And Surf Shall Set You Free

And Surf Shall Set You Free

Surfing is the best sport. This belief is as simple as it is true. For those who have already set out on the pilgrimage of surfing, to discover inner peace and contentment, having had calloused eyes opened to its delights, for these ones surfing is truth. Like spiritual wanderers on an endless life quest, surfers know that the din of angry waves, the cool spray of lonely dawn slapping at their face, the serene beauty of surfing, this is the way, the truth, and the life. A myriad reasons back surfers faith in the purity of their sport, although the framework of these beliefs rest on a few simple tenets. There are biological mechanisms that motivate surfer’s devotion. It is known that the health benefits of surfing are nearly without peer. It is noteworthy how surfing appeases many athletes need for a death teasing rush. Finally, these three tenets are baptized in the sublime artistic expression of the sport, allowing these individual qualities to emerge a unified whole, the best sport. To what can the ethereal glee that is a hallmark of surfing be attributed?

The human feelings of joy, happiness, and a general feeling of well being that accompany surfing, can be unceremoniously sequestered, stripped of their emotional context, and forced to be scrutinized at a biological level. What one discovers in so doing is that, joy is a hormone, happiness is a chemical, and inner peace is a peptide, or at least the workings of many of these substances on the mind. To avoid laboring under the weight of over a half century of detailed research on the chemistry of the brain, it can simply be stated that a chemical produced in our brains called endorphins cause, “feelings of well-being and pleasure” (Nevid 47). This biochemical fact is directly related to surfing. It has been demonstrated that these endorphins are the human body’s natural pain killer. A major contributor to the release of these chemicals by the pituitary gland within the brain is strenuous endurance exercises. Surfing is resoundingly guilty of this. Any surfer will confess to the agony of a long paddle after a good wave. The swim, or “scratch” back through the surf, to get outside where the waves are breaking, is often strenuous, prolonged, and endured like penance for the carnal joy of the ride. It is this very process though that triggers a rush of endorphins in the brain, creating a natural surfer high. The very idea of a high is apropos as endorphins bear a similar molecular structure to their cousin morphine. This alone is just one reason surfing is the best sport.

The health benefits that are derived from surfing cause many to be won over without a word, to this preeminent sport. The web site New-Fitness.com points out succinctly that, “experts have been saying that swimming is great for your health and simply one of the best exercises out there” (“Swimming For Your Heart”). Explaining why this is true, they continue, “swimming uses almost all the major muscle groups . . . develops muscle strength and endurance . . . is a great sport for people of all ages . . . does not put the strain on the connective tissues that running, aerobics and some weight-training regimens do” (“Swimming For Your Heart”). So swimming is clearly excellent for bodily training. Little explanation is necessary to see how this relates to surfing. To surf is to paddle, to kick, and to dive. To surf is to swim. A surfer fights against currents, and to often crowds, reaping in the process all the phenomenal health benefits of swimming. To be immersed into the sport of surfing is to be born again into a devotion to health and wellbeing, again marking surfing as the best sport.

There are some athletes who seek the darker side, the risk takers, the ones who define there existence by their sport. Many athletes are exclusively devoted to the rush. These extreme athletes yearn for the falling, jumping, sliding, the “X-Games” teasing death rush that sets them on edge, works out their inner daemons, and tempts fate. Surfing satiates this desire. To illustrate this point, most would agree that, although only experienced by a few, military combat, with young soldiers cursing, bleeding, praying, and dying, would be the pinnacle of intensity. Interestingly those exact circumstances took place on October 3^rd 1993, in the dusty hitherto nearly unknown African city of Mogadishu. On that day the Battle of the Black Sea began, and over a twenty-four hour period one out of two Americans fighting where casualties. It was the type of day that leaves one gasping for breath under the pressure of the moment. Yet, Specialist Shawn Nelson, an army Ranger who lived through the battle articulated that “it was hard to describe how he felt . . . it was like an epiphany” (Bowden 301). His thoughts continued:

There had been split second in his life when he’ felt death brush past . . . On this day he had lived with that feeling, with death breathing right in his face . . . The only thing he could compare it to was the feeling he found sometimes when he surfed, when he was inside the tube of a big wave, and everything around him was energy and motion, and he was being carried along by some terrific force, and all he could do was focus intently on holding his balance, riding it out. Surfers called it The Green Room. Combat was another door to that room. A state of complete mental and physical awareness. (Bowden 302)

Any other sport placed in that context would fail to make such a distinguished parallel. If mocking life is a criterion for the best sport, one is on the correct path with surfing. Only a few choose this path in surfing, but for surfing to be the best sport it must appeal to diverse crowds, not a provincial few.

These three fundamental qualities, the sublime joy of surfing, the supreme health benefits, and the power of the experience, would not be a united whole without the art of the sport, that gives surfing a unique synergy. As with any of the great artistic activities, the grace of ballet, the balance of figure skating, the color of a gymnast’s routine, surfing brings together the peak of human emotions, the love, the joy, peace, and synthesizes them into something new. Surfing is constantly a new creation that expresses these basic fundamentally human attributes in an instant of time, in explosive radiance by the masters, and soulful intent by those who have just began their sojourn. Each wave is a blank canvas to be colored by an artistic mind, thrashing water with wisps of turquoise. Others embrace the expressiveness of the wave itself, modeling themselves after the sea, as if it was an under-tracing for them to follow. There is no circumscribed process that marches to a set routine, rather, every day, week, month, and year, every wave is a new epoch, a new creation, making surfing one of the greatest of the artistic sports.

Surfing is the best sport. It brings the surfer a sublime joy, it causes them to radiate with good health, and can enrapture the trill seeker. These three fundamental tenets are unified by the artistic expression of the sport, bringing surfing to a near spiritual experience. Once someone is baptized into the sport by emersion in its beauty and power, once they have embarked on their pilgrimage to the inner peace and contentment of surfing, few turn away, simply because surfing is the best sport.