We like the idea that if we complete a measured task, we will get a measured result. Parts of life operate like this. You can go to work and expect to get your weekly pay. You can get on the train and expect to end up at your destination. Nothing is for certain and that doesn’t have to be a horrible, terrifying thing. You could go into work and get a promotion. You could get on the train and have an interesting conversation with a stranger.

How we experience life is determined by how we are in our bodies.

If we are closed down we experience less. If we are open, we experience more. Yoga teaches us to build strength in our bodies so we can feel secure while at the same time being open. We have the balance of knowing ourselves, and being in the world. We can feel connected and a part of things without losing our grounding. We can stand on one foot with our eyes closed. We can perform complicated yoga positions for long periods of time without exhaustion. We can control our bodies with our minds so our spirit roam free. We don’t get sick and we have lots of energy. It all comes from practice.

When it comes to results, sure, yoga will make you strong and fit, and you will get a better body than any other form of exercise without injury. You will get this body if you learn how to pay attention to your habits on and off the mat. You will get this body and also a calm and clear state of mind if you focus on your breath instead of worrying about what you can’t control. Your life will reach heights you might not have imagined for yourself if you continue to put in the work on a regular basis and worry less about the outcome. Banishing worrying isn’t to diminish results, it is to move beyond our limited goals we set for ourselves. We are more capable then we give ourselves credit for. Why just stop at losing 10 pounds? Why not maintain a radiantly healthy body our whole lives.

[by Tara Stiles]

• Share everything , Play fair
• Put things back where you found them, Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Don’t hit people, and Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Be aware of wonder.

Fulghum makes the statement that if any one of us takes these concepts and extrapolate it into “sophisticated” adult terms … and apply it to family, life, work, or the world … that it will always hold true and clear and firm as a solid base for good moral living. I believe him, and it’s quite possible that this author and Unitarian clergyman has single-handedly provided surfers all over the world the true key to zen-like surfing! If you take the ideas he has written about, and apply it to the manner by which you surf, and the attitudes that we carry as we surf … well, wisdom also lies in the surf amidst the flowing waves of the ocean.

Share everything: We all know the image of the lone surfer ripping down Banzai Pipeline by him or herself. The isolated surfer carving long sweeping turns at a point break at sunset is also a common dream for the log riders. However, if you talk to almost every surfer, their most treasured surf sessions are peppered with a common element – good surf AND good friends. Surfing as a rule is all about sharing the good times with other people. Hooting and hollering, cheering each other on when waves are good and wipe outs are gnarly. Irrespective, it’s all about sharing the good times … you get some good waves, and you revel in the experience. And sometimes, even if you had it all the way, you let your friend HAVE the wave. It’s part of having fun … sharing, that is, and it’s only fair! Oh, just so we are all clear about this … ‘dropping in’ on another surfer falls under the “Don’t take things that aren’t yours” category!

Clean up your own mess: This particular gem would solve almost all of our environmental and ecological issues as a planet! Put things back where you found them AND clean up your own mess. A simple solution would be the 20 foot rule. Simply ensure that you take care of the area around you within 20 feet! You don’t have to go out of your way to clean up after everyone and everything … but as you walk around, to and from surfing, make sure you pick up the trash and garbage you see along the way! Take care of you, the environment, and the planet around you 20 feet at a time!

Don’t hit people: When you have a six foot spear being propelled by tons of water, hurtling down a spray of ocean water … it sometimes is an unfortunate reality that we surfers may occasionally collide with other ocean dwellers. It’s inevitable, it’s painful and it is something that we all have been a part of (as hurtler or hurtlee, either way, it hurts!) in the water. However, by not observing proper ocean rules and good etiquette, we could endanger other people and creatures in the water more than we need to! An inattentive surfer and a careless surfer can be equally dangerous out in the water, so don’t hit people inadvertently by not being aware of the rules and proper water manners! AND WHEN YOU DO get to the point where you hit someone or ALMOST hit someone, do the right thing and ensure that you say “sorry” no matter who was at fault. At the end, we all have to learn to take care of each other out there!

