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I’m floating on my belly on the tranquil warm waters of Playa Iguanita in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, my surfboard bobbing gently up and down with the tide. The waves roll in as I shift my toes up and adjust my grip on the front of the board. Lifting from my forearms to push up, I turn my head slightly to monitor the crests behind me, hoping I’ll be able to catch a wave.
A surf amateur, I don’t want to mess up during my lesson with Lia Hermosa Diaz, a 20-year-old Costa Rican national champion and SurfX athlete. Diaz, already a star in Costa Rica, has been making an international name for herself. She recently placed in the top 10 in the World Longboard Championship in El Salvador. She’s something of a natural. Her parents were competitive surfers, just like her.
“I started surfing, well…since the moment I was born,” Diaz tells me, laughing and shifting the ties of her black bucket hat over her hoop earrings as a wave laps by. “I’m pretty sure my mom was swimming in the ocean the day before delivery. At four years old, I got my first surfboard and was catching tiny waves.”
Starting out in my mid 30s, I had no such expectations for surf prowess. (Or rather, I was sure I was going to be Very Bad.) But what I didn’t know was that there was a secret trick that would help me: I practiced yoga. As I learned the surf movements and mentality, I was relieved and surprised by how much they related to yoga poses and mindset practices I already knew by heart.
The surf steps go pretty much like this: lie on your board, push up into Cobra Pose, look back to check your wave, paddle hard, step one foot forward like Warrior 1, fix your feet into a wide parallel Squat, arms up, and, importantly, fix your gaze (or, drishti) on a single point along the horizon—this is the the direction you want your board to flow in. Just like in yoga, focus and presence is key. In surfing, it’s often when you’re scared or distracted that you wipe out—and those wipeouts can hurt.
Suddenly, a bigger wave is coming and Diaz pushes my board forward. “Up! Up!” she yells. I determinedly push myself to stand despite my fears—and I’m flying! I’m on top of the ocean, wind rushing past me, white water cresting and fizzing under me. I catch my wave and stay up all the way to the sand. I feel alive, present, empowered. I’m sandy, soaking wet, and most of all, here. In my body. On the board. In the water.
I think about a Thich Nhat Hanh phrase I often return to during times of stress or elation: “Breathing in, I know that I am here. Breathing out, I know that I am here.”
Surfing isn’t easy, by any means. “Surfing is an activity in which you have to be present all the time. You’re not able to not focus on anything else that’s going on, other than being there,” explains Diaz. She says it makes sense that a regular yoga or meditation practice helps lead you to that zone or flow state, and other pro and amateur surfers agree.
How Yoga Can Help You Learn to Surf
Diaz is an instructor with the SurfX program at the Four Seasons Resort Peninsula Papagayo, which sponsors local surf pros who are in need of funds to compete. The pros lead classes that intentionally combine yoga and meditation with surf lessons.
Classes taught by yoga instructors include ocean-inspired chakra sound healing with Jose Pablo Rodríguez and Mind Over Matter as well as Ninja Surf Flow by Luna Sosa. They endeavor to enhance balance, flexibility, mindfulness, and breathwork to help beginners, such as myself, connect with the waves.
In addition to core work, Diaz incorporates strengthening poses for the arms, shoulders, glutes, legs, as well as mobility training. Her focus targets smaller muscles, including the neck. “I try to do a lot of neck stretching and strengthening,” she says, “holding my neck up while laying flat to create more strength.”
Before my surf lesson, I took multiple yoga classes. At the end of one, Rodríguez sounded a gong and guided us to get back into our bodies. Sosa led us through an alternate nostril breathing practice, then instructed us to stand in Mountain Pose and twist with our arms outstretched, keeping them loose as they swung back and forth with abandon. I felt silly and giddy.
“This is important to learn,” said Sosa, her arms swinging wildly in the direction of the ocean, then back toward the cliffs. “You cannot control your arms, just like you cannot control your life.”
The Yoga-Surf Connection Is No Secret
The undeniable overlap between asana, or yoga poses, and waves isn’t unknown among most surfers. Pros such as Kelly Slater and Gerry Lopez have touted the benefits of yoga for years. As Bali-based yoga and surf instructor Geoff Brooks explains, surfing and yoga have always been connected for him, physically as well as mentally.
The poses support the physical fitness required to push up off the flat surface of the board, balance on the moving water, and hold strong in a wide squat, explains Brooks. And the awareness cultivated by the practice help him remain in tune with the rhythm of the ocean—a necessity.
“There’s an awareness in yoga, called samyama, where breath, focused and repeated mindfulness, and meditation are combined,” Brooks says, “The surfer obtains this in the same way the yogi does—through hard work, practice, and dedication.”
This takes the form of being so in the moment that you’re able to feel like time itself has slowed down, says Brooks. In turn, that “allows me to better observe the rhythm of the waves and feel the subtle shifts in the direction, size, and shape of the swell.”
“For the surfer, this could be as simple as gliding along the face of a smooth green wave, or being inside a curling wave, where every adjustment to trim, speed, balance and position can lead to exhilaration or disaster,” he explains.
Lasting Life Lessons From Surfing + Yoga
After surf bliss in Costa Rica, I returned to my usual studio yoga class in land-locked Philadelphia and paused as I lifted into Warrior 1. An older man next to me wore a blue, threadbare t-shirt printed with the phrase “Ride waves, rather than resist” in white scribble font.
I thought about his mantra, which isn’t unlike what I’ve heard yoga teachers say. I considered how things worked well when I was on the waves, flowing freely with them, versus the fierce resistance and control I tried to exert over challenges and difficulties in life immediately upon my return back home.
Ride rather than resist. I dipped back into Chaturanga and let out a long, slow breath. It was a reminder that I could use.
