The Cure was Saltwater with Sabrina Rudin

An Hour in Nature

Most New Yorkers greet January by pulling the duvet a little higher. Sabrina Rudin pulls on a wetsuit. The founder of Spring Café and author of Healthy with a Side of Happy surfs year-round while living in NYC. She took up surfing six years ago, after the birth of her first son, when postpartum anxiety left the ocean as the one place her nervous system could relax.

Sabrina opened Spring Cafe while working as a snowboard instructor in Aspen, after noticing the ski town had no good place for an organic, vegetarian meal. The menu draws on the vegetarian restaurants of her childhood and on her mother, an early pioneer of natural foods and juicing. Her summers were spent on a Bridgehampton beach, eating corn, tomatoes and pesto pasta at sunset while her father taught her to be a strong ocean swimmer. Now she brings her own kids to that same beach.

In our latest Hour in Nature, Sabrina talks about spirit, saltwater, and why the fix for feeling “de-natured” might be as simple as getting wet.

What’s your favorite thing to do in nature? 

My favorite thing to do is surf. If I’m not surfing I still want to be in the ocean or on the beach, I surf year-round in NYC so even in the cold, dead of Winter I’m in the water, or taking a beach walk.  

How does spending time in nature influence your mental health? Can you think of a specific experience where this effect was particularly strong? 

When I had post-partum anxiety after my first son, the water was the only place I could really calm my nervous system, the negative ions from the ocean immediately bring me peace. Learning to surf six years ago also helped me fully heal from my anxiety and manage anxious thoughts, it’s a deeply grounding and spiritual experience.  

Do you believe nature has a consciousness or spirit? How does that belief shape your interactions with the environment? 

Nature is spirit and spirit is nature, we all exist along the same continuum, when people wake up and realize this, that animals, humans, air, ocean, earth all belong to the same universe, then hopefully we will begin to take better care of our planet, and of ourselves. We are so far removed and frankly de-natured from our true selves, from our intuition and our own spiritual knowing, attuning to the natural world is the easiest way we can tune back into our truest selves.  

What are your fondest memories of spending time in nature? 

 My fondest memories in nature are being on the beach with my parents, we used to pack up dinner and walk down the road to the beach, I was fortunate to spend a lot of time in Bridgehampton as a child where my parents have lived off and on for fifty years. We would walk down to the beach on Ocean Road and watch the sunset, swim, and eat corn and tomatoes and pasta with pesto, or simple grilled fish, and my dad would teach me how to be a strong ocean swimmer, and I would play until the sun went down. Now I do this with my own children and my husband, sometimes on the very same beach and it reminds me that nature, and the ocean, is such a true and deep constant in my life. I love watching my children experience the same magic and wonder.