Live a balanced life: As participants on a lovely dance between board and water, balance is always weighted heavily in our minds. Balance. But there’s more to it, since surfing alone cannot fulfill us. We need play, work, love, life, and learning to round us off … always. Even when the waves are good, we need to know the balance as to when good is something we need or something we are blessed with. I know surfers in the Great Lakes area who WAIT months and months at a time for ONE wave to come, and they revel in it with such joy and pleasure when it comes. I also know of surfers who curse surf sessions in Hawaii when they do not catch all the waves they can at a surf break or if they don’t get perfect chest to head high waves all the time. Balance. (It also needs to be placed with ‘perspective’ eh?)

Be aware of wonder: Touch the water … feel the ocean. Be amazed at the beauty around you! After one particularly uneventful surf session, where I caught half a wave that debatably actually caught me, I was murmuring to myself how the session had been barely worth my time. At that point, a giant green turtle popped it’s head out of the water – as if on cue – and made me laugh in a startled surprise. He was reminding me to never take myself too seriously, and that beauty, especially in the ocean was not just in the waves. Sometimes, we all need a reminder … So Fulghum the wise clergy was right all along.

…

Sure, you often see beginner surfers out in the break being pushed into waves by surf school instructors, and they do catch waves with giant smiles on their faces … BUT the real work comes when you don’t have anyone pushing you into a breaking wave anymore and you have to work for each hard-earned wave. Once on your own, you have to earn each aching muscle with every paddle into a wave; building up stamina as you go. And if you are lucky enough, you may overhear the energizing cheer of “Paddle! Paddle! Paddle!” from somewhere nearby, a hopeful sound from some regulars at the line up, providing you with spiritual support and some tough love. It’s a call for more effort, more drive, and a whole lot of muscle!

To help you build those crucial paddle-centric muscles, iJustSurf.com has put together a quick set of 3 important exercises that will get you pumped and ready for hours of paddling readiness!

1. Push Ups: The grand-daddy of obvious exercises, this simple but effective workout builds chest muscles and shoulder strength that give you a great boost in paddling into waves. Since a majority of work when paddling happens in and around your shoulders, push ups are crucial for building a strong support system for your paddling guns! Push-up exercise, if performed correctly, increases upper body strength and brings about more abdominal and hip stability, a definite plus in surfing!
2. Chair Dips: This is an excellent overall exercise to do for building core surfing muscles. Simple and easy, dips force you to lift your own body-weight, which in turn stresses your upper-body, which builds muscle. Much of the “power” that drives you into a wave is from the balanced and strong strokes supported by your triceps. By strengthening these muscles as well as your core, dips ensure a longer and more steady stroke rhythm for those surf sessions!
3. Vinyasa Flow: That’s right, it’s a yoga sequence of moves that focuses on strengthening your core surf muscles, taking the form of smooth and flowing breath-synchronized movements! Starting with plank pose (similar to the static push up pose and then lowering your body), then cobra pose, you work your way into downward dog, and then repeat the sequence from plank pose.  You will see your paddling as well as surf “pop-up” become smoother and faster, and become more graceful in no time!

Remember to take your time with these exercises, ensuring that you are easing yourself into the routine; working your way into a steadily increasing set of repetitions! Surfing muscles are quite different from other muscles, often requiring you to use sets of muscle groups you have never used in conjunction before!

…

Irrespective of where you are in the world, what culture you are from, what color, status, background, we are universally driven by our human needs. It can be broken down to 6 areas of human needs. They may be subconscious needs, but they automatically drive us in what we do and how we do those things.

Of these 6 needs, you can view them into two broad categories. One group is the Primal Need and the other Spiritual Need – there are 4 human needs in the Primal needs group. These are the needs you would seek to fulfill as a base and drives every one of us. The fulfillment of the spiritual needs gives rise to more sustainable joy versus momentary pleasure associated with just fulfilling the primal needs.

