There’s one beautiful behavior of surfers in their waking moments of the day.
Feeling the direction of the breeze.
Soon after waking up, open your back door or front door. And, haul in a deep breath. A slug of air that fills every corner of your lungs. And close your eyes and feel the gentlest morning breeze on your face.
It might be that you can feel a gentle breeze nestling into the tiniest hairs on your face. Or that you can hardly feel anything, other than feeling asleep still. Or that there is a clear direction of wind.
But tune in to how the world is already working. Ask what way the wind is blowing. Look for a tree, if there is one around, and gaze at its branches and leaves. Is there a clue there?
For surfers, feeling the direction of the morning breeze is a first clue as to the day. It gives us a first signal of how smooth the ocean should be that morning. It starts to paint a fantasy of how the waves will be shaped.
For all of us, this first interaction with nature can be a beautiful trigger to positively wake our mind into the day ahead.
You’ll read about all kinds of gratitude practices and tricks to avoid grabbing your phone as soon as you wake up.
Instead, for just a moment, feel and understand nature, instead of feeling and understanding your phone, TV or coffee machine. Feel your mind and waking mood shift with all the fresh oxygen. You’ll probably find it perks you into a better place than the last chunterings of the subconscious mind of sleep that were still gently whirring a few minutes earlier.
Throw in some movement too. Gently bend your knees and feel your feet rooted into the ground. Tilt your hips gently forward and back and feel your back awaken. Straighten your shoulders and loosen your head gently and sling a reaching arm overhead to move that shoulder its fullest range. How do those triceps and rotator cuffs feel, as they awaken too 🙂
It was on one of my first surf trips in France, that I noticed surfers over breakfast watching the the tips of the leaves on a tree nearby. They debated the wind direction as they saw the leaves gently flap in a breeze. Mesmerized by the tiny shimmers of branches and leaves they were debating was it off-shore or cross-shore or cross-onshore?
For surfers, wind is the finishing school for swell traveling hundreds and thousands of miles across oceans and rearing into a wave as it crashes into land.
For all of us, a moment of understanding nature, daily, can shape our mood and curiosity as to the mighty universe that we’re lucky to be alive in for another day.
Per the quotation that closes a favorite surf forecasting book, the WetSand WaveCast Guide to Surf Forecasting (2003) by Nathan Todd Cool:
The goal of life is living in agreement with nature. – Zeno (335 BC – 264 BC)
