A lot of people ask me why on earth I would want to freedive.  What would possess me?  What is wrong with me?
I guess I don’t really understand the questions a lot of the time… why would someone get so worked up, so upset, so vocal about something that doesn’t affect them… about something so pure and free… about something so *different*
I suppose that is the answer. People don’t like different. People like same same. It’s easier to compare when we are all wearing the same colour, eating the same food and running on the same treadmill.

I spent so long in my youth trying so hard to fit in… to be accepted and to be liked.
I was a good girl. I didn’t cause problems. I excelled. In many spheres. I tried to be liked and I tried to make people around me proud of me.
But it was never enough and I was never enough.

So instead… I went off the beaten track.  And I searched.

It was many of years ago, when I stayed in an ashram in India, studying to become a yoga instructor that I was told of a moment called Kumbhaka.  Technically, Kumbhaka is defined as breath retention, without any movement of lungs, muscles or any other part of the body.  But the way it was described to me was far more mystical and tenuous.  In a nutshell, it was “the perfect moment”.  The moment of silence and peace, between your inhalation and your exhalation, where all of life hangs suspended in a moment.  The time where all moments are endless and infinite and anything is possible.

We find the pose so that we may lose it.
We find the breath so that we may lose it.

The funny thing is… it took diving down to the bottom of the ocean, for me to find Kumbhaka.  Suspended under the liquid, caught between two breaths, I found infinity hanging in the silent blue expanse of another world.  As the moment hung, so too was I, between an inhalation and an exhalation, on the line, between the beginning and the end.  And anything was possible.

And then I feel the contractions in my belly and I begin my ascent for the surface – silence roaring and becoming deafening as I crack the liquid surface with a gasp and reenter the atmosphere, savouring the precious breath of air fresh on my face.  I pause and give the “I’m ok” sign and smile, knowing that just seconds ago, I was caught in a place between what is and what can be, so many possibilities and one certainty – that this is me.  And always, again and again, that is enough.  I am enough.

Freediving is an aquatic sport, considered an extreme one, in which divers attempt to reach great depths unassisted by breathing apparatus.  Its simple really, dive as deep as you can, on one breath of air.

Jacques Mayol, the famous freediver from Luc Besson’s 1988 cult classic “The Big Blue”, very famously stated that the art of holding your breath is to become the act of non-breathing.  To let this vital piece of information go (that you are no longer breathing), you may truly let go of your desire to control, and you become soft, and silent.

Jacques Mayol’s efforts enriched the world of freediving by including an entire philosophy, namely, Yoga.  Using so many techniques from Yoga, freediving has actually been termed “Aquatic Yoga”.  Yoga and freediving are integral and complementary.  Techniques are applied to breathing and breath-hold and for training the diaphragm.  And finally, the obvious techniques of achieving the yoga poses are used to increase the diver’s flexibility and strength training.

Yoga is also invaluable in mental training for breath hold diving, specifically in the areas of sensory withdrawal and meditation.  You need to recognize the power of your mind, and then respect that power and not to become it.  The Zen of freediving is the extreme shift of the consciousness of the freediver into the “now”. He exists purely in the moment in response to his sensations and achieves the goal of meditation in motion.

My Freyja.  Happiest on a horse

As I said, Freyja is six now and the paed assured us that at the age of five her immune system would kick into a higher gear and she would be past the really rough, scary times.  And he was right.  So 2 weeks ago we tried lessons again.

And I spent the entire lesson crying.  It was just so hard to watch my little girl, so rigid with fear, trying to please both me and her swim teacher (we got a great one this time, they don’t go to The School Of Tough Love for swim instruction anymore).  But it was agony to see her trying so so SO hard that she locked out her arms and legs, forming so much tension and rigidity that she was creating her worst nightmare to come true… she was going under and she had no breath to save herself.

As I watched her in the pool struggling to make peace with the water, struggling to find her place in it, my heart ached because it is only when we relax, surrender and trust, do we find the rhythm of the waves.  How do you tell a kid who is hell bent on being the biggest crowd pleaser in the world (that subject is for another time, another blog) that she needs to “try less”?  That she needs to let go?

And I was completely taken to the mat.  Back to the days of my own practice when I was trying so hard to understand a movement or a pose and I was so hell bent on “getting it”.  When we force something, we do not feel.  When we do not feel, we risk pain and injury, and also being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It is only through softening and holding and trusting that I have truly moved through to another level in my practice. That obstacle that used to feel so rigid and hard, it wasn’t even there as I passed it.  I try to convey this to my classes when I teach.  To surrender into poses and let go so that they may take a real and informed decision of where they are at.  To hold that space and be ok in it and to breathe and focus and feel (really feel) if there is energy flow in the body.  If we are too tight, holding our breath and forcing it, there is no flow.  And we will feel that.  It feels locked and tight and very very stressful.

But… I truly believe we have to try hard before we learn to try “easy”… to relax and let go.  We have to see the hard side of the mat before we can get on the soft side.  It’s a journey and it’s a process and it’s called life.  In some poses I am doing half of what I was trying 15 years ago… because 15 years ago I was pushing hard and trying to look a certain way and trying to match up to the person on the mat next to me or in front of me.  Now, I am so grateful that I get to work on this precious, beautiful thing called life and that I get to be authentic and I am so grateful that I know my weaknesses as well as my strengths.

So when Freyja got out of the pool after her lesson, I smiled and hugged her so tight through my tears and thanked her for trying her very best and promised her we would get her a mask and snorkel and go play in the rock pools with the fishes as soon as summer knocks on our coastal town doors….

Namaste x