• First need is the need of Certainty. Everyone wants stability about their basic necessities like food, shelter and other material resources. When people cannot control their physical circumstances, they seek certainty through a state of mind such as religious faith or positive affirmations.
• Second need is the need for Variety. People have a need to change their state to exercise their body and emotions. They seek variety through different ways like change of environment, physical activity, mood change, change of people they interact with, entertainment and others. The need for variety sometimes runs into conflict with the need for certainty.
• The 3rd need is the need for Significance. Everyone needs to feel special and important in some way. People seek significance through recognition from others or from themselves. Some people meet this need in a paradoxical way. Some people when they feel insignificant or helpless will go out to get others to recognize how significant their problems are and how helpless they are. This ironically raises their significance, just by getting people to acknowledge the enormity of their problem and their helplessness.
• The 4th need is the need for Love and Connection. We all need to feel connected with someone or something be it a person, an ideal, a sense of identity. Connection may take the form of love or just engagement. One can still be connected by means of an aggressive interaction.
• The 5th need is the need for Growth … a spiritual need. Everything in the universe is either growing or dying. Many are not satisfied spiritually unless our capacities are expanding.
• The 6th need is the need for Contribution. Just as we survive through the contribution of others (our parents for example), we seek to be spiritually fulfilled through contribution.

There are many ways that people find to meet these needs whether they are positive, negative or neutral ways. We unconsciously act to fulfill our needs and some actions may fulfill a subset of these needs or all of them.

When we have a behavior that fulfills at least 3 of these needs, these actions are considered strongly addictive or sometimes known as habits as they fulfill more than half of your needs. Again, these actions can sometimes be positive, negative or neutral to ourselves.

Not quite.

Surf Yoga is a growing phenomenon amongst surfers with an interest in yoga, and yoga practitioners with a taste for the extreme.

These two disciplines go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

First – the chocolate; As 9-time World Surfing Champion Kelly Slater has proved again and again, yoga is an invaluable part of any surfer’s fitness training routine. Surfers yoga takes an age old system of stretching, poses, and meditation in a new direction; targeting the motions that surfers use to balance, with a focus on strengthening the muscle groups that are used for the “take off, ” the “pop up,” and turning maneuvers like “cut backs,” “hitting the lip” and “tube-riding.”

The mental discipline and physical benefits, combined with a heightened consciousness of body, mind and spirit, have been a key part of Kelly’s success, and many other competitive surfers.

For those who have already been practicing yoga – the peanut butter to our chocolate – surfing is a new and exciting way to get a full body workout, and embodies some of the same philosophies that yoga does; oneness and harmony with natural surroundings with an emphasis on awareness through practice and personal betterment.

That’s right! Surfing is for everyone, regardless of age, sex, race, demographic, or any other qualifiers you can attach to the sport. The truth is: surfing is a deeply personal pursuit, and not everyone gets into it for the same reason. But one thing does remain consistent for just about anyone who has been at it for a while, a deep emotional connection with the ocean, and a respect for her power, which is both awesome and humbling. With surfing, the rewards are huge; your first wave, your deepest tube ride, your longest ride.

In yoga, the rewards are also huge; physical fitness and mental focus which benefits you in every aspect of your daily life. Chocolate and peanut butter.

[By Kelcey Parker]

BE PATIENT (oh so very patient!)

It takes a long time to learn to surf … and even longer to master it. Surfing is flat out hard and one should not expect to be ripping waves on their first day out. If you want a basic feeling about learning to surf, it is basically an exercise in patience. If you think you’ll be successful overnight, you will be sorely disappointed. Oh, and know that you will fall – a lot – while learning to surf … but the more you do it the better you will get, because the learning comes from the falling.

THINK FAST, BE ADAPTABLE

In the vast ocean, no two waves are exactly alike … ever. Every way breaks differently and when you’re riding a wave you always need to be making split second decisions. You can’t predict how a wave will break so be ready to make decisions and adapt on the fly.

LEARN WHERE TO “BE”

In the sport of surfing, you are relying on so many elements to come together just to make a “surfable” wave. It may seem like luck at times, but good surfers know it is all about reading the ocean waves and then placing yourself just before where it will break into a powerful wave. It is not pure luck … it takes a lot of skill (and patience) to be positioned correctly to catch that good wave. Although lots of waves will come your way, it is up to you to READ the oncoming lines and be positioned as well as ready to ride.

