On a Wednesday morning, nearly a dozen women gathered on Santa Monica beach.
Their routine was consistent: They’d do a grounding exercise and give attention to the current moment before pulling on their wetsuits and grabbing surfboards, heading into the water to face regardless of the ocean brought them that day.
“The water is different every week and also you’re different every week,” said Elizabeth Sale, considered one of the participants in Surf Sister Sessions, a surf therapy program run by Groundswell Community Project. “Irrespective of what was occurring in my work, I could show up, I could share and feel the type of communal connective tissue.”
Surf Sister Sessions explore themes comparable to mindfulness, gratitude, self-identity and trauma recovery.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
After a surf therapy session, participants walk to shore.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Led by a licensed therapist and a surf therapy facilitator, the surf sessions are only considered one of the numerous therapy programs that now mix talk therapy with physical activities to assist people process. Across the country, you’ll find all the pieces from dog walking therapy to horticulture therapy to improv therapy.
The concept our bodies can reflect and store emotions and trauma will not be latest — the 2014 book “The Body Keeps the Rating” by psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has spent years atop the Recent York Times best-seller list, and it has long been believed that hip-opening exercises may help release emotions and trauma. But these spaces that fuse therapeutic practices with a physical activity are ever-expanding, reaching latest clients who might find sitting head to head in a proper office intimidating or who need to explore how movement can challenge them to process emotions otherwise.
Daniel Gaines, a therapist based in Los Feliz, began offering walking sessions after the restlessness of the pandemic set in.
“After I began doing virtual sessions I enjoyed it, but at the identical time, it felt form of stuffy,” Gaines said. “I just was like, ‘You recognize what? There’s a phenomenal trail just down the road. Let me try that.’”
Daniel Gaines is a climbing therapist who takes a few of his clients to Ferndell nature trail in Griffith Park.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Taking a lot of his clients on an hour-long loop through Griffith Park, Gaines said he first got the thought in graduate school and reached out to Amanda Stemen, one other local therapist who often takes her clients through Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.
“With the liberty of movement comes this type of freedom to essentially wonder and consider possibilities in your life that you just hadn’t considered,” Gaines said. “I just feel prefer it really contributes to the flow of ideas and the flow of conversation.”
A part of that is from his own experiences — Gaines said he likes to walk while he’s talking together with his own therapist — but there are also clear advantages to getting out of the home or office. He mentioned many studies have shown that spending time outside in nature may help with anything from ADHD and post-traumatic stress disorder to depression and anxiety.
“It’s not prefer it makes all of your problems melt away,” he added. “But I feel prefer it gives people this sense of this, like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s an enormous world out here.’ And it might probably type of help put things in perspective.”
Leah, a Groundswell surf facilitator who asked to be identified by her first name to guard her privacy, initially found Groundswell while she was working with one other local collective called Black Girls Surf.
“[Groundswell was] talking about mental health in a way that felt, for me, very emotional,” Leah said. “In my community, we’re not necessarily focused on emotions — it’s more tough love. And so I used to be very intrigued. I used to be like, ‘Hmm. What if I began seeing myself with more compassion and treating people around me with more compassion?”
Soon enough, she was hired as considered one of Groundswell’s surf facilitators, where she guides latest and nervous surfers through the water. A native of Hawaii who moved to Southern California after college, Leah said she was similarly anxious when she began browsing in L.A.
“After I first put my wetsuit on it took me like half-hour — I used to be shaking,” Leah said. “You’re perhaps considered one of the one people of color on the beach and you’ve got to place your wetsuit on after which you’ve got to inform yourself, ‘I’m going to exit on the waves and do it.’”
Leah, left, and Ali, right, who want to be identified by their first names, attend Groundswell’s surf therapy program.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
But the advantages of stepping into the water, she said, often outweighs people’s initial fears.
“The principal thing that I’ve noticed is that after they’re on land, within the very starting, they’re a method, but then after they go into water they’re laughing and smiling,” Leah said.
Ai, one other member of the group, who asked to be identified by her first name to guard her privacy, said that the group helped her work through some long-lasting trauma and anxiety.
“I’ve been in therapy for a decade,” she said. “And this definitely feels different from just regular talk therapy. It’s quite a bit less like, ‘let’s analyze your head.’ It’s more like meditation.”
When Vicki Alvarez and Clorinda Rossi-Shewan each discovered dance therapy through working with Kathy Cass and Hilary Kern through their Likelihood to Dance and Dance For All programs, they felt similarly enamored with the best way movement could help people express themselves.
By 2018, Alvarez, who’s now a registered dance movement therapist, and Rossi-Shewan, who’s a licensed marriage and family therapist, took the lead on training others within the Dance For All curriculum and rebranded its signature class as Let’s Dance It Out for special needs teens and adults. Though the category isn’t quite therapy, Alvarez said that the activities they practice draw from what they’ve learned of their individual therapy practices.
“How can I discover this sense that’s coming up in my body, that’s not all the time easy to say out loud or to verbalize?” she said. “I can show this emotion through my body, after which have someone else witness that. We will have these feelings and just coexist on this space and move through things together.”
Rachel Symons, center, dances with students through the Let’s Dance It Out class in Santa Monica. This system goals to construct social, emotional and cognitive skills using the ability of movement.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Let’s Dance It Out participants have called the category “healing.”
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Kellie McKuen, considered one of the dancers in the category, said that she first joined Let’s Dance It Out when it was called Likelihood to Dance about 20 years ago.
“As a lady who’s 60 now and on the autism spectrum, it was different after I was a child,” McKuen said. “I actually didn’t get the chance [to dance] because the children were pretty mean.”
But once she found this space to bop and express herself, she just desired to keep coming back. She said that even just offering the opposite dancers room to precise whatever’s on their mind can feel healing in itself.
“Some people are available in and have been nonverbal and shy and didn’t really need to stand up and dance,” McKuen said. “After which I’m telling you, like two or three years later they’re stealing the scenes.”
“It’s like yes!” she continued. “All you needed was just the chance and a few patience and look what blossomed.”
