8/18/25, 10:38 PM At the heart of surfing is the pursuit of moments so pure they clean you out | Aeon Essays

The secret
At the heart of surfing, whether you’re a kook or a
famous charger, is the pursuit of moments so pure
they clean you out

by M M Owen

M M Owen is a British nonfiction author. He obtained his PhD at the University of

British Columbia, and now lives in rural Portugal.

Edited by Pam Weintraub

Sports and games Meaning and the good life Subcultures

W hen my relationship of 17 years ended in divorce, I felt

alone in the world in a way so yawning I couldn’t sit still, it
was like living beneath a cold and blinding sun. I drank. I said
cruel things to myself. I craved but hated all the sympathy.

Finally, newly ensconced on the coast of Portugal, I picked up

a surfboard. The water was cold. My early attempts were so
pathetic I laughed out loud, imagining how I must have
looked from the sand. But I went back, and kept going back,
and now I will never stop.

Learning to catch waves has helped me rebuild myself, and

find a vein of dedication and strength that I deeply needed to
find. I’m not the only one. Surfing is marketed with saccharine
cliché: bronzed Californians gliding across a sepia sunset with
the Beach Boys in the background and a VW camper in the
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foreground. In reality, surfing has long been a haven for the

lost, the hurt, the seeking.

In his book Mindfulness and Surfing (2016), the former

European longboard champion Sam Bleakley writes that he
has ‘seen suffering men and women reborn and healed
through surfing.’ Surfers, he says, ‘often talk as if they have
found a secret in life.’

What’s the secret?

T he first time I ever caught an unbroken wave was one of the

greatest moments of my life. The memory is crystalline,
perfect: the glistening aquamarine curl extending away from
me, the massive sky above; my orange foam board under the
soles of my feet, and a feeling of sliding, slicing downward –
feet like knives in those precious impossible seconds before
the wave begins to break. The dismount was not elegant.
Astonished at what I had just seen, where I had just been, I
yelped and slapped the water. A couple of dog-walkers eyed
me from the shore. Many hours of spluttering, messy effort to
suddenly be so effortlessly, elegantly in tune with the shape of
a wave. All the surfing I do from here on out will partly be in
pursuit of this original sensation.

My ex-wife was a brilliant woman, decisive in a way I’m often

not. I’d seen her ruthlessly cut old friends out of her life, old
habits, old patterns. I never expected to be on the receiving
end but, all of a sudden, on a winter evening in a cocktail bar
in downtown Lisbon, there I was. What I thought was a crisis
meeting was in fact a farewell. She never came home again.
Nostalgia didn’t interest her; nor did sharing the hurt. I wrote
her a letter; she didn’t read it. I know that she believed this to

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be the best way; for her, and also for me. Cauterise the wound.
Tough love until the end. But it was horrible.

Surfing is a lot of bobbing on your board and staring out to

sea, trying to read the undulations. In these moments there is
calm and quiet, just wobbling patches of sun, sea birds taking
their time with who knows what. Then, a hump will start to
appear, and start to climb, and you’re in the right place for it,
or close – and all of you comes to life. Hunger and nerves.
Turn, paddle, look over your shoulder, your other shoulder.
Paddle more, maybe less, maybe suddenly paddle like your
life depends on it, like this is the last wave God will ever grant
you. Get your chin down, get the nose of your board into the
slope, feel the wave pick you up from behind, small sensation
of levitating. Then get your hands under you and sphinx your
way up to your feet. Don’t rush it, but don’t dally. Hesitate and
you’ll flub it. Fractions of seconds and fractional movements
determine whether it will be the wave of the day or you’ll wipe
out. Everything vanishes but the chase, the only thing you
want in life is a clean pop-up and the speed to set off down the
green water. Shake the salt out of your face, tack the wax with
your toes. Get lower. Turn. Eyes where you want to go.

This is what surfing gave me at first: presence. A way to not

wallow in my thoughts. A healthier way than drink, or
hookups, or doomscrolling. All the thoughts my ex had left
me to drown in, when she’d vanished – did she regret it?
Would she miss me, even for a passing second? – all these
acid ponderings would melt. Going to the water, chasing the
water, in the exhausted body hum after the water: blessed
quiet.

