Going to the depths of me.
Freediving as a practice of coming home to my body
You know those meditations or hypnosis prompts where they ask you to find your safe place? For many years I could not seem to find it… I would sit with a therapist or guided audio and it would start the journey into my subconscious, always with that same prompt, “find your safe place…” The idea was that it was usually someplace in nature, so I would strain my mind to dig deep into any time or place where I felt safe. I struggled. Eventually what I tended to do was make up some kind of resort-like place, usually on a beach with clear blue water ahead of me. But the truth was I never really felt safe and so oftentimes I would pretend I had figured it out and just fall asleep (literally) or sit awake and annoyed until the session was over. I knew I had things in my past that made “safety” a hard thing to come by (or even make-up) but it wasn’t until I started immersing myself fully underwater that it clicked. My safe place was not some resort or special mountain or forest.
My safe place was underwater…
It was in the muffled silence that came when water filled my ears and dulled out the human voices and terrestrial chaos. My safe place was the sound of my own heartbeat that immediately started to slow as soon as my face touched the water. (An actual physiological response called the mammalian dive reflex). All this time I had thought that there was something wrong with me. Something worrisome about my inability to find safety on land, to feel “home” on the surface. But all this time I had forgotten that I was far more than just a land dweller. That, like other mammals who were semi-aquatic, there was some ancient (and fetal) part of me that knew a place that was somewhere quieter, somewhere less dense. That my very first home was in fact fully underwater. There had been no safer place than in the warm waters of my mother’s womb. In that contained environment with its familiar muffled sound of ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum… The sound of a heartbeat. Something I rediscovered when I started freediving and something that has been a sort of homecoming ever since.
The freediving thing had come up a few times over the years. I had a mild fascination with watching videos on Instagram of these mermaid-looking divers with their long fins. I was curious about trying it out but knew it would come to me when I was ready. It was the beauty that captured me, but I had no real urgency to seek it out. The traditional “freediving” courses didn’t speak to me and I had a hard time breathing on land as it was. I had been a snorer for many years. Mouth breathing my way to more and more anxiety. I knew I had sinus issues or some kind of deviated septum but it was not until I actually went to check it out that my nose (and world) started opening up. What a life-changing experience when you can actually breathe! Turns out I had a polyp the size of an olive living in my sinus cavity which had pretty much blocked my entire right nostril and the left was also obstructed due to my deviated septum. I had essentially been getting less than half the amount of air through my nose that I should have, and therefore spent a lot of time compensating for that lack of oxygen with mouth breathing - or panting. Panting that had biased my body toward a sympathetic (fight or flight) state.
All I can say is, that once the polyp was removed, the deviated septum straightened, and the surgery healed, my world began to shift quite drastically. I could breathe and therefore I could relax - and therefore I could think. It is all incredibly connected and so, when a few months passed and I got word of a private women’s freediving trip to Durban, I knew immediately it was time. I booked my flights the very moment it was confirmed and felt this calm excitement about finally opening myself up to this fascinating world.
Our trip was hosted by the most divine instructor who instantly felt like a soul brother with his deep respect for nature and the wilds. A man who came from a competitive surfing background but who had discovered freediving as a spiritual practice that offered an incredible opportunity for connection. It is this foundation that I keep coming back to, especially today as a competitive freediver (more on that coming). Like yoga, freediving can go both ways, it has a sports component that sees you chasing meters and time (very seductive for the natural athlete in me), and it can also be used as a practice for personal development. A practice that connects you to yourself and to a whole new world that lives just below the surface.
John, my first freediving instructor’s philosophy, is that of “enlightened activation over blind determination.” An invitation to approach every dive with pristine awareness and ease. For many of us “a-types” or athletes, we know how to push (we like the push), we seek the edges and we wanna go further, faster, harder. For a lot of my life, I have fought. Fought for my freedom, fought against conformity, fought my partners, my family, the culture… gone to my limits, and then extended them a little further. Pushing. Forcing. Sometimes breaking. (Oftentimes burning). I was a proud activist, ready to be placed on the front lines. A proud achiever, always first at the finish line. A rebel fuelled by rage and pride, determined to right the wrongs of the world.
The wrongs in my own life.
When I started freediving, I was faced with a choice.
Was I going to take that same energy into my dive?
Into the ocean? Into this whole new environment that had never harmed me. That did not care about my righteous pursuit for freedom. That had no interest in my edges or how far I could extend them. An environment that was in many ways a total mystery to many of us still today. An infinite space, void of the human dilemmas I had spent so much of my life trying to fix (or fight).
And so on our very first practice of free immersion (a discipline in freediving that involves you pulling yourself down a rope), I immediately felt a sense of peace. Lying on my back, I was invited to relax completely. The beauty of freediving is that the more relaxed you are, the better your dive will be. And so I let my body be held by the ocean beneath me. Breathing gently, I let go of all the stories, allowing my mind to move aside and my body to prepare for the descent. When I felt ready, I took one last big inhale and turned over onto my belly, counted to 3, and duck-dived my way into the deep blue sea…
A rush of ease moved over me.
