do you remember what it was like to hold
your breath underwater in complete
darkness and for what seemed like
forever who remembers that you see you
all done it everyone it was your first
breath hold and had no real beginning
and it ended with your birth and your
first breath we forget that don’t we we
forget that we came into this world
holding a dress so how would you like to
– that quiets liquid weightless world
shall we go should we take a free dive
together okay relax and put yourself
lying on the surface of the ocean and
gazing down into the blue watching those
flickering beams of sunlight converging
on a point far far below you where
you’re going is far beyond even that –
where those those beams have diffused
and – at best a kind of pale pale light
you suck in a last critical breath of
air it’s a breath that’s gonna have to
be your life support system for the next
several minutes your body jackknifes
upside down your arms sweep the water
and pull you under and straight away you
feel that the pool of your own buoyancy
tugging you back to the surface holding
you back asking you do you really want
to go if you do you need to swim this
quickly and powerfully to overcome that
force but be careful don’t use too much
energy because this is the phase of the
dive where you burn the most oxygen your
legs kick your arms sweep the water and
the cycle repeats gradually the surface
lets you go inside your body your lungs
are compressing due to the pressures of
water column above you and by 10 metres
they’re already half the volume that
they were on the surface meaning that
the average density of your body has
increased when that density matches
exactly the density of the water outside
your body then you’re neutrally buoyant
if you stop here you would float
suspended in a mobile so when you
continue on beyond this point it’s like
you have to leave a part of yourself
behind you leave behind your history
your hopes your regrets your worries
from this moment on there is only your
present self in the present moment
you’ve even left behind the concept and
the memory of breathing itself of being
terrestrial and you continue with this
conviction that you are aquatic you’re
like a rocket that sheds its payload and
continues on only with what is necessary
for the journey you see the list of
yourself you take down the lighting of
the load two more longer slower easier
strokes and you’re coasting downhill now
you can shut off the engines from this
point on you’re negatively buoyant so
your arms fall to your side’s kind of
tucking in they’re like a like a Gannett
as it plunges towards the towards the
water every muscle in your body who
relaxes
except for maybe your your feet which
act like tiny little rudders to keep you
on a vertical track what you’re doing
free-falling I mean the reality is that
it would kill you if you only do it long
enough but at the same time it’s the
most beautiful part of the dive where
you feel like you’re being accepted and
absorbed into the ocean even your
eyelids droop and cover your eyes every
second or two they may blink open to
check your position next to the rope
every second or to your tongue pumps a
little bit of air up into your middle
ears to equalize the pressure there your
lungs are compressing further still
losing more volume and creating a kind
of a vacuum effect that’s collapsing
your your ribcage collapsing your
bronchi and your track hair and pulling
your diaphragm up underneath your
ribcage and there’s a dry training
exercise that I can do which replicates
us and gives you an idea of what’s
thanks to just hits a swallow my lunch
again but so this as well as this what
is also happening as your your spleen is
contracting releasing fresh red blood
cells into your circulation your
capillaries in your muscles are also
contracting shunting the blood away from
your muscles so it’s forcing them to
work anaerobically which conserves
oxygen for your brain which has
meanwhile feeling the narcosis due to
the high pressure of gases and in your
lungs your capillaries there are swollen
and dilated from the negative pressure
so there’s there’s nothing about what’s
happening in your body that resembles
any other sport or activity but why
would it what you’re doing is perhaps
the most alien thing a human body can do
sure if you take a spacewalk than you
you’re off the planet and you’re
weightless but a freedive transforms you
it’s dark now it’s a kind of penumbral
Twilight it doesn’t really matter
there’s not much to see down here anyway
there’s very little to hear either
someone could be letting off fireworks
on the surface and you wouldn’t hear it
at best all there is is that kind of
dull thudding of your heartbeat which is
slowed to less than half its resting
rate it’s so slow that there’s this kind
of eerie pause between the two phases of
the beat so instead of being boom boom
boom boom boom boom it’s more of a bling
