Why surf therapy is more than just catching waves

The nose of my board tips skyward and suddenly I’m airborne, plunging headfirst into the Atlantic. I surface, spluttering, salt stinging my throat. My surf instructor, Younesss Arhbi, throws his head back and laughs. He scans the ocean, past the whitewater we’re wading through to the roaring green walls peeling offshore. “You weren’t ready?”

We’re at K17, a surf break 13 miles south from the fishing village of Taghazout. The air is opaque with sea spray and haze, the line between ocean and sky dissolving into nothing. It’s my second day of tuition and I’m still fighting the ocean rather than moving with it. High tide will soon turn the water unruly for novices like me, and I’ve barely made it past kneeling. I press back towards Youness to try again.

Earlier, he’d drawn a wave’s life in the sand, tracing its journey from green swell to broken whitewater with his fingers. “We’ve shown you all the ways to stand up,” he’d said. “Now you have to find yours.” Waist-deep in the Atlantic, I’m meeting only the smallest waves, yet I keep tumbling off the board. Youness shakes his head. “You’re thinking about it too much,” he says. “Don’t force it. Feel where the water is going, and let your body follow.”

Clambering back on, I glance at the horizon and feel the wave before I see it, a deep, slow pulse gathering beneath me. As I turn to paddle, Youness steadies the sides of the surfboard. “Keep your head up,” he says. “This is your wave.” When he lets go, I’m propelled forward. I bring one foot forward, then the other, and stand. Head up, eyes fixed on shore, I leave the wave and Youness behind. For 10 seconds, I’m flying. Everyone but the Atlantic seems to hold its breath.

The moment, however exalting for me, is nothing new for Youness. He’s been surfing these breaks for 35 years, since catching his first ride on a broken, borrowed board on this very beach. Today, he’s something of a local legend, often to be seen tackling overhead barrels at Spiders — a renowned surf spot 10 miles south of Taghazout —occasionally slipping into handstands mid-ride.

Youness isn’t the only surfer drawn to this stretch of coast. Between October and May, Morocco’s Atlantic coastline becomes a pilgrimage site. Campervans edge south through Gibraltar, boards strapped to roofs, while other surfers fly into Casablanca and follow the salt-slicked highway north. Here, the Atlas Mountains lean towards the sea, their rocky outcrops shaping some of North Africa’s most dependable point breaks. Surf culture arrived here in the 1970s, and the names given to the breaks — Devil’s Rock, Hash Point, Killer Point — speak to both the rawness of the coastline and the swagger of the early surfers who claimed it.

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I’m here on a seven-day trauma and surf therapy retreat with Resurface. Why surfing? “It’s enforced mindfulness,” psychologist and retreat host Josh Dickson tells me. “There’s no room for rumination, you reach a flow state.” The water analogy is not lost on me: the idea that in the ocean, as in life, control is often an illusion.

A few days later, after yoga and breakfast, we travel north to Anchor Point, about a mile from Taghazout. From the bluff, a vast rocky shelf spears into the Atlantic, waves unfurling along it with mechanical precision. Surfers dot the rocks, watching, waiting. Timing is everything. A few commit; a few retreat.

Later, the group reflects on how surfing mirrors life. Miss one wave and another will come. Some days the ocean offers nothing; on others it gives more than you can handle. Waiting is hard, but when a good wave arrives, you take it.

It sounds almost too simple but, by the final day, something in me has softened. The beach is quiet and out on the water, the waves are formidable but no longer overwhelming. I still misjudge them, but what once felt like lawless curls now reveal a rhythm. Our second instructor, Abdeljalile Jouchte, tells me to be patient. His brow furrows as his gaze sweeps the horizon, then he nods. “Beautiful waves are coming for you,” he says.

I follow his line of sight to the green swell, unsettled by the fear that I’ll never match it. “You don’t need to be ready for the young waves yet,” Abdeljalile tells me. “One day you’ll pass the whitewater and realise they’re the same. You’ll just know how to meet them.” I finish early, recognising I’ve given all I can for now, although leaving the beach carries its own ache. I turn back to the Atlantic, restless with high tide, and feel the pull to paddle out again. But the water isn’t right. No matter; I have other waves to catch.