When breakers turn into waves that heal and soothe!
Teaching surfing for over 20 years has led me to observe the individual in the aquatic element less and less as a sum of psychomotor skills, but rather as a sensitive being, with strengths and weaknesses, whose behavior in contact with the ocean will be conditioned by the intimate experiences he or she has undergone in the course of his or her existence. This goes beyond the individual to encompass the group, since the culture in which the individual was born will also determine his or her approach to the ocean element.
The ocean, revealing traumas
The liquid element can be perceived as threatening through the sight of waves, the evocation of disquieting depths from which to lose one’s footing, or even through the immersion of the face in water. The many fantastic creatures that have populated the seas throughout history bear witness to this uneasy relationship with the ocean depths, and to the existence of a collective unconscious.
Some men’s distrust of the ocean is often rooted in an intimate or family trauma: a child was rolled over in a big wave as he was discovering the ocean, so-and-so thought he was drowning in a swimming pool, and another has inherited his parents’ fear, passed on through the constant expression of tetanizing stress in the face of the ocean.
It may therefore seem astonishing that an individual who is averse to swimming or the ocean would sign up for surfing lessons. From this, we can observe several motivations and types of behavior:
The desire to exorcise fears
An attentive instructor will enable his pupil to control and then overcome his apprehension, because he will put him in safe conditions to practice: the pupil will be led to go beyond his limits gradually, at his own pace.
If he’s comfortable in 10 cm of water, the instructor won’t encourage him to go any further; this will happen naturally as the ocean experience replaces stress with a sense of pleasure.
The moss will be his first playground, leaving the waves to break offshore. With his feet in the sand and constantly drawn towards the shore, the budding surfer learns to detach himself from his fear and observe a natural element which, as it becomes comprehensible, loses its mysterious and threatening character.
With this kind, progressive approach, adapted to each individual’s pace, we see amazing results: students transform their irrational limits into objective ones, learning to surf in conditions that suit their physical and technical level. In this way, students become able to tell the difference between a gentle ocean on days with small swells, and a rough ocean to be wary of. The tyranny of fear dissolves into an infinite number of oceanic variations that convey sensations of calm, fullness, pleasure and escape.
Self-denial
Some students take surfing lessons to keep up with their friends, with no real desire to overcome their apprehension, no motivation. The educator’s soothing words go unheeded, as fear of the element is brandished like a shield against which reason rebounds.
To communicate, the student exclusively uses the negative form: “I don’t feel like it”, “I’m not happy about it”, “I didn’t want to come”, and the challenge is to make him gradually slip into “I’ll try”, “I understand”, “I trust you”.
For others, the motivation was there, but it fades away in the face of an unconscious that paralyzes them. Fear of the element, lack of self-confidence and distrust of new situations are the source of blockages and irrational behavior.
Some characters still won’t admit to feeling fear. But to overcome fear, you have to accept it, and then move beyond it. Certain clues then reveal what the student had not verbalized, and body language doesn’t lie: the face is closed, tense, the student can’t hear the instructor’s advice, he’s a victim of the tunnel effect, all his attention is focused on the object of his fear, such as the waves.
Surprisingly, we often observe disconcerting behavior on the part of students who have been instructed to stay close to the shore in the small mosses and who, as if bewitched, progress out to sea to encounter the breakers which are the object of their stress and which, by shaking them, only reinforce their repulsion for the waves.
This can be seen as an unconscious desire to validate an aversion rather than try to overcome it. The tunnel effect may also explain this type of automaton behavior, which perceives nothing outside the feared object.
In addition, certain characters who are particularly resistant to the student-teacher pact ignore the educator’s instructions and break every stage of the learning process by confronting the element, at the risk of injury. They don’t understand the ocean, they’re stressed, and yet they’re going to put themselves in situations that abuse both their bodies and their egos. Because if the educator’s benevolent advice isn’t accepted, the ocean always has the last word.
To overcome fear, one must accept one’s weaknesses. The work on oneself cannot begin if the individual apprehends the external environment as an enemy object to be confronted, and the transmitter of knowledge as an obstacle erected in the midst of chaos. Unfortunately, the student who has not put down his ego for the time it takes to learn, will find a thousand excuses to abandon the practice: he’s too sore, he hurt himself stepping on a pebble in the middle of a sandy beach, the surfboard is too bad, or maybe it’s the waves, and so on.
One student will lack confidence, while another will be over-confident, and the educator will have to adapt to opposing attitudes, between the one who tries nothing for fear of failure, and the one who fails by wanting to burn out every step of the learning process.
The good educator doesn’t see his pupils as supermen or sub-gifted; he sees only men in a learning situation, in all the diversity of the human race.
The fullness of the surfer
The ocean has countless virtues, for the terrifying ocean is in fact the ocean that calms and soothes. Ocean users have signed a pact with nature, surrendering to the rhythm of the elements, letting go, putting aside certain habits to live for the moment.
The ocean is an ego-busting machine, as everyone finds their limits when the element goes from being an oily sea in summer to a winter storm that devours the coastline.
But surfing discipline has its benefits as well as its perverse effects: it reveals character.
The adrenalin, the search for pleasure and the variability of the ocean environment are great fuel for surpassing yourself, improving your endurance, tenacity, stress management, reflexes, efficiency in the moment, adaptability, patience, humility and tolerance.
Alas, this is also the breeding ground for feelings such as the negation of the other, that competitor on the wave, rugged individualism, and a disproportionate ego once a certain degree of autonomy is reached. The dark side of the force, say Star Wars or Taoism fans! But this type of drift is generally found more on the side of the experienced surfer.
To sum up, surfing is not intended to replace psychoanalysis, but rather, using the natural environment as a playground, to place the apprentice surfer on the path to bliss. This reenchantment with the liquid element and the quest for hedonism is the basis of the teaching approach adopted by the Ki Surf School on the beaches of the southern Landes region.