Pulling myself down the rope, I recalled that quiet muffled familiarity…
The ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum… of my slowing heartbeat.
Leaving my fears at the surface, I let my mind be emptied. A feeling of safety washed over me. A coming home to a not-so-unfamiliar place that left me curious and curiouser, wandering what lay a little further down the line… With my consciousness now fully in my body, connected to every subtle sensation, I pulled down the rope a little more until that urge to breathe became too big to ignore. I paused on the rope, brought myself into an upright position, and let myself ascend back up to the surface.
What I appreciate most about freediving is that there is no pretending. There is no performing. As soon as you duck your head under the water you are faced with yourself. Like the water’s ability to reflect, as soon as you start your dive a mirror to your inner world is instantly revealed to you. And it is either genuinely calm and at ease or it exposes a resisting and contracting part of you. A part of you that does not trust. That is desperate to get back to the surface. For so many of us, we are trained to move away from discomfort. To avoid it or disassociate from it. In freediving, you are invited to meet it. To build your capacity to be with it. To face the fear head-on. To meet the tension and see where you can find more ease. It is a profound somatic experience that reveals the most authentic expression of your nervous system state.
A humbling map of how you are doing, really.
And how those around you experience you, really.
And so on our second day of diving when we ducked our heads underwater and were met with a large pod of dolphins, I witnessed the truth of John’s teachings and the real reason why I was there. John embodied the peace that he taught and so attracted marine life to him. His connection to his body, and thus the body of the ocean and all her animals, was intact. It was authentic. Years of surfing and now diving humbled him to know how to speak their language. How to make genuine connections. I was astounded at these majestic animals who were so willing to play with us, dance with us, trust us. It was a day that restored my own connection. Faith in myself and my body. Faith in my ability to remain calm in what could be perceived as a rather “scary” or unfamiliar environment. With this newfound reverence, I was able to meet the ocean at that same frequency. Meet these beautiful creatures with that same level of ease.
When we are in flow with the rhythms of nature, and our own true nature, magic happens. Miracles that come in the form of twenty squeaking and clicking dolphins dancing with their human friends. Humans who are reclaiming their full potential. A potential that includes an underwater superpower that has always been a part of them, but a part that they had perhaps been too busy on the surface to explore.
That night when we went for a walk on the vast open beaches of Sodwana Bay to witness further miracles of sea turtles laying their eggs at the very same place they had once upon a time been born, I cried. I let myself be washed with emotion, wet with the tears of joy and revelation. I cried for the part of me that finally felt a sense of safety. I cried with relief knowing that there was a place I could go to to escape the density of this life. The weight of what it means to be human. I cried for the forgetting. For the disconnect to our true nature and the pain it had caused so many of us. I cried for the seas and the part of us that had separated ourselves from this planet’s beauty. I cried for the revelation that I had this potential locked up inside of me. This ability to find serenity in the depths of the deep blue sea.
I recall a line from a beautiful writer, Philip Shepherd that really struck me,
“If you are divided from your body you are also divided from the body of the world, which then appears to be other than you or separate from you rather than the living continuum to which you belong…”
Freediving has united me with my body again. Walking on the beach with sand in my toes and red eyes from the salty waters both inside and outside of me, I was brought home. For the past few years, I was immersed in a world of online living. Glued to a screen, I had spent so much time building these social media communities, but the truth is I felt empty.
Freediving demands an awakening of sensation. A bodily awareness that I did not realize I was so starved of. If you escape your body in freediving, you risk dying. Unlike other sports where you can push a little harder, and go a little further, in freediving, if you are not paying attention, or if you push past what is actually true to your body’s abilities, you will black out.
And I have come close, twice.
I have come to face every part of me that wants to override my true needs.
That is so used to pushing past pain into a disassociated state of survival. A state that is totally separated from my body. Living on a screen, I did not need to pay attention to the subtle signals that were happening inside of me. I had forgotten what it was like to know how I was doing, really. We get so good at performing. At posting the shiny facades. The surface stuff.
But what is happening a layer deeper, what is actually going on below the surface?
Freediving has reactivated my instincts. It has awoken me to the subtle sensations and to a deeper self-awareness. When we are not living in our bodies, we are floating above them, in our minds. Apathetic to the horrors that go on around us. Numb to the cries that come from our bodies, our human families, our lands, oceans, and fellow living beings. Believing ourselves separate from the “living continuum to which we belong…” And whilst my current freediving journey has found me training in pools for competitions that are now taking me to other parts of the world, the ethos of this practice (and passion) will forever remain the same:
A practice of getting to know me.
Of cultivating enough safety to go a little deeper…and a little deeper…
Deeper into my own body…
Coming home to my body, and thus to the body of this beautiful world to which I belong.
Image by the amazing Natalie Karpushenko