Welcome

Krista Barry, MAPP (Distinction), is a positive psychology practitioner, published academic, and neuroscience-informed wellbeing coach. She brings over 25 years of coaching and movement-based teaching experience, alongside her long-standing role as director of Godfathers of the Ocean Surf School and her background as a former elite Australian swimmer.

Krista’s peer-reviewed research on women’s wellbeing and surfing is published in the Annals of Leisure Research (2024) and was featured in the Australian Women’s Weekly. She has contributed to the International Positive Psychology Association’s World Congress twice. At the 2023 Congress in Vancouver, she delivered a short research presentation on early findings from her work on women’s wellbeing and surfing. At the 2025 Congress in Brisbane, she facilitated and presented a half-day workshop based on her published research, applying water-based learning and ocean-centred wellbeing practices to positive psychology in action.

Krista has collaborated with universities, youth groups, schools, community organisations, and workplace wellbeing programs. Through Flow Like Water Academy — the home of her wellbeing practice — she supports individuals, small groups, and organisations with evidence-based programs that combine positive psychology, neuroscience, behaviour change, and water-based experiential learning.

Her approach is practical, compassionate, and rooted in real-world experience. Krista’s work aims to help people strengthen their wellbeing, rebuild confidence, regulate their nervous systems, and navigate life with greater resilience and self-trust.