{"id":1297,"date":"2021-09-28T09:46:52","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T07:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/my-plan-plan-is-to-surf-until-i-shed-my-wetsuit-for-good\/"},"modified":"2021-10-01T12:50:47","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T10:50:47","slug":"my-plan-plan-is-to-surf-until-i-shed-my-wetsuit-for-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/my-plan-plan-is-to-surf-until-i-shed-my-wetsuit-for-good\/","title":{"rendered":"My plan plan is to surf until I shed my wetsuit. For good. (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

October 2020<\/p>\n

It’s the beginning of October 2020. I have just recovered from a bad lumbar sprain and today I am starting my first surf lesson at the local surf school. I am exactly 55 years old and pretty fearful of high waves, strong currents and fast winds. But something -don’t have the time to wonder what- drives me into the ocean with a quite heavy surfboard and a borrowed oversized wetsuit.\u00a0 \"\"<\/p>\n

I am tired of being a sedentary ageing person. Not that I don’t want to grow older. I learned some time back that it’s going to happen whether I like it or not. But I want to grow into a healthy older person, and I have realized that to achieve this goal I need to keep fit and active. I do practice yoga though. But I mainly meditate, study, think a lot, read, analyze everything see, hear, touch or taste, and overuse my mind to try to apprehend and comprehend the world around me. So I am basically a sedentary ageing intelectual woman. I am not afraid of dying -except when I feel I might die LOL-, but I am afraid of illnesses that slowly creep into your tissues and bones and cells until you are unable to climb stairs or get up from a chair without a hand. I know those will eventually show up. But I would like to avoid them as long as I can. I am happier and more self-content than ever in my life, and I intend to keep it that way. Even make it better if possible.<\/p>\n

So back to right here right now. Back to my first surfing lesson. Fortunately, the ocean is totally flat today. I am really nervous, excited too. I am the oldest in the group. Of course. I wonder why I keep being interested in weird stuff people my age defnitely don’t usually do unless they have done it their whole lives. I would get it had I been the adventurous or daring type. But although I had my share of adventure in life, I am really the good girl, calm type, full of fears and preocupations yet nice and sociable, so it doesn’t really make sense. Whatever.<\/p>\n

\"\"The water is cold and the wetsuit is too big. I am not a fan of cold water but well, this is part of the deal. It’s funny to feel how unstable a beginner’s surfboard can be even in calm waters. Mine keeps bouncing sideways and I manage to look like an idiot trying to paddle out and losing balance over and over again. In dead calm waters.<\/p>\n

We paddle around a few more minutes. Then we play a game consisting in holding the board still so we can practice pop up safely in pairs. No matter how safe it is, and how calm the water is, I am unable to do something as simple as pushing myself up while placing one leg forward on the board. Where did my core muscles go? They were there last time I checked! I feel frustrated and ridiculous in my oversized wetsuit and my hair dripping carelessly into my eyes. So I internally get into ‘counselor mode’, reminding myself of the impact of negative self-thoughts and feelings, and I try to pretend I am totally cool with all this business. It seems to work because I manage to stop beating myself up. Until the next lesson.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back to the here and now. Back to my first surf lesson. Of course, I’m the oldest one in the group. I wonder why I’m still interested in weird stuff that people my age don’t usually do unless they’ve been doing it all their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[119,117],"tags":[109,110,108,107,113,112,111,106],"class_list":["post-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-like-life-itself","tag-adventure","tag-ageing","tag-costa-del-sol-en","tag-counselor-en","tag-emotions","tag-fit","tag-health","tag-surf-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hereandnowinstitute.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}