Can Surfing Promote Better Mental Health?

When you think about relaxation, you almost always think about the beach. So, you can only imagine the benefits of being on the water and riding through the waves to your mind and body. Here’s why surfing can help promote better mental health.

Surfing helps heal the mind and body

Surfing has been prescribed by doctors for many years to patients who are recovering from trauma, anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. This is because being one with nature, in this case riding the waves, has been proven to help release negative thoughts, irritability, anxiety, and other depressive symptoms.

Surfing helps you relax

Keeping up with the demands of life can get quite overwhelming that sometimes, all you need is a break away from the hustle and bustle. Being on the water gives you a sense of calm and relaxation that it makes you forget about daily life even just for a while. This Zen effect allows you to recharge and restores your balance, so you can take on future stresses more effectively without affecting your mental health as much.

Surfing wakes up your mind and body

When you’re doing the same things over and over again, you sometimes find yourself being in that routine and not feeling so many emotions anymore. But when you go surfing, all of your senses need to work together for you to get up on that board and ride those waves.

This awakens your adrenaline rush and makes you fully alert, which can be beneficial to your mental health. By getting things back into perspective, you get to make better decisions to deal with stresses and solve problems.

Finally, surfing is still one of the best ways to just go out there and be one with nature. Riding those waves is such a life-changing experience and the road to getting there is also an experience in itself.

Learning how to surf is a learning process and just like life, you will fall down many times before you can stand up on the board and be good at surfing.