Move over, Freud. Your couch is being replaced by a piece of wood on wheels.

On the shady slopes of pavement in Greynolds Park in North Miami Beach, a therapy counseling session is in progress.

Once a week, amid the sprawling canopies of hardwood hammocks and mangrove forests, patients sort through emotions — while pushing on a longboard skateboard.

Donning kneepads and helmet gear, Alex Batista, 47, smiles as he rides silently alongside his therapist.

“Longboarding forced me to focus on what I was doing and not what I was going through — the suffering and everything else,” said Batista.

Last October, Batista’s wife Claudia, 48, died after undergoing a year of intensive chemotherapy treatments for ovarian cancer. They were married 12 years.

“I was in this black hole. There were a lot of emotions going on. So I thought, ‘What do I do?’?’’ Batista said.

Listen to the Episode on NPR (WLRN) below:

What he did was ask his wife’s therapist for help. Her counseling sessions had helped her before she died. At first, he had regular talk sessions with Isaac Farin, a marriage and family therapist in North Miami. But Farin, an avid longboard skater, was developing a new treatment using the sport.

“I use longboarding as exercise, but I started to feel different. My stress was being reduced and I liked how I was feeling. It was a different sense of joy,” said Farin.

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