Joe Surf: Yoga and surfing — a perfect balance

They seem to fit together like peanut butter and jelly, yin and yang, flip and flop.

But until Peggy Hall came along, nobody had put together yoga and surfing in such a meaningful way.

Hall is creating quite an empire for herself by combining two niche activities she is passionate about, two activities that are similar in many ways and seem to be enhanced when combined.

Hall is producing her fifth Yoga For Surfers DVD, “Yoga For Surfers Live,” an endeavor that began as a hobby and turned into a full-time business.

She’s a featured health and wellness expert on the ABC Radio Network and has written articles for magazines like Self, Men’s Journal, Yoga Journal and Oxygen. Woman’s World magazine called her “America’s Ultimate Wellness Expert.”

She’s also a surfer.

A competitive swimmer and water polo player at Dana Hills High School, and then an endurance ocean swimmer, Hall, now in her 40s, had always wanted to take up surfing. She finally got serious about it when she met her future husband, a surfer himself, David, on a blind date.

Eventually, chronic shoulder tendinitis got so bad she was considering surgery, before David made a suggestion.

“He said, ‘You should come with me to a yoga class,’” Hall recalled. “This was before it became popular like it is now. We actually had to go to a senior center because it was the only place that had it nearby.

“I was really reluctant. I was thinking, ‘Oh, yoga. What, do I have to burn incense and chant or something?’ But it was, ‘Oh my gosh!’ I could not believe how great it made me feel.”

Hall said her surfing began to improve, and the only change she had made in her daily life was the addition of yoga. Her shoulder improved too.

“I immediately began looking for a surf-specific yoga routine,” she said. “I had seen something on yoga for seniors. There was a pregnancy yoga video. But I couldn’t find anything specifically for surfing. I’m like, you’re kidding me! This is the perfect thing for surfing.

“Not only the strength and flexibility and all of that, but just the mental focus, the ability to concentrate and stay calm in the lineup in heavy conditions.”

Sure, yoga is good for surfing, I told Hall. But yoga is good for any type of physical activity. Yoga is good, period. So what makes surfing and yoga so compatible?

“Not all types of yoga are suitable for all types of people,” Hall explained. “Since I’m a surfer, I understand what my body needs to recover. Yoga For Surfers replenishes energy, restores energy, shortens recovering between sessions.

“What makes Yoga For Surfers different is I specifically explain what poses do for your surfing. You’re not just holding a warrior pose. In Yoga For Surfers, there’s a sense of fluidity, moving in and out of the positions. It helps with balance and stability. You go through the poses with more of a repetitive, fluid nature.

“Yoga For Surfers is about giving you energy so you can surf your brains out for as long as you like.”

Hall seems to have energy out of the water as well, and it’s a good thing. Besides yoga, surfing and writing, she also puts together surfing and yoga workshops and retreats, many geared toward women. She’s a certified nutritionist and highly sought-after speaker. She even finds time to teach a yoga class at YogaWorks in Laguna Beach.

And it all started with the yoga that helped heal her ailing shoulder.

“The type of personality I have is when I discover something, I dive in,” Hall said. “I had been a university instructor, and later director of teacher training at UCI. I took up yoga teacher training on the side and I said, ‘Oh my gosh! I’m totally going to do this!’

“It’s one of those things where I was shaking my husband awake at 2 in the morning saying, ‘I’m going to make a yoga for surfers video!’”

Hall made the right connections and got the right people involved. Bill Ballard, producer of the movie “Blue Crush,” got on board. ASP World Tour surfing veteran Taylor Knox did too, and Hall says it’s no coincidence that Knox, an avid yoga practitioner, is still ripping at age 40.

As the DVDs became more and more popular, it took more of her time and she left her teaching job at the university. Now, her teaching is more universal.

“It’s kind of wild,” she said. “I felt like, ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me how great this was?’ That became my mission, to introduce the benefits of yoga to surfing. Frankly, the more surfers doing yoga, the better the vibe in the lineup. People are less agro, they have more fun, they catch more waves.”

When Hall was a little girl growing up, she used to watch the surfers at Salt Creek and dreamed of surfing herself one day. And now that she surfs, she says she wants to surf the rest of her life. Yoga, she says, makes that possible.

“Yoga For Surfers is about healing and preventing injuries,” she said. “It’s about directly relating the yoga pose to what you’re doing on the board. And besides, those who surf and those who practice yoga are really coming from the same place.

“As surfers, we already know, we understand what it means to be immersed in this soulful experience of surfing,” she said. “Being in the water, being in nature, you feel a sense of excitement and wonder. And that translates to yoga. It’s about experiencing life to the fullest and having that feeling of experiencing life completely.”

JOE HAAKENSON is an Orange County-based sports writer and editor. He may be reached at joe@juvecreative.com.