Once or twice a week, chronic pain researcher Jason Kutch rises at dawn and heads to a Los Angeles-area surf break to catch some waves.
Kutch studies the effect of surfing on brain activity - but during those early morning surf sessions, he's completely focused on keeping his balance in the crashing water.
"You have to coexist with this extremely powerful force that demands all of your attention," says Kutch, a professor in the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy.
Kutch and Peter Westwick, professor of the practice of thematic option and history at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, are both experts in the science and technology of surfing. Kutch is studying whether surfing can positively shift brain activity and relieve chronic pain. Westwick, also a surfer, explored the tension between the sport's natural and engineered elements as co-author of The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing.
Yet both scholars believe that waves' appeal and healing potential can't be fully captured by data. Their experiences as surfers inform their insights into how this elemental force of nature shapes culture and health.
Communion with nature
In ancient Hawaii, where surfing emerged perhaps 1,500 years ago, the activity was woven into every aspect of cultural life, from courtship rituals to religious festivals, Westwick says.
The Hawaiian language reflects a belief in riding waves as a philosophical pursuit. "Nalu, the Hawaiian word for surf, can also mean to search for truth," he says. "Additionally, nalu refers to the amniotic fluid that covers babies. Hawaiians were born surfing."
Waves connect us not just to the watery environment of our mother's wombs, but to Mother Nature - even as surfboards, wetsuits and even some features of the coastline are products of human engineering.
"Part of the attraction for surfers is that we are literally immersed in the natural world," says Westwick, who surfs near his home in Santa Barbara. "We sit on our boards looking out to sea with our backs literally and figuratively turned on modern industrial civilization."
'Riding nature's energy bands'
Though the marine environment offers a soothing counterpoint to the stresses of modern life, waves are unpredictable and, at times, destructive.
"Most ocean waves are a conversion of the wind energy of very distant storms," Westwick says. "These disturbances on the ocean surface can travel thousands of miles and eventually reach a coastline. Close to shore, the ocean gets shallower, causing the waves to rise up, topple over and break."
Surfing offers a direct experience of these powerful and capricious forces.
"If you catch a wave on your surfboard, this energy of distant storms has now been transferred to you," he says. "You're riding nature's energy bands."
Flight and flow
For Kutch, that energy transfer provides a singular thrill. "There's something about shooting down that unbroken wave while standing on the board, and it can't be described by any other term than 'flying,'" he says.
Kutch notes that staying afloat is a delicate balancing act, both physically and mentally.
"Surfing is a repeated, goal-directed task in a highly sensory-rich environment that fluctuates moment to moment," Kutch says. "That engages mechanisms in the brain in a special way."
Kutch has identified a marker of brain activity called peak alpha frequency that may shift favorably after a surfing session and could be a factor in chronic pain relief. This scientific phenomenon highlights a poetic symmetry: ocean waves influence our brain waves.
Grappling with the ocean's flow can also encourage a mental state known as "flow": deep focus and total absorption in an activity. Artists, athletes and others have described flow as akin to being carried along by a water current.
In surfing, the concept is both literal and metaphoric: "A flow state can positively redirect your attention away from pain, anxiety and depression," says Kutch, who credits surfing with resolving his own chronic pain. "I think there's some magic in that space."
