What Chi Gung (Qigong) Brings to Longboard Surfing

Aloha Tribe,

As most of you know, I love Chi Gung. And, I love longboarding. And, the cool thing is, one, enhances the other.

Chi Gung is a 4000 year old Chinese system of studying the energy of our bodies, as well as the energy that's all around us and in everything. What I've done is I've taken my experience in that art, and, brought it to longboard surfing. And, here's what it does.

With Chi Gung, you specifically and concretely train yourself to develop all of your senses to their absolute  maximum potential. As such, when you surf, say on a longboard, you can actually feel things that you've never felt before. In other words, you'll have new feelings in your body as you surf, which is the whole reason we all began surfing to begin with, and, these feelings, these physical sensations, will grow deeper and more advanced the more Chi Gung that you do.

Basically, in a nutshell, Chi Gung begins as a form of breathing training, where you learn initially to be aware of your breath, to merely notice it at first. Over time, and with many various exercises, you learn to ultimately control your breathing, and, more so, to guide the energy of your breath anywhere in your body, as well as into your surfboard. This makes your surfboard, literally, an extension of yourself.

What you're learning to do is to feel, in your body, all the sensations and experiences that your surfboard encounters, and, to be aware of them, as your own. When you can learn to do this, your surfing will be on a whole new level, for you'll learn to lose yourself in the feeling of surfing over the waves in ways you've never imagined nor experienced.

This, of course, is the feeling of stoke. That awesomely energetic sensation that we so all love. You can learn to experience that deeper and deeper and deeper, with literally no end to what you can learn about yourself and your sensory awareness.

As such, it's truly magical what you can feel as you surf, feelings of pure and total ecstasy and complete abandon where you lose yourself to the beautiful feeling of gliding and carving on your longboard. And, for those of you who are shortboarders, the same thing applies, simply more yang and less yin, merely the opposite side of the same coin.

We all can learn to push our limits, to expand what we can feel and sense. Some of us, many actually, have and do use various drugs to reach such levels, but, with a cool art like Chi Gung, drugs aren't necessary to reach such a high for an art like this is a pure and totally naturaly high through learning to merely embrace your body on levels that most have never imagined.

What Chi Gung brings to Longboard Surfing, is, pure magic. Dreams of sensations that are undreamable. This art offers ways to manifest that which you truly desire in your riding, and  more so, you can learn to do this not only during your ride but as you remember it later, as well as in watching the rides of others.

Imagine watching your favorite pro, and, literally feeling what they are feeling as they do it. That, is what Chi Gung has to offer. We can learn to feel what others feel, and, we can learn to feel what we ourselves truly feel as we surf.

Bodaciously  Stoked,

Lily of the Valley