Sensing Water: Uncovering Health and Well-Being in the Sea and Surf. (February 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Britton, Easkey; Foley, Ronan
• Other Names: Olive Rebecca guest-editor.; Wheaton Belinda guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of sport and social issues. Volume 45:Number 1(2021)
• Page Start: 60
• Page End: 87
• Publication Date: 2021-02
• Subjects: blue space -- surf therapy -- sea swimming -- embodiment -- Ireland; Sports -- Periodicals; Sports -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 796.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0193723520928597
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0193-7235

Abstract

This article considers how different recreational users engage with and utilize blue spaces as health-enabling. Informed by empirical and participatory fieldwork with surfing and sea swimming groups, we explore embodied and emotional experiences while researching directly within blue space. Given a focus on health and well-being, we identify different dimensions of how surfers and swimmers narrate those experiences while directly immersed in water during a sport/recreational activity. Such questions resonate with geographical thinking around phenomenology, active relational geographies, embodiment, emotion, and sport and leisure practice. We use a broad health promotion or enabling spaces approach to capture different emotional and embodied accounts of immersions in blue space, recognizing that this capture is emergent in and from place.