Surfing Can Improve Your Mental Health

Surfing is not only a set of physical exercises or a technique “how to stand up on a surfboard”. This is largely a mental concept that can improve your mental health. The ocean is a healing space. So doctors recommend surf therapy because catching waves works like a medicine and help to deal with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. Surfing releases a cocktail of feel-good chemicals into your brain as adrenaline, endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin.

BALANCE
Creating a balance in life is one of the most important components of mental health and wellbeing. Many surfers can find some sort of spirituality in surfing because when you are riding a wave you can’t think about anything else than the sense of balance. So it helps to shift the focus away from obsessive thoughts. It’s about letting go of control inside your head.

PATIENCE
Patience is a big point in this case because surfers can spend a lot of time waiting for a wave. Sometimes there can be cloudy days with no waves and you have to learn to accept it. And thanks to surfing, you can learn patience and use it in everyday life. Learning to be more patient is a great way to help lower your stress level and improve your physical and mental health, too.

INTUITION
Surfing teaches you to be flexible in a gradually changing environment. For example, your next move, a drift of weight, or turn, or moment of waiting, immediately shapes how you see the wave’s next coming moment, and how you should then move next. It’s called a work of intuition and fine-tuned instincts that surfing can develop in you.

Waikiki Beach is the best place to learn how to surf in Hawaii.