Every Thursday, Gary Katz and Christine paddle out from the shores of Rockaway Beach, Queens, to go surfing. They spend about an hour catching waves before hitting the sand to discuss how things went.
But this isn’t just a chat between two surfers — it’s therapy.
The idea came to Katz, a licensed social worker who practices in Manhattan, when he turned to surfing three years ago to counteract burnout from working 13-hour days. He found surfing to be healing in his own life and decided to give it a shot with his patients over the past spring. He now surfs weekly with five of them, putting in an hour in the water (he doesn’t charge for surf time) followed by an hour of therapy on the beach.
“The training I do focuses a lot on getting in touch with what you’re feeling in your body — is your heart racing? Is your stomach clenched? — and staying with it to drop down into a deeper emotional state,” says Katz, a 47-year-old Upper East Sider. Surfing takes care of the first part and allows for better exploration of the second.
Surfing as a treatment for autism and PTSD, as well as for anxiety and depression, is finally making its way to New York after finding fans in California over the past few decades. The benefits have made surfing an unexpected outlet for those who don’t find success with traditional therapy.
Israel “Izzy” Paskowitz was a champion longboarder when his son Isaiah was diagnosed with autism 25 years ago. He struggled to manage his son’s needs and his own frustrations with the end of his carefree lifestyle.
One day, when Isaiah was 6 years old and in the middle of a meltdown, Paskowitz put him in the water. “I wasn’t sure if he could swim, but he came up and he was smiling,” says Paskowitz, 53. “So I put him on my board, we caught some waves, and he was smiling the rest of the day.”
Surfing, he says, provides a sensory experience you can’t get on land — the sound of crashing waves, the salty taste, the feel of the water hitting your face. “It’s therapy, that sensory aspect of it,” Paskowitz says. He started taking other autistic children surfing, and it blossomed into a traveling surf school for kids afflicted with the disorder. He and his wife, Danielle, now travel the globe, hosting events through their organization, Surfers Healing, and will include stops along the East Coast in September.
Paskowitz has seen an emergence of camps for children with special needs since starting his own 20 years ago. One organization, A Walk on Water, lets kids and their siblings hang ten. The group sets up shop in Montauk on Sept. 10 and 11.
Even dogs get in on the action. One, called Ricochet, is a California-based surfing therapy pooch for kids with special needs, as well as veterans with PTSD.
Katz is pleased with the results of surf therapy, finding that the sport broke down barriers that would typically take several traditional therapy sessions. “There’s something humbling about the ocean, its vastness,” he says. “It has an extremely calming feeling.”
Surfing before a session forces patients to put their guard down, allowing for deeper conversation, faster. “Living in New York City, you have guards up to get through the day, and when you get to the room it’s hard to drop that,” says Katz’s patient Christine, an Astoria, Queens, resident who declined to give her last name for personal reasons.
Plus, Christine points out, surfing is fun — therapy often isn’t. “I used to go to feel better but left feeling worse, and I think that’s why a lot of people quit,” she says. “Now I associate [therapy] with fun, good things.”
And, Katz says, surf therapy has untapped potential: “Waiting to take the right wave. How you handle it when you pick the wrong one . . . There’s so much to learn from the ocean.”