of course you’re on your way towards a
certain depth as a target a a white disc
at that depth that holds the tags you
have to retrieve and bring back to the
surface as proof of your journey but
here’s a catch you cannot in any way
anticipate your arrival at that point
you have to freefall descend with a
conviction or with no expectation or
point of arrival you see a terrestrial
being would become more tense and
agitated the deeper it descends but
that’s not you your aquatic remember the
ocean is your home and the deeper you
merge with it the more relaxed you
become when the the base plates or your
alarm and your dive computer finally
wake you up out of that River II then
you grasp the Rope of one hand it’s the
only time you’re allowed to touch it you
grab the tag and your body swings around
by 180 degrees and now might be a good
time to ask yourself the question why
are you here
how are you doing this you know why
don’t just stay up on the surface and
I’d like to have a crack at answering
that question myself and my suggestion
is that a key word is surface the
disease of our times is that we live on
the surface we like the Platte River a
mile wide and an inch deep steven
pressfield’s of that right now all of us
here
I suspect glued to the surface of the
world
gravity glues doesn’t it and we’re stuck
on this two-dimensional plane that
extends over hill and veil of a lake and
sea separating the the solid and liquid
from the gas the incompressible from the
compressible form from formless this sum
this boundary this interface is where we
spend our lives
I climb down from a mountain I swim
across a light maybe walk through a
forest on the other side and not once
have I
parted from that boundary so there’s
there’s a good reason why we say of
course free is a bird or a free as a
dolphin but we never say free as a
Hedgehog or free as a giraffe so in rare
moments we escaped that surface to soar
through the air but we’re always kind of
dependent on something that’s outside
our bodies aren’t we like a glider a
parachute or a set of skis to land on
the only other way that we can escape
the surface is down underwater and
swimming and other aquatic sports they
don’t really cut it because you’re
always staying on that interface but the
boundary level and swimming you you’re
raising your limbs to take advantage of
the fact they move quicker through the
air than the water free diving is the
only fully aquatic sport where we’re
completely submerged below the ocean
enveloped in something other than gas
and without a tank of gas on our backs
it’s unencumbered immersion it’s the
only true way to escape the surface and
it turns out below the surface is a
pretty cool place to be right I mean 95%
of our planets ecosystems are down there
underwater we evolved from the oceans
five hundred and thirty million years
ago it has seahorses red-lipped batfish
Dumbo octopus everything you want but
here’s the thing it’s not just our
planet that has a surface layer we have
this kind of surface boundary in our
minds that separates the rational
conscious mind from the subconscious
below and we spend most of our lives
above that boundary in this virial
untethered medium of rational thought
while below there’s a quiet deep well of
it has its own activity of course down
there but it all happens without our
awareness can’t see into it we don’t
know what’s happening but things come
out of it we don’t know how deep it is
but we’ve never been to the bottom of it
and we can dive into that subconscious
sea in the same way that we would dive
into the free dive into the physical
ocean of our world and of course the
physical origin of our species traces
back to the ocean below the surface and
in the same way our minds have evolved
from below the surface from the
brainstem up adding parts and building
above the surface into rational thought
and awareness so it’s not just the free
divers then who go below the surface
anyone who practices meditation or
mindfulness or even takes mind all
substances is taking trips below into
that still sea and sometimes I almost
feel like a free dive you know I almost
feel like I’m cheating or taking a hack
or a shortcut because your environment
and a free dive is already a still ocean
you know a hundred meters down you can’t
think about politics or laundry or
whether you said the right thing if all
that belongs to a different world that
you’ve left behind up there on the
surface you become stillness immersed in
stillness and in that void what is
revealed is I believe one of the most
beautiful experiences it’s an awareness
of presence and presence in awareness
it’s pure consciousness it’s the one
thing that we may never ever be able to
explain with science no matter how deep
you go of course you still always got to
come back up and I lift you guys hanging
down there in the dark depths
about to tackle that long swim back up
to the surface sorry about that
