Certified NUSHU Group Facilitator and Founder of Well Refined, Courtney Evans, joined the NUSHU Surf Retreat in February 2023. What follows is her beautiful retelling of the time spent on retreat:

“I spent last week in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica on a women’s surf retreat with NUSHU, a wellness collective I facilitate sharing circles for. I joined the retreat in a personal and professional capacity, and I left inspired beyond measure. 14 women, hours of surfing each day, nourishing food and connective time spent reflecting on what surfing can teach us about life. The answer? Just about everything.

My surf coach was a 5’8 tanned Italian man named Davide who had come to Santa Teresa on a lark and hasn’t left. He is a deeply soulful man whose surf metaphors resonated to my core. My favorite? ‘Connect to the feeling to create the movement’.

In the midst of our first day I was gripping my surf board, terrified of falling and thinking I could think my way out of every situation. Not so I quickly learned. The power of the ocean and the precarity of balancing on a board meant there was only one solution. Close my eyes, drop into the moment, drop the expectations I had of myself to perform on the first try and breathe into each small step in the pop-up process to create fluidity to my movement.

I’ve shared before the idea that wellness is a feelings game rather than an intellectual exercise, as I was reminded of while I surfed, progressively getting more capable each day and each day letting go my overthinking in service to awe.

Surrender in surfing is the pathway to progression. So, too, in our wellness. Surrendering to all the feelings we have — about the way foods make us feel, about the complicated relationships that trigger us to numb out with unsupportive habits, about the external expectations we internalize about what we should look like or be like. The more we connect to the feeling in surfing and in wellness, the more we create the forward momentum in a direction that supports our fullest expression.

By the end of the week, I witnessed myself and the 14 other women on the retreat popping up with grace, compassion and a well of self-love that had each of us riding waves to the shore feeling lighter, stronger, more grounded and healthier than we’ve felt before.

Here are a few other things I learned while surfing that are instructive for how we can think about wellness:

• Acknowledging + honoring our limitations can clarify our next steps forward.
• Recognizing + accepting the emotions we feel when facing a fear of change takes power away from fear and replaces it with love.
• Change is more fun when we find joy + playfulness in it.
• Resetting ineffective habits is more easily accomplished by going back to the basics, rather than trying to grind forward.
• Nature heals both by down-regulating the nervous system and by connecting us to our truest selves.
• Keeping our eyes on the horizon will keep us moving forward.
• Slow steady movement done in a smooth + graceful way will create faster results then if we rush in the first place.
• The person who walks often goes farther than the person who runs.
• Finding a community who accepts our most authentic self and who holds our truths without judgement offers the most healing power of all.”

Join the next NUSHU Surf Retreat!