'Adventure Coaching' in Costa Rica

[Shannon Farley]

By Shannon Farley

Any Olympic athlete or professional athlete, or high school or university athlete, or even a child on a sports team for that matter, has a coach. Actors have coaches. Singers and dancers have coaches or trainers. Over the past decades, executives and businesspersons have joined the ranks of seeking coaching for success.

In today’s modern world, there is business coaching, financial coaching, executive coaching, career coaching, expat & global coaching for those living and working in another culture, personal coaching, health coaching, and even dating coaching.

Now, here’s a new twist – adventure coaching. On Costa Rica’s surf-fringed central Pacific coast, at Hermosa Beach, surf school Del Mar Surf Camp is adding “personal coaching sessions” to all of its surf vacations and surf programs.

“Adventures like surfing, or canopy tours, or even bungee jumping for instance, can create mental and emotional breakthroughs from the physical adventure,” said Life and business coach Paola Castro. “The environment of Playa Hermosa invites you to contemplate the abundance of life. It’s the perfect environment for these sessions. And if you’re faced with activities like surfing, you are physically challenging yourself.”

Castro, Costa Rica born and also a surfer, uses the activity of surfing as a metaphorical window into the person’s life. If they had a good day or a frustrating day … how does that show up in their life and work, she explains.

She calls the concept “adventure coaching”. “Coaching comes from high-performance athletes,” explains Castro. “Thirty years ago in the USA, executives said if high-performance athletes have coaches, why don’t executives in companies and people in their personal lives have coaches?”

Coaching is a teaching or training process in which an individual gets support while learning to achieve a specific personal or professional result or goal, according to Wikipedia. “Managing is making sure people do what they know how to do. Training is teaching people to do what they don’t know how to do. Mentoring is showing people how the people who are really good at doing something do it. Coaching is none of these – it is helping to identify the skills and capabilities that are within the person, and enabling them to use them to the best of their ability,” Wikipedia defines.

A life coach is an “advisor who helps people make decisions, set and reach goals, or deal with problems,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It is a practice that uses techniques from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, career counseling and positive development, to help people identify and achieve personal goals. The development of personal coaching, or life coaching, can be traced back to the early 1970s Human Potential Movement in the USA, and credited to the teachings of Werner Erhard’s “Est Training.” One of the most successful and well-known personal coaches in the United States is Tony Robbins, who has been coaching executives to celebrities for success for more than 30 years.

In celebration of Del Mar Surf Camp’s 10^th Anniversary in 2013, owner Maria del Mar said they want to give more to people and create vacations that are “transformational and empowering.”

“Coaching is a transformational process that will help you find the clarity and courage you need to start living the life you dream and deserve,” asserts Del Mar Surf Camp’s website. “It’s for anyone to achieve their goals, and also to help in any way they need,” Maria del Mar says.

Del Mar Surf Camp specializes in Costa Rica surf vacation packages, yoga-surf retreats and day surf lessons for adults, women only and families. They cater to beginners, intermediate or advanced surfers, with locations on Nosara Beach on the Guanacaste Pacific Coast, Santa Teresa Beach on the Pacific’s Nicoya Peninsula, and Hermosa Beach on the Central Pacific Coast. The personal coaching sessions, led by Paola Castro, are an extra activity that participants can add on to “go beyond having just a traditional vacation,” says Maria del Mar. Personal coaching will only be available at Del Mar’s Hermosa Beach location.

Hermosa Beach, just south of the bustling beach town of Jacó, is Del Mar Surf Camp’s headquarters. The popular beach, with its consistent surf, variety of breaks and great exposure to swells, is famous with advanced surfers from all over the globe. And, just a 5-minute drive away is the south end of Playa Jacó where beginners learn to surf in gentle and easy waves. A big plus is it’s only an hour’s drive away on paved roads from the capital city of San Jose and the international airport.

Castro will coach in 60-minute sessions, and can continue with follow-up sessions after a person returns home using Skype video calls. Coaching can focus on realizing dreams and goals, breaking free from fears, taking leaps of faith, reducing stress, improving health, etc. Castro gives practical steps for shaping behaviors to get results.

“The thing with coaching is you need to be responsible for creating the changes in your life,” said Castro. “A coach doesn’t tell you what to do. We use a Socratic method based on questions that stimulate the answers within you, because who else knows how better to live your life but yourself.”

 

Del Mar Surf Camp has created new Summer Specials packages, with great discounts, to celebrate their 10^th anniversary in 2013.

Maria del Mar’s message from her website:

“Thank you for 10 years of laughter and wipeouts, glassy rides and perfect waves, tears of frustration and tears of joy, new-found friendship and promises to see each other again. By teaching you, we have learned, and thanks to you, we have grown! With all of our gratitude and so much love, we’ve created new special packages for you, hoping to make surfing with us more accessible and therefore continue to share our passion. Simple, beachy, self-guided and affordable, introducing Pacifico, Swell, and Estrella de Mar surf packages. They all include beachfront accommodations, breakfast and surf lessons – all of the essentials to surf with us in Costa Rica, so you can pick your best fit.”

 

“Surfing soothes me, it's always been a kind of a Zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I'm on a wave.” – Paul Walker