I asked Andrew Cotton, one of the world’s best big wave

surfers, about what surfing does for him. Though Andrew
rides waves 20 times the size of the waves I do, his answer
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matched my own: ‘It’s always been my escape,’ he said. ‘It

forces me to be completely present. It clears the head and
brings a kind of calm that’s hard to find anywhere else.’ At the
heart of surfing, whether you’re a kook like me or a famous
charger like Andrew, is this: the pursuit of moments so pure
they clean you out.

T he sciences have done their best to probe. Surfing is by

nature somewhat immune to study. It’s hard to put someone
in an fMRI machine while they’re riding a wave. It’s hard to
create good control groups; it’s hard to isolate surfing from
other positive effects (exercise is good for you, as is being in
cold water and sunshine). Nonetheless, ‘surf therapy’ has
been on the rise since the 1980s, and there’s been a steady
uptick in research into surfing’s benefits.

A 2020 systematic review of 29 studies found that, across a

variety of populations, surf therapy fosters resilience,
emotional regulation and social connection. Many studies
focus on particular sub-groups. For British combat veterans
with PTSD, surfing was found to provide ‘a fully embodied
feeling of release from suffering’, reducing symptoms of
anxiety and depression. Similar benefits have been seen
among Australian military veterans, where 10 sessions of
surfing led to significant reductions in PTSD symptoms, with
improvements maintained seven months post-programme,
even if the surfing stopped.

Studies show that surfing confers increased self-esteem and

emotional stability in youth, including for young adult cancer
survivors. One study found that surfing boosted ‘mindful
embodiment, which supports repair from the mind-body split
that can happen as a consequence of trauma [and] addiction’.
In a survey of Australian surfers, 99 per cent of respondents
reported improvements in mental health. The 2024 UK
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Surfing and Health survey found that frequent surfers

reported higher physical health and mental wellbeing, with
significant increases in positive engagement, revitalisation
and tranquility. A Hawaiian study found that participation in
an ocean surfing course significantly increased spirituality
among participants.

What’s behind all this? It’s hard to say for sure. But Wallace J
Nichols, author of the influential book Blue Mind (2014),
posits that surfing likely produces an addictive mix of
endorphins, dopamine and adrenaline that is tailor-made for
‘peak emotional experience’. Speaking to the journalist
Steven Kotler, the neuroscientist Andrew B Newberg said that
‘the intense focus surfing requires is so similar to the intense
focus of deep meditation or ecstatic prayer or ritual dance or
any number of so-called spiritual experiences that it’s a pretty
good bet that very similar things are going on in the brain.’

‘I was a sunburnt pagan now. I felt privy to mysteries,’ wrote

William Finnegan in Barbarian Days (2015), his memoir of
discovering and dedicating his life to surfing. While the
methodologies vary and there is much research still to do, it’s
clear: surfing is good for you. Whatever the mysteries that
surfers become privy to – they’re real.

Y ou always paddle out alone. Sometimes you’ll be with

friends, or people you know from the lineup. But when the
moment of action comes, or when a scary set looms up –
you’re on your own. On cold days, rough days, out there
earlier than the rest of the world, you can feel like the only
person on earth. When you’re learning, surfing can be grim,
confusing, humiliating. You’ve got to want it. It’s warmer in
the car. To progress, you have to find courage: you’ll never
progress if you don’t paddle into things that frighten you, and

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early on you have to discover that wiping out is scarier in your

mind than in reality.

Divorce had left me down on myself, drained by the horror

that the person who had known me best had found me so
easy to leave. Paddling out solo, refusing to be put off when I
got monstered by a heavy wave, sore as hell in my nearly 40-
year-old body – it made me confident, proud of my
determination. Surfing was hard and I refused to quit. Even
after a bad session, I felt stronger and braver. It was better
than all the talking, all the acid nostalgia. What no-one tells
you about life tragedies is that after about six months people
just stop asking, and suddenly you miss the sympathy. We had
said that one day we would be old and grey together; now, she
was asking me to stop WhatsApping her. It wasn’t meant to be
like this. My loop-the-loop brain remained certain there was
so much thinking to do, even though all the thinking had
already flayed me, robbed me of weeks of sleep. The water was
cold and unending and without opinions. It helped.