but this is going to be the most
physical part of the dive you had that
free ride down and now you’re gonna have
to pay for it on the way back up this is
where all the poor begins
have you gone too deep have you
stretched that umbilical cord to the
surface out too far to the point where
it’s it’s snapped into and now you don’t
have enough oxygen to come back up
stop need to stop that right there
thoughts themselves are brainwave
frequencies that consume oxygen and
their creation and negative thoughts
they breed like gremlin rabbits until
they swarm all over your mind if you
panic here and now you’ll consume all
the rest of your oxygen in a flash
instead you can count the strokes give
your mind something to do in the same
way that you would give a baby a
two strokes three strokes three strokes
how many more strokes to go no don’t
start that over again you cannot have
any expectation or point of arrival
there is only this stroke this kick this
now this now this now suddenly up your
thoracic muscles contract expanding your
ribcage it’s a involuntary breathing
reflex trying to suck air into your
mouth but your mouth and your glottis
stay clamped shut while you’re
underwater so no water passes and
instead your diaphragm is yanked up
under your ribcage it’s kind of like a
punch in the gut same you need to
breathe soon don’t look up though you
still won’t be able to see the surface
and if you look up you’ll break your
streamlining as well as stretch out your
tract hair which is being kind of
collapsed by the negative pressure this
is the most delicate and dangerous part
of the freedive so it’s when your safety
divers come down to meet you and escort
you through those final metres the light
is returning finally and with it so as
your buoyancy allowing you to glide for
longer on each stroke as that air in
your lungs re-expanded of you and for
those last moments you enjoy the
sensation of flying through liquid
you’re about to wake from this dream
from this journey below surfaces below
the waves and turbulence of thoughts
you’re about to return from a realm of
pure consciousness and when you do when
you take when you suck in that first
breath you will do so not just as a
terrestrial hominoid return to its
element but also equally as an aquatic
take a breath now taste it as if it were
your first and hold on to that awareness
of the depths as you return to life
above the surface this is why I free
dive thank you for coming on the journey with
your breath underwater in complete
darkness and for what seemed like
forever who remembers that you see you
all done it everyone it was your first
breath hold and had no real beginning
and it ended with your birth and your
first breath we forget that don’t we we
forget that we came into this world
holding a dress so how would you like to
– that quiets liquid weightless world
shall we go should we take a free dive
together okay relax and put yourself
lying on the surface of the ocean and
gazing down into the blue watching those
flickering beams of sunlight converging
on a point far far below you where
you’re going is far beyond even that –
where those those beams have diffused
and – at best a kind of pale pale light
you suck in a last critical breath of
air it’s a breath that’s gonna have to
be your life support system for the next
several minutes your body jackknifes
upside down your arms sweep the water
and pull you under and straight away you
feel that the pool of your own buoyancy
tugging you back to the surface holding
you back asking you do you really want
to go if you do you need to swim this
quickly and powerfully to overcome that
force but be careful don’t use too much
energy because this is the phase of the
dive where you burn the most oxygen your
legs kick your arms sweep the water and
the cycle repeats gradually the surface
lets you go inside your body your lungs
are compressing due to the pressures of
water column above you and by 10 metres
they’re already half the volume that
they were on the surface meaning that
the average density of your body has
increased when that density matches
exactly the density of the water outside
your body then you’re neutrally buoyant
if you stop here you would float
suspended in a mobile so when you
continue on beyond this point it’s like
you have to leave a part of yourself
behind you leave behind your history
your hopes your regrets your worries
from this moment on there is only your
present self in the present moment
you’ve even left behind the concept and
the memory of breathing itself of being
terrestrial and you continue with this
conviction that you are aquatic you’re
like a rocket that sheds its payload and
continues on only with what is necessary
for the journey you see the list of
yourself you take down the lighting of
the load two more longer slower easier
strokes and you’re coasting downhill now
you can shut off the engines from this
point on you’re negatively buoyant so
