Awakening Layne Beachley

THE ocean is where Layne Beachley still feels like herself.

She surfs most days at her local break on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, or at least slips into the water to swim, calling it her place to “surrender”.

It’s not all chasing waves anymore, or proving anything.

These days, she’s learning to slow down, something that took her decades to figure out.

Next weekend she will bring that story to Byron Writers Festival, where she will speak in two sessions.

One focuses on her new book Awake Academy, a hybrid of memoir and self-help built around the tools she used to rebuild her life after retiring from competition.

The other, Breaking the Waves, teams her with fellow surfing trailblazer Pauline Menczer to talk about resilience, rebellion, and the joy women have carved into surfing culture.

For Beachley, the conversations at Byron are not about trophies or records.

They are about what came after the spotlight, when her drive to win, and the story she had carried since childhood about not being worthy of love, finally caught up with her.

“I realise now that I kept looking outside of myself to find all the answers when all the answers lay within,” she says.

“But I didn’t know what questions to ask, or what tools to use to create space and manage my emotions.

“That’s why we created Awake Academy.

“We wanted to create and share our toolkit to help people fill their own cups so they can share that with the world.”

Beachley, now 53, spent most of her career convinced she had to earn her place in the world.

From a very young age, she experienced trauma. Beachley’s mother was seventeen and an aspiring model, when she was the victim of a rape committed by her manager. She fell pregnant with Beachley, who was put up for adoption as a newborn.

When Beachley was seven, her adoptive mother died during a medical procedure.

A year later, her father told her she had been adopted.

Those shocks, she says, left her desperate to prove she was worth loving.

The clearest way, at least to her, was to become the best surfer alive.

It worked.

She went on to win seven world titles.

Her first, in 1998, and her last, in 2006, she says, were achieved “in a state of love.”

The five in between, from 1999 to 2003, came “in a state of fear,” driven by a belief that worth came only through achievement.

“The body whispers before it screams, and I was ignoring both,” she says.

“I had this win-at-all-costs mentality, and it caught up with me.

“I had adrenal fatigue, a tonne of injuries, and eventually a neck injury that forced me out of the water for six months.

“That’s when the healing started, because I had to sit still.”

Retirement was supposed to bring peace, but it left her hollow.

The routine, the structure, the clear purpose, gone.

She buried the discomfort by overcommitting, running a clothing brand, a foundation, surf events, public speaking, anything to keep moving.

Her health collapsed again.

Her husband, INXS guitarist and saxophonist Kirk Pengilly, finally asked, “Why do I always get the broken Layne?”

That moment forced her to look inward.

She began using breath work, journalling, meditation, clear boundaries and a handful of rituals that now anchor Awake Academy.

The book, written with co-author Tess Brouwer, combines their personal stories with exercises to help readers “know yourself to grow yourself.”

Brouwer’s account of surviving a spinal cord injury and PTSD runs through the book, her vulnerability balancing Beachley’s frankness.

Some of the tools are gentle, like box breathing and mantra work.

Others are blunt, like the “hell yeah/fuck no” decision filter, which Beachley still uses daily.

She is not pretending to be a guru.

When a recent “wobble” pushed her into anxiety, she went back to basics, drawing her feelings, rewriting the story she was telling herself, and climbing back out.

“We’re not preaching,” she says.

“These are the tools we still use to help ourselves.

“The book’s just about shortcutting the struggle for other people.”

Even as she talks about the heavy moments, there is still a current of joy in her voice, especially when the ocean comes up.

It is her reset button, her constant.

“It’s my happy place,” she says.

“It’s where I feel freedom and satisfaction.

“It’s where I truly learn the essence of surrender.”

Surfing itself has changed since she first paddled out in the late 1970s, when she was often the only girl in the water.

These days, she says, there are moments at her local break when women outnumber men, a shift that fills her with pride.

Pay equity at the top is one thing, but it is the grassroots inclusion that matters most to her.

“At the end of the day, you don’t need to earn your right to be in the ocean,” she says.

“It doesn’t care about your appearance.

“It’s just about presence.

“And now, instead of intimidation, you’ve got guys out there who are encouraging and supportive.

“That’s a beautiful shift.”

That balance, between struggle and joy, between fear and love, runs through Awake Academy and the talks she will deliver in Byron.

For Beachley, the goal is not to lecture or sell a formula. It is to give people something they can carry into their own lives.

“I just want people to walk away believing they can do something differently, and feeling inspired to start today,” she says.

Beachley will appear at Byron Writers Festival on Saturday, August 9.

She will speak at 9 am with Tess Brouwer and Courtney Miller for Awake Academy and at 12.45 pm with Pauline Menczer and Jock Serong for Breaking the Waves.