemed so vivid and pure: 

‘It feels like being in a tree, and getting blown all around.’

‘It feels like the (window) blind, when you let go and it flies up, really fast.’

‘It feels like riding on a bird.’

‘It feels like you’re running away from a car going really fast.’

Now we are a surfing family, with some of our best times together spent waiting for and chasing waves. 

'Mum, you dropped in on me!' my daughter admonishes me some days. As if she hasn't caught a thousand more waves than me in her life. My son takes wave after wave, as I paddle onto another face, only to be brushed off by a 12 year old. 

I am a late starter, a post-forty mum in a steamer. A few Christmases ago, the kids and bloke got me a sealed, long sleeve, long leg wetsuit. Some days I come out of the water and my bathers are still half dry underneath! It's a revelation.

But the greater revelation is the sense of happiness mixed with calm and exhilaration that comes with floating on my fibreglass 7'4" Bobsled and scanning the horizon for swell. Some days it's grey, and the sky looms heavy above us. Rain falls with slow drops, but those days, the waves are clean and uncrowded, and the four of us surf til we are too tired to push ourselves up on the boards, then run for the carpark as the storm breaks.

Other days, we might fight for space at a popular point break, watching hipsters and old dudes catch multiple waves on their longboards in the warm NSW coastal water. Or we go further afield while camping, and surf our biggest waves ever, finishing off with wipe-outs, a campfire and a sausage.

Initiatives in the UK have explored the benefits of surfing for those suffering depression or low self esteem, with programs focussing on disadvantaged kids. While the data cannot claim direct effect, the researchers talk of the feelings of 'stoke', that feeling of physical and spiritual life-force which recharges us. New York scientist Zenven Wu, in an interview with Tim Baker, links stoke to the negative ions which are formed through the interaction between water and oxygen, such as occurs when waves are breaking. Negative ions are said to help elevate mood and produce increased seratonin levels.

Closer to home, One Wave is a ‘non-profit surf community tackling funks like depression, anxiety and bipolar.’ Their belief is that all it takes to give you hope, is to have that ‘feeling of being on a wave, letting everything go and enjoying the moment.’

What I know is that the sound of water slapping at the base of my board, is now music to me. That being on the water brings a calm sense of contemplation mixed with fierce purpose. I’m not too fussed about getting the most waves possible-though my children are-I am just so happy to be paddling, bobbing, striving and sometimes flying. 

One Buddhist surfer speaks of the ‘Zen of Surfing’, how the experience of riding the waves, and dealing with chaos, can help people manage the emotional challenges of life and death, or samsara. This is how I have felt recently, as I navigated the grief of my father’s death. As the horrendous hand of grief would come to strangle my throat, and the fingers grab at my intestines, my mind would hold fast to the mantra ‘little waves, little waves’, a call to calm that we have used with the kids over the years. It’s like breathing, the inevitable cycle of in and out, of the coming and the going, the push and the pull, the force and the froth and the subsequent calm-we can make sense in these moments when we breathe through the turmoil and take off, like riding on the back of a bird...

An evolution:

Softboard mania 1, pic Charlie Sublet

Softboard mania 2, pic Charlie Sublet 

My McTavish Bobsled, Point Lonsdale

First fibreglass boards, Ocean Grove
Dec, 2013

Winter surf with booties! Point Lonsdale

Was published (edited version) by Fairfax Media, in Juice Daily, 20th May, 2016, no longer online.

Now running on The Inertia as Surfing Feels Like...

Also see The Religion of Surfing

The Wave Project–Now running 5 years, proving to be fantastic treatment for anxiety, depression and for developing resilience.

Why do we Surf? article by Ben Lacy


(c) Anna Sublet, 2016