Matt Warshaw is a former professional surfer, and the pre-

eminent historian of surfing culture. I asked Matt about his
own history with surfing, and how it gets its hooks into you.
‘Surfing pretty much ate me up, ate my time and attention for
35 years,’ he said. ‘It took some doing to not lose myself for
good in it.’ I asked him if my impression from working
through the surfing literature was correct: that there seemed
to be a long and deep history of surfers going to the water to
heal. A tactful man, he didn’t pry about my own recent past.
But he confirmed: ‘The beach and the ocean have always been
fantastic places to retreat, to escape, to find calm,’ he told me.
‘Surfing as a healing, curative practice; yes, absolutely.’

Reverence and rebirth. They suffuse the history of surfing. I

am but a late arrival in a long, long line. In 1779, a baffled
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Lieutenant James King watched the Indigenous people of

Hawai‘i enter ‘the Swell of the Surf, & lay themselves flat upon
an oval piece of plan about their size and breadth … wait the
time of the greatest swell that Sets on Shore, & altogether
push forward with their Arms to keep on its top …’ He didn’t
know what he was seeing, but now we do: people hooked on
the feeling of catching waves. To these people, surfing (heʻe
nalu) was bound up with divine reverence. Boards would be
carved from local trees, with prayers offered and rituals
performed before they were taken out to the water. To this
day, Hawaii remains surfing’s spiritual home – the place
where people were hooked long before boards got lighter, cars
became commonplace, the wetsuit arrived, and surfing went
global.

From Captain Cook’s Voyages Round the World (1897). Courtesy the
British Library/Flickr

In the ancient oral tale of Hi‘iakaikapoliopele, the goddess of

medicine uses surfing to help resurrect a chieftain. Fast-
forward to my own godless era, and we find one of my

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favourite films: Point Break (1991). In this epic, hammy tribute

to surfing, the antihero, played by a brooding Patrick Swayze,
exits this life on a wave he’s been hunting for decades. It’s silly
– but it’s also dreadful and beautiful. Deep down, in a
whisper, every surfer thinks What a way to go out. Life and
death among the waves. It’s hard to imagine a similar plot
climax for a passionate golfer, or darts player.

S ummer has arrived, and here in Portugal that means the

beaches are packed. I am getting out as early as I can, setting
alarms for 6 am on a Saturday (the 19-year-old me would be
stunned). It’s beautiful to be out there early, with just a few
others. Share some hellos, some nods. The sun burns off the
clouds and lands diamond-bright on the water. Between sets, I
like to drop my wetsuit-slick body into the water, rest my chin
on the deck of the board, half-close my eyes, and listen to the
lap of the ocean rumble and echo through the bottom of the
board. Nothing to do. No phone. Try and be patient, no
paddling chasing vanished peaks. Keep the horizon in view.
Wait. In Psyche, the philosopher Aaron James writes
eloquently on how surfing ‘amounts to a kind of faith – faith
that the world will work in your favour, if you just do your
part, and keep doing the next right thing.’ Like pilgrims on a
long march, surfing is 90 per cent expectation. Then suddenly
on the horizon there’s a shape rising, and I’m in its path, and
it’s time to move.

I made mistakes in my marriage. I didn’t think they were fatal,

but that was probably the real mistake, the meta-mistake. You
make mistakes surfing, too. I recently dropped in too late and
too steep on a wave that was already closing out. It broke hard
into my right side, and I lacked the time or wherewithal to
jump down into or up over the exploding white water. Instead,
in the same instant, I was crunched and ragdolled toward the
shore, and the wave picked up and launched my 9’6” log of a

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longboard. I got my arms up in an instinctive nuclear bomb

crouch, and caught it on my triceps, where as I write I have
two bruises, so broad and grey-green that they’re hard not to
admire. If I’d been a bit later it would have been my nose, or
my teeth. I’ve seen surfers much braver than me, riding bigger
seas than me, with slipped discs, shattered feet, broken jaws.
Even on a glassy sunny day, the sea can always remind you: it
doesn’t care. It can hurt you.