your arms fall to your side’s kind of
tucking in they’re like a like a Gannett
as it plunges towards the towards the
water every muscle in your body who
relaxes
except for maybe your your feet which
act like tiny little rudders to keep you
on a vertical track what you’re doing
free-falling I mean the reality is that
it would kill you if you only do it long
enough but at the same time it’s the
most beautiful part of the dive where
you feel like you’re being accepted and
absorbed into the ocean even your
eyelids droop and cover your eyes every
second or two they may blink open to
check your position next to the rope
every second or to your tongue pumps a
little bit of air up into your middle
ears to equalize the pressure there your
lungs are compressing further still
losing more volume and creating a kind
of a vacuum effect that’s collapsing
your your ribcage collapsing your
bronchi and your track hair and pulling
your diaphragm up underneath your
ribcage and there’s a dry training
exercise that I can do which replicates
us and gives you an idea of what’s
thanks to just hits a swallow my lunch
again but so this as well as this what
is also happening as your your spleen is
contracting releasing fresh red blood
cells into your circulation your
capillaries in your muscles are also
contracting shunting the blood away from
your muscles so it’s forcing them to
work anaerobically which conserves
oxygen for your brain which has
meanwhile feeling the narcosis due to
the high pressure of gases and in your
lungs your capillaries there are swollen
and dilated from the negative pressure
so there’s there’s nothing about what’s
happening in your body that resembles
any other sport or activity but why
would it what you’re doing is perhaps
the most alien thing a human body can do
sure if you take a spacewalk than you
you’re off the planet and you’re
weightless but a freedive transforms you
it’s dark now it’s a kind of penumbral
Twilight it doesn’t really matter
there’s not much to see down here anyway
there’s very little to hear either
someone could be letting off fireworks
on the surface and you wouldn’t hear it
at best all there is is that kind of
dull thudding of your heartbeat which is
slowed to less than half its resting
rate it’s so slow that there’s this kind
of eerie pause between the two phases of
the beat so instead of being boom boom
boom boom boom boom it’s more of a bling
of course you’re on your way towards a
certain depth as a target a a white disc
at that depth that holds the tags you
have to retrieve and bring back to the
surface as proof of your journey but
here’s a catch you cannot in any way
anticipate your arrival at that point
you have to freefall descend with a
conviction or with no expectation or
point of arrival you see a terrestrial
being would become more tense and
agitated the deeper it descends but
that’s not you your aquatic remember the
ocean is your home and the deeper you
merge with it the more relaxed you
become when the the base plates or your
alarm and your dive computer finally
wake you up out of that River II then
you grasp the Rope of one hand it’s the
only time you’re allowed to touch it you
grab the tag and your body swings around
by 180 degrees and now might be a good
time to ask yourself the question why
are you here
how are you doing this you know why
don’t just stay up on the surface and
I’d like to have a crack at answering
that question myself and my suggestion
is that a key word is surface the
disease of our times is that we live on
the surface we like the Platte River a
mile wide and an inch deep steven
pressfield’s of that right now all of us
here
I suspect glued to the surface of the
world
gravity glues doesn’t it and we’re stuck
on this two-dimensional plane that
extends over hill and veil of a lake and
sea separating the the solid and liquid
from the gas the incompressible from the
compressible form from formless this sum
this boundary this interface is where we
spend our lives
I climb down from a mountain I swim
across a light maybe walk through a
forest on the other side and not once
have I
parted from that boundary so there’s
there’s a good reason why we say of
course free is a bird or a free as a
dolphin but we never say free as a
Hedgehog or free as a giraffe so in rare
moments we escaped that surface to soar
through the air but we’re always kind of
dependent on something that’s outside
our bodies aren’t we like a glider a
parachute or a set of skis to land on
the only other way that we can escape
the surface is down underwater and
swimming and other aquatic sports they
don’t really cut it because you’re
always staying on that interface but the
boundary level and swimming you you’re
raising your limbs to take advantage of
the fact they move quicker through the
air than the water free diving is the
only fully aquatic sport where we’re
completely submerged below the ocean
enveloped in something other than gas
