The Ocean as a Unique Therapeutic Environment: Developing a Surfing Program

Abstract

1The lack of fitness and recreation opportunities for children with disabilities is problematic and 2 can be consequential to proper health and development. All children need to accumulate 60 3 minutes or more of moderate-vigorous intensity activity throughout the day (World Health 4 Organization, 2012). Adapted aquatics offers necessary physical activity and educational 5 programming to children with disabilities and the benefits for children with disabilities are more 6 pronounced and significant than for their able-bodied peers . Similar benefits could 7 potentially be derived from surfing in the ocean. A twice weekly, eight-week surf instruction

Surfing for Social Integration: Mental Health and Well-Being promotion through Surf Therapy among Institutionalized Young People

“…With regard to the first analysis, the results showed positive outcomes as other similar projects shows [5,6,[12][13][14]. Regarding the items related to emotional regulation, most of the participants felt improvements and reported that they did learn about social and emotional competences, what can be a consequence of the fact that surf training was learn alongside with social emotional competencies.…”

“…Furthermore, it is thought that similar results could be obtained with risk populations in younger children and projects suggestion in the adapted surfing area [5,12,13]. Concerning the impact that this project had in social issues, future interventions should address surf therapy when working with families in vulnerable situations and as a prevention strategy.…”

“…On one hand, there are projects focussing on children and youth with developmental disorders and/ or other disabilities, which sometimes are under the umbrella of "adapted surf ". These projects assessment validated surf therapy as a way to decrease internalised symptoms and increase self-confidence, self-esteem, social skills, motivation about physical activity, [5,12,13] self-control, cooperation, responsibility, involvement [14] and social inclusion [12]. On the other hand, there are projects working through surf with addiction disorders, with war veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder, depression [10] and combat-related poly-trauma [11], validating surf therapy as a relevant form of holistic treatment.…”

Effectiveness of surf therapy for children with disabilities

“…Obesity is a public health concern 1 . The prevalence of obesity among U.S. youth aged [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] years is 17% and therefore affects about 12.7 million youth and adolescents 2 . To lower the risk for this and other diseases, it is recommended that children, ages 6-17, accumulate 60 minutes or more of aerobic, muscle strengthening, and bone strengthening physical activity each day, and complete each type of physical activity three times a week 3 .…”

Ocean Surfing as a Novel Physiotherapy Environment: A Commentary

“…The instructional goals are to teach each child to paddle, to balance on the board while in various positions, to catch a wave and ride it into shore and lastly to paddle back out through the surf. Each child has their own instructor who formulates individualized instructional goals designed around each child's physical and cognitive needs [8].…”