Two traditions, both very old and each with roots near other oceans, are blending at the Jersey Shore.
It took a little while to even notice. There would be a few more guys in a local yoga class that had been almost all women, and maybe a couple of them were wearing board shorts. More telling, they would be talking about waves before class began, sometimes in detail.
Surfing, meet yoga.
Yoga began millennia ago in ancient India. It has been practiced for an immensely long time. Literally, civilizations have risen and fallen since the practice of combining spiritual practice and body postures began. What is called hatha yoga, the kind most familiar in the United States, is only a few hundred years old.
Like surfing, until pretty recently yoga had a distinctly counterculture feel to it, as if it were restricted to those who loved sandalwood and talked a lot about auras. And, also like surfing, it has gone distinctly mainstream, with yoga mats and other gear now available at Walmart and classes offered in most towns.
Part of that yoga boom, either as a cause or an effect, has been the shedding of some of the spiritual elements, or at least the specifically Hindu trappings. For better or worse, a large percentage of American yoga practitioners see it as a fitness regimen, not a path to enlightenment. But that’s a whole other topic.
A while ago, one of the hardcore, out-almost-every-day longboarders was telling me about yoga. For one thing, he could no longer just assume that his body would continue to do everything he wanted without a little maintenance. Besides, he said, much of what he saw in yoga classes reflected what he was doing on the board. A lot of the time, out on the break, a surfer is looking over his shoulder, seeing what’s coming in.
Yoga typically involves a lot of twisting and a good deal of work on balance, an obvious benefit for someone trying to stand up on a moving board.
Endurance training is a big part of it as well, according to Cailin Callahan.
Callahan leads a yoga class on the beach at 41st Street in Ocean City three days a week, starting at 7 a.m. She has been surfing her whole life, getting started as a little kid because her dad surfed. When she was living in Costa Rica, she also had a beachfront yoga class. You could call her a wahine yogini, but maybe we’d better not.
She sees yoga and surfing as a good match.
“There’s no exercise that you can do for your body that will prepare you for surfing, except for surfing,” Callahan said. At one time, she would hit the gym, run, exercise constantly, but it wouldn’t transfer to the board. Swimming or rowing can help up to a point, she acknowledged, but still, the paddling and maneuvering on the surfboard uses muscles in a unique way.
Callahan used a friend as an example. She said he is in amazing shape, works as a trainer, and is plenty strong, but when he went out surfing with her his arms were like noodles and he was exhausted in 20 minutes.
She said yoga works with the body much the way surfing does. You might feel good about going to the gym, but how often do you see someone beaming while running or in the middle of a bench press set?
“When I went to the gym, I never felt, ‘Oh, wow, this is amazing,’” she said. In yoga, it happens all the time.
Steve Mullen made the same point in a separate interview. Mullen has been a longboarder for about 13 years and got into yoga about two years ago. He jumped into it in a big way, and in March he was certified as a yoga instructor by the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts.
“It literally changed my life,” he said about yoga. After a good yoga class or surf session, everyone is smiling, Mullen said.
“They’re happy. You rarely see someone break into a smile after a workout,” he noted.
There is another connection, Mullen said. He described surfing as an almost spiritual act connecting the surfer to the ocean and the planet.
“The other tie-in is the whole idea of being present. In yoga, you’re always connecting to your breath,” he said. “When you’re surfing, you’re doing the same darn thing. Each wave is entirely different than the one before.”
He said a surfer needs to be completely in the moment, not thinking about the way the waves were that morning or what might happen that afternoon, but moving with the wave that’s coming in.
The fitness elements are part of it, too. According to Mullen, yoga focuses on core strength, on building strength in the body’s largest muscles.
“Guys spend so much time pumping their arms, but it’s really all about the core,” he said.
He is frustrated with the misconceptions about yoga.
“It’s bizarre. People think it’s just a chick thing, or that it’s not that challenging. It can be anything you want it to be,” he said.
As for whether or not it’s challenging, that depends on the posture and how long it is held. In how many practices can someone be dripping with sweat, muscles nearing exhaustion, while not actually moving?
Mullen suggests that everyone spend time stretching each day as part of regular maintenance. He does not suggest stretching on the beach before paddling out, however. No matter how warm the water is, it will likely be at least 10 degrees cooler than the air, so all that stretching could be for naught.
For some, the connection between surfing and yoga is more direct.
Tricia Piola, who owns Harbor Outfitters with her husband, Chuck, launched the Fish Alley Stand Up Paddleboard school in Sea Isle City. A yoga teacher who has been paddleboarding for four years, she said eventually the two had to come together.
“We’re out there all the time paddleboarding, and all of a sudden I started out in downward facing dog,” which is a yoga pose with the hands on the floor (or board in this case) and the hips in the air, much like when a dog stretches out. She tried other poses, like warrior 1, which involves balance.
“I was amazed at how much more my body had to work in order to get into the position,” she said.
The poses are about balance, and if something is a challenge on a mat, it is going to be all the more challenging on a board. Paddleboards are stable and wide enough to do the postures, and Piola has started offering SUP yoga classes, especially since they now have a waterfront spot from which to take off.
“Now we have a clutch spot to do it,” she said, adding that they can always find some solitude.
On a recent weekday evening, a group went out that included some veteran yoga practitioners and a few relative newcomers. Some postures were easier on the board than others, but the boards tend to drift, so while the class started in a circle, some soon found themselves bumping boards or up against a dock in a quiet Sea Isle lagoon.
For a few of the postures, there were a number of splashes as the yoga surfers tumbled off their boards. But the water was warm, and the after the first dunk there wasn’t much fear of falling in.
Piola said the mind is a big part of the equation.
“It really calls for a lot of focus. You have to be able to center yourself on the board if you are going to be able to pull off this pose,” she said. “You’re getting more comfortable on the board. You’re really trusting the board, that it’s going to be there for you.”
More details about the SUP yoga classes can be found at www.harboroutfitters.com. Mullen teaches yoga several times a week at The Training Room at 744 Central Ave. in Ocean City, the Tilton Athletic Club, the Jewish Community Center in Margate, and in his home studio.
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