Community Partner Spotlight Series: One Sea Wellness
By Deborah Jessen, Writer & Surfer
At Groundswell Community Project, we know how powerful it is when people have access to a safe place where they can experience the healing power of water. Around the world, community partner organizations and individuals have completed the Groundswell Surf Therapy™ training and are now bringing surf therapy into their own regions, cultures, and communities, each in their own unique way.
Our Community Partner Spotlight Series is a way to honor them: to share their stories, highlight their impact, and remind us all that we are part of something special, a worldwide wave of connection, belonging, and transformation.
This month, our spotlight moves between coast and mountains, ocean and river, to One Sea Wellness and its founder, PJ. Her heart-centered project is rooted in two landscapes: along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and in the mountain valley of Gunnison, Colorado. Different waters, the same intention: to create spaces where women, youth, and survivors can feel safe in their bodies and seen in their individuality.
Where water connects – A program between ocean and river
One Sea Wellness is a trauma-informed, nature-based healing program inspired by Groundswell’s community-centered approach. PJ weaves together surf therapy, somatic healing, community, and adventure-based wellness into experiences that support women, youth, and underserved communities in rediscovering strength, joy, and belonging.
In Costa Rica, during the winter months, surf therapy programs and women’s wellness retreats take place along the Pacific coast. Together with other Groundswell-trained facilitators, PJ creates spaces where healing happens through connection with the ocean, mindfulness, and shared presence. Women from many different backgrounds come together here: local Latina communities, travelers in search of healing, and young women encountering the ocean as a therapeutic space for the first time.
In Gunnison, Colorado, the ocean is far away, but the water flows here as well. One Sea Wellness offers maternal support groups, individual counseling with EMDR and somatic-based therapy, and river surf therapy for survivors of violence and trauma, and for those living with depression, anxiety, grief, substance use, or major life transitions. Through partnerships with local organizations, underprivileged youth and Latina women are also given access to these spaces of healing.
Two very different places and yet the same intention, the same medicine, and the same deep connection to water.
When healing becomes a calling
PJ’s path into surf therapy was shaped by years of working with survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. Over the time, she witnessed how trauma disconnects people from their bodies, their voices, and their sense of self-agency. What she was searching for was a way back into the body, back into one’s own capacity to act, back into life.
“Surf therapy offers survivors a pathway to reclaim their lives, rediscover empowerment, and learn to feel safe within their own bodies again.”
She quickly realized that healing does not begin with words or talk therapy. It begins with presence, with movement, and with the simple experience of being held by something greater than one’s own fear.
Moving to Colorado deepened the sense that this was her calling. Gunnison is a center for outdoor sports, including river surfing, and at the same time a place that can feel quietly exclusive. Those who do not perform “well enough” can quickly feel invisible. Much here is shaped by competition and perfectionism, patterns that can be especially painful for people in healing processes. There were few spaces that placed connection above performance. Few places where belonging mattered more than success.
These patterns are not accidental. They are part of larger societal systems that value productivity, adaptation, and achievement over connection, care, and humanity. For many women, this means losing themselves again and again in order to function. One Sea Wellness opens a counter-space: a place where no one has to prove anything in order to belong.
The ocean was far away, but the rivers and mountains carried their own healing power. Bringing Groundswell’s philosophy into river surf therapy became a way to slowly shift this culture. Because in the water, what counts is not skill it is being human.
“There are very few offerings here that place connection and healing over performance. Even though the ocean is far away, the mountains and rivers carry their own medicine.”
Many participants arrived expecting to learn a new sport. What they found was a deeper relationship with water, with their bodies, and with their inner wisdom.
Groundswell Community – Belonging and Trust
Becoming part of the Groundswell community happened during a time of deep personal vulnerability. As a survivor of domestic violence, living with chronic PTSD and carrying shame and fear, traditional talk therapy often felt unreachable. Originally arriving as a volunteer, the surf therapy spaces themselves became places of profound healing.
During this time, PJ was carrying heavy experiences within her, loss, fear, and a deep exhaustion familiar to many mothers. The water and the community became a place where she could breathe again. Not because everything suddenly became easy, but because she no longer had to feel alone.
Through empathy, ritual, and shared presence, embodiment began to make sense. Accompanying others on their healing journeys became a mirror.
“The empathy, safety, and connection in the surf therapy program were deeply healing for me.”
