Riding Your Hips

Aloha Tribe,

Most of us learn to steer with our eyes, our hands, our arms, our shoulders, and THEN, our waists. We learn to steer and control our boards from the top down. Sure, our feet apply pressure, but we are taught as well as learn through experience, that it is our shoulders and up that do a lot of work.

Perhaps, and, this is just a guess, but maybe it's because so many surfers have been guys and guys are often stronger in the shoulders and arms than girls, whereas girls are heavier and more balanced in the hips.

The thing is, it would seem that all of us could benefit from learning to use our hips a bit more, A subtle shift forwards or backwards, left or right might be all that is needed, especially on a longboard, to glide smoothly into long romantic arching turns filled with grace, beauty, style, and oh that wonderful flowing feeling that all of us so love.

One of the things is, it seems, is that many of us learn from looking at the stars and legends, and, we try to copy them. The thing is, we need to take into consideration who we ourselves our, and, as such, to find our own paths to true surfing stoke.

Each of us has different strengths and balance and grace, as well as experience on the water, and, all of that and a hundred other things need to be taken into consideration.

Sure, the old-school way was to watch our heroes surf, or, to look at photos of them in the magazines, then, to try to copy what we've seen. Today, of course, it's so much easier with dvds that can freeze frame any position and muscle contraction. You literally can see what muscles are pushing on a board, how or where a person's balance lies, and by watching again and again, we can even learn to anticipate what a surfer will do or more so, what a wave will do. This last fact, is truly an awesome way to learn about the water because you can study the structure of a wave, frame by frame, and watch as it rises and falls and each ripple upon its surface as it happens. Then, going back a frame or two, you can learn to predict what will happen on the wave, since, you've already seen the future by previous viewing. In this way, one can learn truly magical elements of waves and as such, the language of the swell and sea.

So, what does all of that have to do with our hips, you might be asking? Well, loads. You see, when you focus on something, like a slight shift of weight due to hip position, you're learning to read your body and her sense of balance, to play with it, to truly understand the exact and critical point to the millimeter of where you balance shifts. It is the same, when reading the waves.

Now sure, I know that most of us don't bother with such seemingly trivial irrelevance, yet, for some, such experimentation is fun, I clearly, as you have read, fall into the latter category. For me, it's all about seeing what I can do. Pushing a bit more, trying something new and creative, spur the moment, in an instant of spontaneous imagination. I find such experiences truly, totally, bodaciously thrilling.

The thing is, the more we practice, the more we experiment, the more we play (and that's the important one), the freer we are in our surfing and thus, in expressing ourselves as we surf, more so, when we truly surf free, we find that we lose ourselves to the wave, we simply become water energy ourselves, riding, flowing, in harmony, with no sense of self, for, in such moments, we are the sea, both within our bodies and how all of the fluid in our body adapts to what we are doing but also, on the wave we surf.

It's fun to ride with your hips. It loosens up your waist, helps with overall body flexibility, and, well, it just feels awesomely awesome, so much so, it makes a girl just want to yell from pure ecstasy.

Ride loose, Tribe, flow free, and simply be the wave.

Bodaciously Stoked,

Lily of the Valley