My Freediving Journey: The Reward of Diving into Fear
If you’d have asked me a few years ago if I would ever think of myself as a freediver I would say no way. I’ve always loved the water, I’ve always done water activities and am a good swimmer but the idea of depth has always terrified me. For years even when sailing, I would tense up at the thought of there only being a few centimetres separating the boat’s fiberglass and the hundreds of metres of void beneath me. That fear is partly one of the reasons I was drawn to embarking on our sailing adventure in the first place. Because it scared the hell out of me. Something inside me felt drawn to changing that. It was my edge.
After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean on our sailboat, freediving showed up as my next edge. Lars has always loved freediving (like a weird, genuine love, no fear!), and it’s been in our lives for years. I remember him age 15 diving down in an anchorage, and buying books to geek out on equalisation techniques. It was his thing. Over the years, he kept diving and it forced me to ask myself why I wasn’t. Was it that I didn’t like it? It felt more complex and charged than that. I was simultaneously drawn to it but equally terrified. When we were living in Antibes, I decided that I wanted to change my relationship to it and started pushing myself into that uncomfortable place I had become so good at avoiding. I got more comfortable in the water, and was able to dive down to 13 metres. That was a milestone for me.
Then we lived on the boat for 3 years, and spent hours in the water. We mostly snorkelled, but diving became more accessible and so I could push myself in my own time. I decided I wanted to do a course, to boost my confidence and feel like I understood all the ins and outs, especially from a safety perspective as Lars was doing some deeper dives and I couldn’t really support him. So I completed my AIDA 2 certification and was really proud of myself, ready to stop there (deepest dive 20 metres at this point).
Lars had signed up for a freediving course in Dominica, so off we went. We entered a real freediving community there. Everyone was a hardcore freediver. And also some of the nicest, most laid back people I’ve ever met. People kept inviting me out to the platform to dive, but I couldn’t bring myself to. The platform was about 300 metres offshore (you had to swim to it), in the middle of a volcanic crater that reached 200 metres depth. My mind couldn’t help itself from freaking out at the idea of all that depth, let alone diving down into it. I felt squeamish at the idea that I was the only one not able to make it out there - and I knew it was just my mind that was getting in the way.
One evening, when we were winding down for the night in the guesthouse we were staying at, Lars asked me if I would join on the platform the following morning. I immediately tensed up and we started unpacking my fears. Lars rolled into guiding me through a meditation, in which I visualised myself swimming out to the platform, preparing for my first dive, and then actually diving down. It was a tough meditation, I struggled to picture it all without feeling stressed and emotional. It was a real practice of relaxation and of not listening to my mind’s thoughts and fears. But it also felt cathartic. It released something in me and the next morning I got up and did the swim out to the platform. I prepped for my dive and dived down to 25 metres. A new personal record. I went back out the next day, and dived to 30 metres. What was happening? I was on a roll. At the end of the week, we had plans to leave Dominica. We left onto our next destination, but we missed Dominica and diving. So we scratched all our original plans and decided to go back. We ended up living there for 2 months. I got into a real diving routine, diving almost every day, alongside some of the world’s deepest divers, and makes some good friends out there. Somehow, I had become a free diver.
By the end of my time there, I could dive to 42 metres, and had become certified as a ‘Master Freediver’ and could work as an assistant instructor. My transformation was progressive but I look back on past me and am thankful that I took the plunge and pushed myself through that discomfort. Without it, I would never have got to experience one of the most magical, wild things we can do as humans, and wouldn’t have found a new passion. Diving has given me a trust in myself and a confidence that I can take off the line. It’s is a powerful practice and ties in so many elements I already love: yoga, meditation, breathwork and of course the water, it was only natural that I would grow to love it if I let it in and got out of my own way.