and without a tank of gas on our backs
it’s unencumbered immersion it’s the
only true way to escape the surface and
it turns out below the surface is a
pretty cool place to be right I mean 95%
of our planets ecosystems are down there
underwater we evolved from the oceans
five hundred and thirty million years
ago it has seahorses red-lipped batfish
Dumbo octopus everything you want but
here’s the thing it’s not just our
planet that has a surface layer we have
this kind of surface boundary in our
minds that separates the rational
conscious mind from the subconscious
below and we spend most of our lives
above that boundary in this virial
untethered medium of rational thought
while below there’s a quiet deep well of
it has its own activity of course down
there but it all happens without our
awareness can’t see into it we don’t
know what’s happening but things come
out of it we don’t know how deep it is
but we’ve never been to the bottom of it
and we can dive into that subconscious
sea in the same way that we would dive
into the free dive into the physical
ocean of our world and of course the
physical origin of our species traces
back to the ocean below the surface and
in the same way our minds have evolved
from below the surface from the
brainstem up adding parts and building
above the surface into rational thought
and awareness so it’s not just the free
divers then who go below the surface
anyone who practices meditation or
mindfulness or even takes mind all
substances is taking trips below into
that still sea and sometimes I almost
feel like a free dive you know I almost
feel like I’m cheating or taking a hack
or a shortcut because your environment
and a free dive is already a still ocean
you know a hundred meters down you can’t
think about politics or laundry or
whether you said the right thing if all
that belongs to a different world that
you’ve left behind up there on the
surface you become stillness immersed in
stillness and in that void what is
revealed is I believe one of the most
beautiful experiences it’s an awareness
of presence and presence in awareness
it’s pure consciousness it’s the one
thing that we may never ever be able to
explain with science no matter how deep
you go of course you still always got to
come back up and I lift you guys hanging
down there in the dark depths
about to tackle that long swim back up
to the surface sorry about that
but this is going to be the most
physical part of the dive you had that
free ride down and now you’re gonna have
to pay for it on the way back up this is
where all the poor begins
have you gone too deep have you
stretched that umbilical cord to the
surface out too far to the point where
it’s it’s snapped into and now you don’t
have enough oxygen to come back up
stop need to stop that right there
thoughts themselves are brainwave
frequencies that consume oxygen and
their creation and negative thoughts
they breed like gremlin rabbits until
they swarm all over your mind if you
panic here and now you’ll consume all
the rest of your oxygen in a flash
instead you can count the strokes give
your mind something to do in the same
way that you would give a baby a
two strokes three strokes three strokes
how many more strokes to go no don’t
start that over again you cannot have
any expectation or point of arrival
there is only this stroke this kick this
now this now this now suddenly up your
thoracic muscles contract expanding your
ribcage it’s a involuntary breathing
reflex trying to suck air into your
mouth but your mouth and your glottis
stay clamped shut while you’re
underwater so no water passes and
instead your diaphragm is yanked up
under your ribcage it’s kind of like a
punch in the gut same you need to
breathe soon don’t look up though you
still won’t be able to see the surface
and if you look up you’ll break your
streamlining as well as stretch out your
tract hair which is being kind of
collapsed by the negative pressure this
is the most delicate and dangerous part
of the freedive so it’s when your safety
divers come down to meet you and escort
you through those final metres the light
is returning finally and with it so as
your buoyancy allowing you to glide for
longer on each stroke as that air in
your lungs re-expanded of you and for
those last moments you enjoy the
sensation of flying through liquid
you’re about to wake from this dream
from this journey below surfaces below
the waves and turbulence of thoughts
you’re about to return from a realm of
pure consciousness and when you do when
you take when you suck in that first
breath you will do so not just as a
terrestrial hominoid return to its
element but also equally as an aquatic
take a breath now taste it as if it were
your first and hold on to that awareness
of the depths as you return to life
above the surface this is why I free
dive thank you for coming on the journey with
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