Mark Berman

Surfing is challenging.

It's a hard physical exercise.

And I think they probably also thought that that would be helpful as well.

They found that PTSD symptoms and depression symptoms went down when these surfers were involved in the program.

And they also had sort of improved moods, so more positive mood, less negative mood.

and that the severity of their depression and anxiety symptoms tended to decrease amongst these surf therapy participants.

Yeah, the two main places that I would go to were Barton Park.

That was kind of right on the Huron River in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And I would also often go to the Ann Arbor Botanical Gardens, which was a little bit farther away from campus, a little bit farther away from where I lived, but a very beautiful botanical garden that had a lot of nature trails that you could walk on.

Yeah, there was this gigantic oak tree.

kind of in the middle of the trail on Barton Park.

It was almost kind of off by itself, this kind of singular oak tree that had a really, really giant trunk.

And it always kind of caught my eye.

You definitely could hear the wind kind of rustling through its leaves.

And, you know, sometimes I even felt like I would kind of, you know,

talk to this majestic tree, that I kind of would anthropomorphize this tree, that it could listen to me and maybe kind of help me sort out some of my problems.

Yeah, it was very difficult.

And I'm sure a lot of people have experienced difficult breakups, but it was one of my more serious relationships.

And maybe I thought this would be a very long-term relationship, possibly somebody that I would get married to.

So that was a big blow to me.