What mental benefits can surfing bring?
Every morning I wake up before the sun has risen above the horizon, slip on my moccasins and head out into the world, foraging for surf stories to put on your breakfast table. Sometimes I find big, juicy, ripe ones like the professional surfer union inking a 10-year deal with their World Surf League in which North Korean levels of praise were heaped upon benevolent, all-knowing Santa Monica masters. Sometimes I find small, dry, underdeveloped ones like the completely unrelated to surfing meteorologist who drowned after delivering a rough water warning.
Sometimes the stories fill the belly with warmth and the heart with laughs. Sometimes they leave us all hungry, angry, grumpy.
Today’s, I hope, will give you such a sense of goodwill and hope that you will change your mean, mean ways. Oh not you but J.P. Currie for I have discovered another Scottish surfer and this one is the world’s only Surf Therapy PhD candidate. Please step inside Edinburgh Live and meet (soon to be) Dr. Jamie Marshall
Jamie Marshall’s course at Edinburgh Napier University is unique, he’s the only person in the world studying for a PhD in surf therapy.
He first started surfing aged 14 as a way of escaping a difficult time with bullying at secondary school.
He’s now exploring the physical and mental benefits that surfing can bring.
He said: “I fell in love with surfing the first time I tried it age 14 which was also a pretty difficult time for me at school due to bullying. Surfing provided a bit of an escape for me but I also identified as a surfer from that point on and that was something no one could take away from me.
“In some ways, this probably made my career path inevitable!”
“Scotland now has a history of excellence regarding surf therapy and I’m delighted to have played a part in the success that the Wave Project has had here in this country, working with vulnerable young people across Edinburgh and the Lothians.
“A key part of my PhD is to support the evaluation of surf therapy based upon the experiences of participants.”
I wonder if Dr. Marshall’s work will also eventually include vulnerable adult learners (buy the t-shirt here)?
And if you could get a PhD in one facet of surfing would it be surf therapy? I think I would choose to get mine in Content, Media and Studios.
It’s a growth market.
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Its a non elimination round
Print mag is where it’s at.
Dirk: “I have a scheme, my friends, and there will be swell condition difficulties we face today and so we may finish tomorrow. But today, today I have a scheme, that all men are equal. Equal in my scheme. The high and E-Lo. The rich and the poor-ish. Behold the illumination of Non-Elimination. It is good, yes?”
I believe the Health Department Grade was a D. Dirk thinks they are referring to him and E-Lo doesn’t have the heart to tell Dirk the truth.
More in the sense that if you were gonna go all the way with it, it was gonna hurt you as well as stoke you.
Again speaking solely for myself — surfing never struck me as just play.
Speaking solely for myself, surfing posed as Therapy at first, but soon taught me how to punch people, take too many drugs, injure myself quite badly, and degrade various women who deserved far better.
It actually required Therapy for me to survive the effects of surfing.
Very revealing
Are you on x?
Fuck it’s not that revealing.
I was hoping it was only rumor.
I’ll bet Longtom only did the drugs bit
I think it’s a cultural thing, correlation doesn’t equal causation. It’s probably also fair to say that the same culture bred a generation of chargers who don’t know how to pull back. Moderation is the key for all drugs but I don’t think that’s in your lexicon.
Ah Edinburgh.
Talk about highs and lows.
Crazy fantastic town.
Heartbreaking and exhilarating.
My wife and I drove up there once cause we heard they had good tattoos. I wanted a wedding band so I didn’t need to wear a ring.
Turns out I got a bagpipe band.
Perhaps they’ve been reading Inertia articles about improving their pop-ups.
Inertia articles improve squat.
Squatty-potty?
Hey guys, that futures clip is pretty shit hot. Nice work humanising the company. Would have been nice to see more of the process from fibreglass block to finished product, maybe Chas ordering a set and follow it until it gets dropped into his hands at the end, or Simpo stealing it just before Chas gets them. CNC machines are interesting to watch. Hopefully futures do bring their manufacturing back to the US. They should set up a small Aussie and Euro factory too and do local production. That would be all time. Who could grumble about that!
humanising = bro drinking a Coors
fuk, I’ve got to this whole thing too late! so many good comment ideas, and i’m ready for bed!