Within Groundswell programs in San Diego and Peru, surfing transformed from a skill into a mindful practice. Surrounded by women who placed healing above performance, the water became a place of trust. Her body became a home again.
What began as personal healing slowly turned into collective purpose. Groundswell’s curriculum found its way into support groups for survivors of violence. This path eventually led her to become a therapist, and it was here that One Sea Wellness began to take shape.
Rituals that let the body speak and flow
At One Sea Wellness, healing does not happen through words alone. It unfolds through movement, metaphor, and shared experience. PJ creates a safe, beautiful space in which the body can begin to speak again and water becomes a mirror for what lives within each participant.
In embodiment sessions, women explore how water reflects their inner landscape. It becomes clear: veins resemble rivers. Everything flows. Everything is connected. Every stream eventually finds its way to the ocean - just as our stories and emotions find their way to our inner heart.
Each woman names something she would like to send there: a release, an intention, a wish, or a prayer. An object from nature becomes its symbol. Together, these intentions are offered to the river and carried away.
“Our bodies carry stories just as rivers carry the stories of the land. When we offer something to the water, we remember that we are part of something greater than ourselves.”
During the retreats, playful movement becomes a source of healing. PJ brings her experience as an acrobat and acroyoga teacher into every session. Bodies become shapes that mirror waves, through lifting, through balance, through trust. Here, participants rediscover resilience and safety, learning that strength grows when it is supported.
Another ritual centers entirely on the river. Women reflect on how she carves her way through the land, steady, gentle, and yet powerful, flowing around obstacles rather than breaking against them. Through movement and flow, this quality becomes embodied. The body practices adapting, rising, and continuing.
In all these moments, water becomes the teacher. The body becomes a place of remembering.
When resistance meets belonging
Building this project was not without challenges. Within the small river surf community, a kind of exclusion occured. Local surfers questioned PJ’s presence and her work, treating her with competitiveness and doubt. For someone who experienced abuse and years of learning to make herself small in order to survive, this resistance was very painful. But she didn't give up on her goal of building connections.
She invited one of the most critical river surfers into a closing circle, a space that gives each person space to offer something kind and encouraging to another. Over time, something began to change. The passion and meaning behind the work became visible and slowly gained respect within the community.
Another challenge lies in the unpredictability of nature itself. Each season depends on snowfall. Climate change alters river levels, some years there is less snow, less water, and the program cannot take place in its full form. PJ meets this reality as a teacher, inviting gratitude, flexibility, and adaptation.
The Greater Impact of Surf Therapy
Beyond individual healing, One Sea Wellness is part of a larger movement. Each surf therapy session becomes a silent cultural change, away from performance and comparison, toward connection and care. Within the group, long-held beliefs are gently questioned, while at the same time creating space for intuition and inner guidance.
At the level of mental health, a place is created where the truth can be spoken. Fears, traumas, and postpartum experiences no longer need to remain hidden. Every woman's healing is seen, accepted, and respected, without masks, without restraint.
And because all of this takes place in rivers, oceans, and on land shaped by climate change, the connection to the environment is an inseparable part of the work. Healing is understood not only as personal, but also as a relationship with the Earth.
“This is healing work, empowerment work, and justice work—one wave, one circle, one woman at a time.”
For PJ, water as a healer can be described like this:
Ocean: Nurturing. Creative. Belonging.
River: Unifying. Transforming. Visionary.
A Future Vision for One Sea Wellness
PJ dreams of expanding programs for youth and people living with substance use, deepening partnerships with nonprofit organizations, and advocating for a new wave that flows year-round, to create greater safety and access for all.
There is also a vision for volunteer and internship trainings, for more helping hands and hearts to carry this work forward. In the future, she hopes to welcome a social worker, an outdoor therapist, or a “stoke sister” into the circle.
A Message to Women Everywhere
“Trust your body.
Honor your emotions.
Know that you deserve love, safety, and belonging.
You are resilient. You are seen. Your voice matters.
Flow with your own strength and let the world witness your courage.”
How to Support One Sea Wellness
There are many small and meaningful ways to support this work:
By following, sharing, and carrying forward retreats, programs, and campaigns, especially the vision of a year-round flowing wave.
By joining a surf therapy retreat in Costa Rica, including upcoming retreats co-led with Groundswell founder Natali Small.
By speaking about river surfing and community-based healing and opening others to this work.
By becoming part of it yourself, through retreats, volunteering, or an internship.
Every movement begins with a small ripple.
Connect with One Sea Wellness:
