Take two waves and call me in the morning: International Surf Therapy Organization brings ocean healing into the mainstream
Marine Corps members share in post-surf exaltation with volunteers from the Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation in 2015. Photo by Gus McConnell Carly Rogers was told there was “no way” she would be able to pull it off. Jamie Marshall was told, “I don’t know what you’re going to do here.” And Joel Pilgrim was told that he was “just a surfer who wants to get paid to go surfing.” The last one wasn’t entirely untrue. Pilgrim, the founder, and CEO of the Australia-based surf therapy charity Waves of Wellness, has spent more than two decades surfing. And it was his personal experience in the water that in 2016 led the mental health occupational therapist to launch an organization built around a belief in the healing power of the ocean. But as he and other panelists shared last weekend at Cross Campus in El Segundo, his optimistic vision was not automatically accepted when he pitched it to philanthropic partners. “They said I had rocks in my head,” Pilgrim said. Pilgrim was in the South Bay for the International Surf Therapy Organization’s 2019 Symposium, a gathering of researchers, clinicians, nonprofit executives and, yes, surfers. The symposium, the first of its kind, was an opportunity…
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