Spiritual Tube Riding

spray separating into droplets. Weirder still, it was quiet. Almost totally silent. The only sound I was aware of was the sound of my inside rail slicing the face of the wave. I was back inside the barrel and I could not hear the sound of the wave breaking all around me. Even though my adrenaline must have been pumping and my heart racing, I felt calm and serene, even a little detached for however many moments or fractions of a second it lasted. Then suddenly I was blasted back into realtime as I came careening out of the tube.

The transition was seamless. It didn’t really hit me until I had paddled back out past the impact zone. Oddly, I wasn’t surprised. I was still in kind of a tranquil state. Normally, I am pretty loud and enthusiastic when surfing, but not this day. I was uncharacteristically subdued. I rode with a peaceful intensity – surfing better than I knew how. I caught wave after wave – including a second silent-slow-motion tube ride. It was as if I were in tune with the Ocean. At least on that day, at that strange foggy spot I experienced some kind of altered consciousness that put me in sync with those waves. Looking back after nearly four decades of surfing, I have never had a stranger, or a more rewarding session.

I have heard of others experiencing the silent-slow-motion phenomenon – like Pro football players, race car drivers, martial artists, and even a jazz pianist. Distance runners talk about a “high” reachable during long runs. It is a phenomenon that seems to occur only during periods of total concentration where distractions are automatically ignored or blocked out. Maya Gabeira, “Best Girls Performance” recipient at the 2008 Billabong XXL Global Big Wave contest, recently recalled

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