Freediving in Fiji

*A baby black tip reef shark learning to hunt in the shallows. This one is 40 cm long. No breath holding needed for this photo – I was sitting in <1m of water. Drawaqa Island, The Yasawas*

Years ago, our family did a scuba course in Turks & Caicos. Our instructor was a military dude whose jaw looked like it was made of poured concrete. He was not gentle or encouraging. He reassured us several times that one small mistake underwater and we would die. My kids were unphased but I was pretty sure that trying to breathe underwater would feel like suffocation and I’d have to tap out.

But the first time I dropped in, I loved the feeling of rising above the reef or dropping headfirst down the wall following a turtle or shark. It felt like flying. It was as if I went from a fear of needles to discovering the glories of mainlining crack.

And more than a decade later, I’ve discovered my new crack.

Free diving is diving on one breath. I thought it was only for people who spearfished or competed. But then I saw a photographer who could hang out on the reef taking pictures, managing to compose a shot in one breath and I was curious. And it was the old adage that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

At LiquidStateFreeDiving, I met Neelam and I immediately trusted her. I told her I wasn’t concerned with completing deep dives or long breath holds, I just wanted to develop a comfortable feeling by giving up a couple of minutes of what has been a lifetime of breathing 12-16 times a minute. I wanted to shake the extreme discomfort I had with holding my breath. It wasn’t so much fear of suffocating, it was the aversion to any pain. She assured me that it was just a mind game. Long before your oxygen level drops, your body responds to the increased CO2 levels and sounds the alarms. With experience of higher CO2 levels, breath holding gets more comfortable and the mind and body chill out.

In the first water sessions, I can only compare the experience of holding my breath for a prolonged period to an oncoming panic attack–something I experienced when I had acute PTSD–my crazy work and my crazy past life contributing equally. And of course, at that moment, I was safe. I was standing on the sandy bottom with my face in the water. Neelam was so patient.

With practice, it did seem that my brain learned that I still had loads of oxygen circulating. It chilled out quite a bit and the panic really did abate. Near the end of session, we hung off a dive buoy and I prepared for each dive with 3min of floating with my snorkel in my mouth, taking long slow breaths, and then when ready, I took the biggest possible breath, pre-equalized my ears, removed my snorkel and duck dove down, following a weighted line.

In the end, it all went better than I imagined. I dove 20 metres (65 feet) in one breath, and the trippy Zen feeling that comes from a day of slow deep breathing lasted into the evening. I’m definitely hooked.