Well it was pretty cool that Simpo knew the name of the guy who pad prints the logos on his fins.. and where on the planet are you that you were going to bed 2 hours ago??
BeachGrit’s sample group
Proves surfing is the clear cause
Of mental Illness
Though it could be said
Surfing’s in fact a symptom
Of a greater need
Identify this
👆
id (?)
I identify as a lesbian
Does your wife know about this?
Loves it
({})
Noone can take that away from me.
..({})..You and Ashton already schedule a first session?
Ashton would rather call a She riff there-a-pissed off-is Chas for add vice.
My entire career has been but a quest for Pezman photo-caption levels of pith and pungency. “Emotional peaks and points of involvement.”
Emotional VALleys test a man’s patience on a pass/fail scale.
This website is one pop up ad from being unvisitable
Excuse me, Mr House, but I have a story I will shortly be pitching to your Adventure Journal.
Please don’t tell your colleagues I frequent places like this.
Ad venture?
Ha. Unintended!
As long as you shower a couple times before pitching, you should be fine.
I should add, we’ll be able to tell if you haven’t
I know I failed math and all, but this shit just doesn’t add up. How in the hell does someone formulate the game plan to learn surfing to escape bullying? Holy heck, the professional World Bully League even has a Qualifying Series just to hone one’s bully skills. Calling Dr. Marshall. Calling Dr. Marshall. Hello! McFly! Talk about running away from tormentors just to become one.
When testing, is the grumpy local the control group and the VAL the test group? Has Marshall considered the placebo effect?
SurfAds*, an undisclosed longboarder from Sydney** and I are working on a patch to be given to every person learning to surf in a pond. With a small molecular adjustment the subject will forever be repulsed by the thought of surfing in the ocean and, in a clockwork orangesque twist, will also be repelled from attractive girls and boys (depending on their orientation). The patch will be administered with the final good-luck pat-on-the-back before their first session and will be financed by the exorbitant pond surf pricing scheme known as “A Frame” but represented as a triangle or pyramid.
* unconfirmed
** unlikely
Edit: * confirmed !!
Shhh I told you, nothing public until it’s been peer reviewed.
You forgot to mention though, the patch will also make them want to write about their desire to not surf, using hamfisted historical and literary allegories.
and explode at the touch of salt water?
When the nicotine patch first hit the market, my friend’s dad had two patches on, lit a Marlboro Red and suffered a myocardial infarction. The ER left that part off the insurance form thank goodness.
I had one on, took it off and was just rolling it around in my fingers while driving.
Had to pull over and puke, dizzy, so so sick. Thought I was dying. Just made it home and lay on floor for hours.
Didn’t connect what it was till next day.
Well this should rapidly render the Surf Therapy field obsolete.
How do you square that eventuality of being obsolete with the philosophical pitfalls of the Non-Elimination Round?
Fuck! Can you imagine the amount of Therapy it will require for the WSL to convince their newly signed up professional athletes to abandon the Non Elimination Round.
“It’s OK, it happens in every other sport!”
“BUT surfing’s not like other sports!!”
“Well then think of it as an extra day off.”
“Oh. Oh. OK then.”
Imagine trying to write code for WSL CT Pro Surfer video game. Code Writer: “I can’t write code for a Non-Elimination. The computer alerts a syntax error and crashes.” Game Developer: “What’s the problem?” Code Writer: “I think it’s an Artificial Intelligence issue. It thinks a Non-Elimination Round is Superficial Intelligence.”
there’s a “peer” review for ya!
Currently working towards a PhD in Surf Website Editing. Commas and flawless spelling: Eliminating both and enhancing perceived je ne sais quoi to be successful. A case study of Beach Grit is the working title of my dissertation.
catchy!
We’re linguistic revolutionaries!
Overuse of exclamation marks at BeachGrit would be a good project.
I used to think so too. Then came along Sean Volland with a Masters Degree in Exclamation Marks.
!, or,: !!
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Don’t forget the *s. I got ensnared earlier.
Kookballs!!!
Why did the World Surf League flagship restaurant go out of business?
There were too many kooks in the kitchen.
Top of the class.