"The flow state and peak experience always involve the whole body. In surfing, the whole body is involved and every wave is different so you can’t plan, you have to respond without thought, you are using a different part of the mind, a deep, background part of the mind. The wave, the board, your body are really a continuum and so when you start to really become able to surf you are entering that space where you’re no longer trying, no longer thinking about it but you are in a totally receptive and totally active process simultaneously, that’s what invites peak experience."
"When you are in a peak experience you don’t need words, and it’s like you’ve come home to something you intuitively recognise as rightful, and trying to explain it in words just ends up diminishing it. And once you have that kind of experience, the world of ego-drives and desires and narcissistic self-involvement and competition, it becomes unimportant because there is something much more essential that you understand about life. The question of the importance of peak experience to what we as human beings are doing to the planet is really important. "
And there it was. The last possible point before the wind turned the swell ragged. Feathering and bending down a point, the outside section clearly shallow, the inside a little small to reel, but doing a passable impression. Could you surf it? The decision was quickly taken. On the way down to the point, a stone head guarded the path, features a blur of orange lichen. I silently excused myself, asked permission.
Me: Andrew Kidman’s film Litmus started off with a direct quote from you, it goes something like ‘I wish when they’d asked me what surfing meant, I’d replied a spiritual activity instead of a sport, because that put us on the wrong track.’, do you stand by that statement?
Nat: Yeah. I still believe that surfing is much more of an artform than a sport. I think that it is a misnomer. When the media and the general population had to put us into a box, they went- this is a sport. Because they were on the psyche… But it could have just as easily gone the other way, and be considered as a legitimate artform, if it would have been projected as such. Literally, it would have been adopted instantly by the London Ballet company, and the Sydney, by all these different places as a form of dance, and expression, then we would probably all be in a lot different position. I’m only saying this because I feel it probably would have been a more accurate label for the activity.