The art of holding your breath...

Those who know me well won’t be surprised when I say that I am used to breathing under water. In fact I also have a licence to kil... hem... teach it, hence when I found myself face down in a pool completely zonked out and motionless like a dead body it just didn’t seem right. Yet it was out of my choice.

It’s been just about a week since our return from the neighbouring UAE where we spent 6 whole days training to maximise our breath hold under water and learn about the physiology of diving (even more than what I know already!).

Why? You may ask. That’s the same question I have been asking myself while fighting diaphragm contractions, psychological blockage and the mild fear of drowning by my own doing. The thing is I like a challenge and I wanted to see what it is like to push my body beyond my normal comfort zone. Yes it is a little bit daunting but I guess I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie… yet adrenaline is the last thing you’d want before or during a breath hold! It's almost a form of meditation.

I had been thinking about trying it for a while so, aware that there is no free diving teaching facility yet in Oman I made a few enquiries and less than a month later we headed to Abu Dhabi to train for the 2-star and 3-star AIDA free diving certification.

Results: I still have to conquer the 3-star performance requirements (nothing for the faint hearted) but I have climbed to my 2-star status. In practical terms this means that I have managed to hold my breath for 2’15 minutes (static), swim on one single breath for 40m back and forth in a pool (banging my head a couple of times in the process…idiot!) that’s called dynamic, one of the disciplines of free diving and push myself down to 16 metres and back up on a single breath fighting contractions, mind games and an incredibly high number of jelly fish of all sorts of shapes and sizes (I still have a couple of burns) in what is known as the constant weight discipline. All in the name of fun.

And fun it is. I was a bit sceptical when I researched about free diving before going on the course. It seems that there are a lot of people talking about these mystic experiences and it all sounded a bit arty farty to me. Many refer to free diving as a personal journey.

Whatever you take from it and however you look at it, it is a personal experience that is hard to explain.

For me it was a step into a rather unfamiliar domain, mentally and physically.

The only way to truly understand it is to try it. Personally, I like it!