Apnea
Oh right, I have a BLOG....
Robin is an apneist. I'm not so much, although I have been known once in awhile to spend time underwater without a tank. In the past few weeks I have gone on a couple of freediving (Wikipedia) trips with Robin (to Tenerife and to Konstanz), and while I have been sitting on the surface waiting for him, I have been doing some thinking about the pastime.
Upon hearing that Robin (or I) freedives, a surprising number of people remark, "Sounds scary! I don't think I could do that." And indeed, it is a much less popular sport than, say, SCUBA diving (which is also scary for a lot of people). Having done both, I find freediving far less scary. For me, there's something innately terrifying about trusting my life to a set of tubes and tanks and weights and and balloons tied to my back, most of which I am probably using for the first time, and all of which I just assembled in haste while being jostled about by a bunch of other people on a boat. Not only is there the threat of quick and scary death due to equipment malfunction, but also the option of slow and painful death due to miscalculation of course, current, or bottom time. Not to mention the sheer embarrassment of bopping around on the surface like a cork when everyone else has disappeared below, or crawling around on the bottom damaging coral underneath the group, due to misweighting. Now that I've shown myself to be terror-prone, I should say that I actually do enjoy SCUBA diving, although I have found that I vastly prefer it in warm waters, where the lack of a wetsuit makes weighting issues much simpler (and where dive boat operators are more hands-on helping with gear, because of the larger percentage of bozos like me). (I have other issues with wetsuits in general, but they don't fit into this post.) But my point is, there seem to be a lot more people willing to learn a whole lot of technical stuff and put a bunch of gear on their back in order to dive under the water for 10-40 minutes, than people who are willing to hold their breath while they dive under for a minute or two.
So many fewer, in fact, that immediately after people tell us how scary freediving is, they follow it up with "Why do you do it?" Now, I don't remember ever having been asked this about SCUBA, but it happens all the time with freediving. In fact, people have come up with a variety of reasons for freediving, and in fact most people seem to freedive for one of the following reasons:
- To photograph fish. It's easier to get close to fish when they're not being scared by the bubbles coming out of your regulator (NOTE: it is not recommended ever to hold your breath while SCUBA diving).
- To hunt fish with a spear or spear gun. It is illegal in many places to hunt fish while SCUBA diving (and some people think it is easier freediving, for the same reason it is easier to photograph fish).
- To challenge yourself. There are many freedivers whose primary focus is to go down deeper and to stay down longer than they ever have before. There are even professional freedivers who compete internationally for fame and prize money, vying to set new records in a variety of sub-disciplines. These people must have a very high level of physical fitness, to be sure, but they are also competing on another front: knowing how far to push themselves. There is, in fact, a sub-discipline called "no limits", in which the diver drops down holding on to a weight, and comes back up attached to a balloon. To do well in this activity, you don't really need lots of muscles, but you do need a very good heart and lungs, and a whole lot of guts.
But there is a much simpler reason to become an apneist: it's good for you. Mind, body, and soul.
Humans, like all mammals, are actually pre-wired to do apnea diving. When cool water is splashed on our faces, our brains automatically prepare our bodies for a dive: our heart rate slows, our circulation changes to give our brain and vital organs a larger share of oxygen, and we pad our chest with blood to protect our lungs under high water pressure. Yup, even you have an innate ability to hold your breath and dive under water.
This ability is actually very trainable. For example, I can hold my breath under water for about a minute, but Herbert Nitsch can do it for over 9 minutes. Studies on Jacques Mayol, the first freediver to reach 100 meters, found that his heart rate slowed to 20 beats per minute while he was diving. Sebastian Murat, infamous for diving on empty lungs (he breathes out before he dives), has been measured at 10 beats per minute at 150 meters. This is true for dolphins, also - when Jacques Mayol started diving with dolphins, he found that they normally only hung out around 20 meters or so, and when they started following him deeper, they actually had to train to catch up with him.
I can hear you saying, sure, Taska, this is all fine for macho hunks and crazy dolphin men, but why is it good for me? Well, go ahead and try it. Take a few deep breaths (no hyperventilating!) and then just hold your breath for as long as you can. Just this once, I'll let you time it. You can look at a watch or count in your head). How long can you hold your breath? I can do a minute, but 30 seconds is fine. How long did those 30 seconds seem, in comparison to the rest of your day? Breathe normally for a minute, and then try again. This time, just listen and look around you. How many things do you see or hear in your environment that you've never noticed before?
Now imagine doing this underwater, surrounded by fish and corals, and think about how much more you will see. How much longer those 30 seconds will be. How much more life you can experience, simply... not breathing.
Why is this? Breath holding takes focus. When we're holding our breath, there's no room for senseless distractions. Stressing over tomorrow's test or interview, running tonight's shopping list around in circles in your head, wondering if that package will arrive today... it all takes oxygen. All that multitasking, all that activity in the brain falls away, and the inactivity becomes the activity. Not the inactivity of slouching on the couch in front of the TV after a long day (no eating!), but the inactivity of activating your senses while dropping all the unnecessary brain and muscle activity.
You don't have to be completely still. Try the "apnea walk": stand in front of your front door. Prepare with some deep breaths and then hold your breath. Walk down the street as far as you can before breathing again. In the meantime, notice everything around you. When you have to breath again, walk slowly back to your door, breathing regular, slow breaths. Prepare, and then try again. Can you get farther? Here's a hint: running won't help you much. It tends to take up more oxygen than it gives you in distance.
Freediving is the same way. Learning to freedive is an exercise in relaxation. Apnea is a form of meditation.
It's also an exercise in controlling your reactions to the world. Let's say you're on your apnea walk, calmly heading for your goal of the next street corner. You're ten feet away when your little sister jumps in front of you and says BOO! Do you explode and start yelling at her (not that you have the breath)? Or do you walk around her and keep heading for your goal? The same story applies if your goal is the water surface, 10 feet above you, and the sudden distraction is an annoyed moray eel whose territory you just accidentally invaded. The next time that a colleague or manager at work seriously annoys you, imagine that they're your little sister, you're holding your breath, and your goal is 10 feet away. (Or imagine them as an annoyed moray 10 feet underwater....)
Apnea is good for you because it lowers your heart rate, helps you learn to relax and focus, and makes every minute last longer. And freediving lets you visit many of the same spots that SCUBA divers visit, without all the stress and expense. You can actually do it without any equipment at all, but a nice mask, snorkel, and fins will be about $150 (more basic ones cost far less). That amount would barely get you a low-end SCUBA regulator.
A lot of current apneists spend a lot of breath obsessing over their deepest dive or longest breath hold, to the point that they will happily dive in deep, dark, cold water with only a rope and a dive watch as their guide. I think that really undermines the meditative aspect of apnea. It's nice to push your limits, but it's more fun to do that by finding out how much you can experience on just one breath. Throw away the watch, slow down, relax, look, listen - you will breathe more easily, knowing that you know how NOT to breathe.
technorati tags:apnea, freediving
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