CHOOSE WISELY

Being in the right position to catch a wave is one thing. Catching the right wave is another thing. As a surfer, you learn to read the shape of the waves as they’re coming in. If you pick the wrong wave it may close out on you and there will be no where to go except right over the falls. Do not just paddle for every wave … this is a recipe for quick exhaustion and possibly a punch in the face from other surfers. Learn to CHOOSE the good waves to ride. Learn to recognize and pick the right waves that you can ride successfully. Get on the wrong wave and you will get pounded by a force more powerful than you!

BE THE WAVE, WANT THE WAVE!

There are a lot of surfers out in the water, and they all want that same GOOD wave as you! If you don’t get focused with the first four surfing essentials mentioned above, there are a hundred other surfers in the lineup who will paddle right around you and happily catch the waves. Don’t be overly greedy or aggressive out in the line up … but remember that to get the wave, you also have to put it all together and WANT that wave … it will not always come to you.

…

It is a fun sport … which accounts for all those people lugging their waxed-up sticks to the ocean on a regular basis. There is no doubt that it is fun! The booming water sport attracts hundreds upon hundreds of new people to the ocean on a daily basis, luring them with the promise of the next greatest sport to try. And people come in droves, happily donning surf gear and paddling out into the clear blue … after all, like you said, “how hard could it be?”.

This is Step 1 in Learning to Surf: thorough research! How hard surfing will be for any beginner depends on how thorough your research is about surfing, and how much research you do regarding equipment suited for you and your surf breaks. Before you even get in the water … before you even wax your first board … it is important that you understand some of the surfing basics.

Surfing basics are easier to discover for beginner surfers with the help of knowledgeable surfers, namely from a reputable surf school or a non-retail oriented surf shop. After you have exhausted resources from the internet and on-line articles about surfing, and especially after you have frustrated friends who surf with a million-and-one questions … the surf school instructor or surf shop expert is the next line of information. Their information will be especially useful since they have the inside track on local breaks and local surfers … something internet research may not provide for you!

By being open to what surf instructors and surf shop experts have to reveal to you, what type of gear you may eventually get, and the types of breaks you begin to surf may vary. In any event, being an open person and listening to the people who know the surf community will lead you to a rich research experience and get you on your way to the next step in learning to surf!

As a final word to starting your research, do not buy into surf fads and jump on the surf industry’s commercial assault of the surf community. You do not need the biggest, baddest, newest, or greatest. You just need an open mind, a caring heart, and a sense of adventure and fun!

…

Some practitioners of both sports may tell you that yoga and surfing often go hand in hand … both activities benefiting from the physical and mental enhancements as a result of the other. There are the obvious physical benefits of practicing yoga as a surfer, namely the improved balance and flexibility, plus the addition of core and physical strength. In this aspect, some yoga instructors/surfers like Peggy Hall have produced DVDs that target the surf-yoga market, touting the benefits of the practice especially for pro surfers such as Rochelle Ballard and Taylor Knox.

What often is underplayed are the mental benefits of yoga for people, and in this case for surfers. Especially for beginners, the often intense physical sequences bring about an increased sense of focus and awareness to the human form and body. The intense concentration on what your body is doing, and how it is reacting, often has the immediate effect of bringing calmness to the mind, and to the breath. As surfers, being aware of your breath and being aware of how you breathe allows the natural rhythm and flow of the body to rise to the surface. A more rhythmic body focuses your surfing on the core skills – balance and internal rhythm.

So what does yoga do for your surfing?

Practicing yoga gives you an increased awareness of your own body. In yoga, you are often called upon to make small, subtle movements to improve your alignment. Over time, this will increase your level of comfort in your own body. This can lead to improved posture and greater self-confidence. Translated to surfing, this means better balance on your surfboard, a more rhythmic approach to paddling and moving on the board, as well as an increased awareness of your connection to the water, the waves, and your board.

Where to begin with yoga and surfing?

As always, you have to start slow and allow your body to adapt to the use of muscles in a new or different way. Much like learning to surf, you have to ensure that your body can adapt to the new physical activity in a smooth manner. Group classes in your community is a great way to start, allowing you to learn yoga and be guided by more advanced practitioners of the sport. Although there are a number of types of yoga available, the most common yoga practiced by surfers are based in the Ashtanga style or the Bikrams method. There are also a number of DVDs available that can get you started in the right direction.

Whatever you choose and in whatever style, just start slow, start now, and get going!