When surf and yoga overlap … and just a few of the things I’ve learnt at Surf School Sri Lanka

Hello from Sri Lanka! Taking a month out from London winter, Drew and myself have set up home in Southern Sri Lanka for 4 weeks of surf and sun. Aaahhh. We’ve just finished 3 days of surfing with Surf School Sri Lanka in Kabalana Beach. It’s got me thinking about the beautiful overlap between surf and yoga. Beyond the obvious strength and mobility a regular yoga practice can give you, the underlying principles of truly being present, awareness of the body and a sense of softening in to movement can really change the experience on the board. This is something Dan and the team truly integrated into their brilliant coaching over our few days with them. Using breath control, calm mind and sense of focus to read the wave (and see, feel and immerse in the beauty in it!) … surfing is a yoga mind in action.

Just a few places where surf and yoga overlap here …

Body Awareness 

Any movement practice will help you develop a greater sense of body awareness. Proprioception, or sometimes called kinaesthesia, is your bodies ability to sense it’s own movement and position in space. It’s a sense that becomes stronger with practice and can fade with an increasingly sedentary life. You can see it in dancers, movers and athletes. An obviously profound sense of placement of the body in space. 

On a wave this felt sense of the body carefully balanced will allow the surfer to make the smallest adjustments in their position to move with and attune to the force beneath them. On the yoga mat this sense allows us to understand where the body is in a pose, adjusting the sense of effort or ease to allow the body to feel spacious.

Muscle Memory

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This is how I first found intrigue in the yoga practice. Working through the same set of poses each day allowed me to feel a sense of progression and inquiry that I hadn’t experienced in the odd drop-in class here and there. A map of familiar forms develops through time, facilitating the freedom for the self to focus on whats occurring presently, rather than focusing on what to do. 

In surfing this equates to not just time spent in the water but building a sense of familiarity in movement on land. Embedding the pop-up to muscle memory will allow the movement to happen unthinkingly in the water. This is something I’ve never put the time in until now. Throwing myself into the water and hoping to one day magically jump up with ease (… at the moment it’s a real slow motion step up) without putting the training in. Daily pop up training starts here!

Conserve your Energy

“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long”. Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching.

Here we apply the ideas of an effortless action. Found in Daoist philosophies this idea of finding the least resistance through life applies perfectly to both surf and yoga. It is also something that is built in to us through evolutionary pressure. Where efficiency of action was essential for survival.

In the water we paddle out with the current rather than smashing through the white wash. Strokes are consistent and rhythmic allowing for a fast glide into the wave without unnecessary energy consuming double paddles. Watching the wave as it changes behind you, you learn to observe when it’s dissipated and let it go, saving yourself for the next one.

In yoga this is found in our sense of balance in the pose. When we look at a pose in detail we see there are equal elements of effort and relaxation. When we stand in Virabhadrasana II the thighs engage as they rotate apart from one another, the hips gently sink with an effortless softening towards the earth, arms and hands are active whilst the shoulders melt down the back. This balance of effort and ease through our practice allows it to be become sustainable with strength gradually building over time.

Notice the Breath

Here’s the crucial one. The process of noticing your breath is such an important step for beginning a yoga practice. This breath sets the rhythm with which to move and provides an internal soundscape and focus point for the practice. Of course there are thousands of specific pranayama techniques we can use to stimulate nervous system response and build the strength of the lungs and diaphragm however the first and most important aspect is simply noticing our own breathing. Check in, have you noticed your own breath yet today?

At the point of paddling in to a wave the simple act of noticing the breath can help connect you to a sense of present awareness. When the stress response hits it’s common to hold or shorten our breath, effecting our ability to perform. 

Techniques found in present awareness meditation and yoga become invaluable here. Helping attune to presence and allowing that muscle memory training to kick in. 

During surf school we used video analysis to look back on what we were doing in the water and find key areas to improve on for the next days surf. Here we were encouraged to not just observe our own surfing, but to analyse each other’s videos as if they were our own. Such a good lesson for yoga teachers here: to observe each student uniquely. Knowing they each arrive to the practice with a different experience that has led them there, their own personal goals and reasons for practice as well as their own unique anatomical body types that will make some poses easy and others sometimes impossible. Watching someone else’s surf, just as observing another students practice as if it is yourself opens up the possibility of understanding an experience beyond your own perspective.

I’ve learnt so much not just about improving my own surfing technique but also skills to apply to my yoga teaching. These guys all shared their surfing knowledge with such care, respect and empathy - ensuring that everyone’s experience on the course was equally valid despite our different experience levels. Their observation skills were unbelievably precise, carefully watching a whole group, guiding us into waves and giving essential feedback and encouragement in the water. The passion and years of experience was obvious and it was an absolute joy to be taught by them. I can’t thank them enough and am so excited to put all that teaching into practice during our next couple of weeks here.

Anyone seeking intermediate surf coaching I can’t recommend this school enough. They run courses in both Sri Lanka and Lanzarote and you can start learning from their seriously thorough Insight Surf YouTube channel here.

Londoners heading out on a surf trip this summer? Get in touch to organise yoga for surf training with me to build the strength, mobility and, most crucially, that calm breath-focussed mindset to make the most out of your surfing.