Urge Surfing

What is urge surfing?

Urge surfing is a mindfulness skill for cravings and urges. Most people handle an urge in one of two ways: they fight it, or they give in. Urge surfing is a third way. You watch the urge closely, the way a surfer rides a wave, and let it rise, peak and fall without acting on it.

The idea comes from psychologist G. Alan Marlatt's work on relapse prevention for addictive behaviors. It became a core practice in mindfulness-based relapse prevention, the program he developed with Sarah Bowen and Neha Chawla. The prompts and the tool on this page are our own.

How to surf an urge

1. Notice it. Name the urge, and rate how strong it is from 0 to 10.
2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? What is it like: tight, warm, restless, hollow?
3. Breathe with it. Slow breaths, a little longer out than in. Let the breath be your surfboard.
4. Ride it. Watch the urge rise, peak and change, without acting on it and without fighting it.
5. Rate it again. Every minute or so, rate it again. Most urges shift more than we expect.
6. Choose what is next. When the wave has passed or eased, decide what you want to do next.

The point is not to make the urge vanish. It is to learn, from your own experience, that an urge is a feeling in the body that changes on its own, not an order you have to follow.

What the urge surfing tool does

• Set up in seconds. Pick what the urge is to do (optional), rate it from 0 to 10, and choose how long to ride it: 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes.
• Ride the wave. The wave on screen grows and settles with your latest rating, while a guided prompt changes every 20 seconds.
• Re-rate every minute. A quick 0 to 10 check appears each minute, with an optional soft chime. You can also rate it any time, end early if the urge passes, or keep riding longer.
• See the chart. At the end, a chart shows your ratings rising and falling, with the start, the peak and the end. Print it or copy it as text for a log.

Using urge surfing in therapy

• Practice in session with a mild urge first, such as the pull to check a phone, before using it with strong cravings.
• Use the chart to test a belief. Many clients expect an urge to keep growing until they act on it. A chart of their own urge peaking and easing is more convincing than anything we can say.
• Build it into a relapse prevention plan: what the urge usually follows, how long to ride it, and what to do once the wave has passed.
• Use the printable log as homework, and review the start, peak and end numbers together each week.
• It is not only for substances. Therapists also use it for urges to binge eat, gamble, shop, check a phone or snap at someone.

Using it over telehealth

1. Share your screen and press Present mode, so the wave and prompts fill the screen.
2. Read each prompt aloud in a slow voice, and ask the client for their number each minute.
3. Or send the link, so the client can use it on their own device the next time an urge hits. The soft chime helps if their eyes are closed.
4. At the end, copy the summary as text for your notes. It is never sent to us.

Urge surfing with teens

Teens often respond to the experiment framing: "Let's see what this urge actually does." Keep it short, 3 or 5 minutes, and use urges that matter to them, like vaping, scrolling or blowing up at a sibling. The chart at the end gives them something concrete to look at, and to argue with.

Safety

• Urge surfing is for urges, not for withdrawal. Stopping alcohol or some drugs suddenly can be medically dangerous. Talk with a doctor about safe ways to cut down or stop.
• If the urge is to hurt yourself and you might act on it, do not wait it out alone. Call or text 988 any time, or call 911 in an emergency.
• If an urge stays high, it is fine to switch to another skill. Urge surfing is a tool, not a test.

Does urge surfing work?

The research is promising, though still limited. In a small study of college students who smoked, those taught a brief urge surfing technique smoked fewer cigarettes over the following week than those who were not, even though their cravings in the moment were similar (Bowen and Marlatt, 2009). A larger trial of the full mindfulness-based relapse prevention program, which includes urge surfing, found less drug use and heavy drinking a year later than standard relapse prevention or usual care (Bowen and colleagues, 2014). That trial tested the whole program, not urge surfing on its own.

Urge surfing log (PDF)

The free PDF has two pages. The first is an urge surfing log: the steps at the top, then a row for each urge with what set it off, its start, peak and end ratings, how long you rode it, and what you did next. The second has two blank wave charts to plot your ratings minute by minute, with space to note what you felt in your body. It is free to print and share.