The concept ‘yoga off the mat’ refers to the transference of key yoga principles such as patience, balance and self- awareness to our daily lives. Like yoga, freediving provides us with tools and techniques we can integrate into our lives ‘out of the water’.
How do we tap into that feeling of connectedness and moment-to-moment presence we embody in the water when facing the challenges of life?
Freediving can be both a teacher and healer. It helps us process emotions as our dream states do. It also offers alternate states of consciousness to explore, if we choose.
It demands a level of self acceptance and self inquiry. It is a place where secrets and experiences find their way through us, whether we want them to or not.
Every dive gives us an opportunity to find ease, calm, an other-worldliness. In these moments, a fullness enters our bodies, and we move with a freedom and gentleness for ourselves and our surroundings, a gentleness that often escapes us in our day-to-day lives.
When the dive is over and we’re back on land, life and its challenges are usually right where we left them. Our phones beep, and as quickly as we can say “take me back out there”, our nervous systems go back to where they were before the dive.
Some of us get very busy, some spend hours on socials, others drink or smoke, whatever the distraction of choice, ultimately, we want to replicate our bodies’ state of calm and joy that was so easily attainable in the water.
What if we turn the experience of freediving into a resource for effective and healthier coping strategies back on land?
While yoga is a practice for bodymind union, nervous system regulation, and greater self-awareness; freedivers often find these same experiences to be the unexpected or untapped added benefits of diving.
Do the breath hold and deep breathing practices create this feeling of connectedness? Well, yes and.. there is much more to explore between those two breaths than we might imagine.
Most divers have a deep love and appreciation for the underwater world and love to witness marine life in their natural habitat. When you ask divers what they love most about the experience of freediving, their answer almost always refers to a feeling they experience within themselves.
On numerous dives, I’ve asked fellow divers “what do you love about diving?” the responses are “I feel….
BETWEEN TWO BREATHS
YIELDING
When we dive, we naturally learn to yield. Yielding is the process of creating balance between giving and receiving. As we enter, the water receives the structure of our body, and creates a natural rebound to it.
We gently yield with the water by way of our breath and gentle movement, finding the perfect rhythm of not too much energy and not too little. Not too fast, and not too slow. The water surrounding us receives our shape and supports and sustains it throughout our dive.
When we encounter marine life, we are also ‘yielding’. When face to face with a large manta or a whale — to chase after the animal is to force the experience, while turning away from it, is to collapse from it.
To yield with the experience is to take in the animal before you, notice their movement, pace, playfulness, energy, focus, and adjust your own rhythm to theirs. Watch for them to meet your adjustment, or not.
We meet them in the way that is appropriate for the animal. We take in the space, theirs and your position in the water, make slight adjustments in response to each other, this is the practice of yielding. It is gentle not aggressive, responsive not collapsed. It is respectful to them and yourself.
Dolphins, whales, mobula rays and schools of fish are masters of yielding. For example, when diving with thousands of mobula rays, we witness micro yielding between individual rays as they move together with incredible synchronicity. Then if we zoom out, we notice the entire fever moves as though it is of a single body, it yields around other marine life and away from predators. Yielding as a beautiful, protective force.
Yielding is a practice with many applications — we can practice it in how we enter a room or join a meeting, how we step into a difficult conversation, into our relationships with each other and to our environment.
It is how we move through feelings, it is how we enquire and listen, it is how we support and hold ourselves and our loved ones. Diving is a gentle and easy place to practice our yielding technique, so we can become better practitioners of this in our daily lives.
OBSERVER MIND
To be a diver is to be an observer. We are guests in an environment that is not our own. We enter these unknown spaces unsure of what we shall meet, see, encounter or experience. With so much uncertainty, we still say yes, time and again.
We explore the reef floors, we swim with 70 tonne mammals, we glide along a drift, we observe everything around us, and ourselves within the environment.
We observe each other to share the joy of the moment, and to keep each other safe. We observe our breath, we listen and feel to see if it is telling us anything. We watch for micro changes in the environment, we move through space with a connected awareness to all we are witnessing.
When we are out of the water, our observer mind is often overtaken by our analytical and judgement minds. The practice of observing ourselves and our environment without judgement is a little more difficult when we’re faced with relationship issues, conflicts at work, or having a bad day. Yet these are the times when our Observer Mind is an effective tool.
To zoom out and become the observer of our own thoughts and behaviours without judgement, attempt to understand their purpose, is a superpower that can bring greater ease to many challenging situations.
Outside the freediving community, when ‘freediving’ is mentioned, often the first questions are ‘how long can you hold your breath?’ or ‘how deep can you dive?’. Understandably so, as these are the quantitive measures in the sport of freediving.
However, for many of us, freediving is not about the depth or length of breath hold. While these are necessary elements to create the right setting for our experience, they are not our focus. Another side is the practice of deep self awareness, excavating what needs to be cleared from the emotional debris of life. Diving is a place to celebrate a complete sense of connection between self and ocean life.
Our bodies tell us when we are not listening. Freediving is like handing our bodies a megaphone, and if we choose to listen, down there in the deep blue, our life stories may just find a way to liquify and merge with the water and transmute into the energy and vibrancy for life they want to become.