A little while later, having shaken the adrenaline out of my

bones, I caught a beautiful one. Small but clean and green,
and I got into it early, watched a whole line of others glumly
pull out as they saw me coming down the line on my log. I
trimmed up and down a bit, experimented a little with
walking daintily toward the nose, salt water shaving and
leaping off the rails like tiny melting diamonds. I rode the
wave to the end, carved back out to face the horizon. A guy
with peroxide blond hair paddling out gave a little whoop, a
little shaka sign. He didn’t know it, but it made my session.
When surfing isn’t lonely, it can be wonderfully friendly. I’ve
never spoken to as many strangers as I have in the past two
years, out on the ocean.

Somewhere along the way – partly the surfing, partly time

being the healer they say it is – I’ve come to a shocking new
clarity: my ex was right. We were finished. We had lost one
another. I hadn’t been happy either; in fact, I had been
passive, hollow, faking it. But I would never have had the
strength to leave my best friend. After all that, I owed her a
strange sort of thanks. She was always braver than me. Clarity
is part of surfing too. There are no lies. You catch a wave or
you don’t.

Am I idealising surfing? Probably. Most kooks do. Any

seasoned surfer reading this may well be rolling their eyes.
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Surf culture has its roots in the punk movements, and surfers
were always seen as outsiders and agitators. To this day, the
surf scene is hardly one populated entirely by enlightened
Zen masters. YouTube is replete with punch-ups. Localism
reigns. There is a lot of gatekeeping. Surf communities tend to
be wry, dry, dismissive of the happy-clappy gentrifiers of
surfing.

Even if surfers aren’t very Zen most of the time, the same goes
for most adherents to anything. We humans tend to overlay
any pursuit with the usual selfishness, impatience, and mess
of flaws. The surf bros yelling in parking lots, guarding their
turf like it’s sacred? They’re part of it too. But, behind the
bluster, everyone with a board is chasing the same thing: a
channel to something purer, where the human experience
meets ocean and for a moment the noise drops away.

‘W hen suicide seemed a damn viable option,’ writes Steven

Kotler, in West of Jesus (2006), ‘surfing saved my life.’ I was
never suicidal – but I wasn’t good. Two years later, I’m well.
Bruised, maybe forever. But here to stay.

Heartbroken and newly alone in the world, could another

activity – padel, archery, woodworking – have helped me
come back to myself? I suspect not, at least not in the same
way. I’ve come to believe that it was the ocean that helped me:
the ocean, and the waves it makes as it sends its ripples to dry
land; and the things you can do, or try to do, during a wave’s
final seconds of blue-green.

The woman I lost adored the ocean, especially the freezing,

pounding Atlantic. Sometimes when I’m floating back out, the

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thought will cross my mind: she would have loved this. She
would have loved learning this, together.

But our wave broke. It was a long, glassy, beautiful peeling

right – but it broke. All waves do, in the end.

Now I’m on a new wave, with a woman who loves me in new

and brilliant ways, who I care for in new and careful ways. She
is fearless on a foamie. Our wave too has power, it builds and
climbs from the darker blue into the sunlit flats. I will ride it
for as long as I can.

Some of my purest, most blissful memories are holidays to

Cornwall as a child. Back then I already adored the sea,
adored letting it toss me, slap me, pound me with salt and
froth. One morning, my mother and I went bodyboarding at
dawn; I think it’s the purest happiness I have ever felt, or ever
will feel. The sea is like this: it’s there, it was always there, it
will always be there. It was there before you came, it will be
there when you’re gone. Its lessons are old, and they’re
available for everyone: young or old, rich or poor. The endless,
moaning sound of the sea – mordros, in Cornish – was here
before us, and will be here after us.

Whatever pain is sloshing around your skull – divorce, grief,

ageing, bankruptcy, melancholia – you are guaranteed to
forget it, to be bigger and purer than it, at least for a moment,
when you come down the face of a green wave. The ocean
doesn’t care. It will offer you what it has, and nothing else.
Give it the best of yourself, and it will give back, one way or
another.

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Shaun Tomson, former world surfing champion, has shared a

12-fold ‘surfer’s code’, part of which is a mantra for the ocean
and for life: I will always paddle back out.

I lost the love of my life. Paddling back out was wretched, a

near-drowning. I made it past the breakers.

I will always paddle back out.

aeon.co 11 August 2025

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