“How important is talent in your sport?” was the question posed by the coach of a football team a few days ago. More and more often, not only companies are looking for contact with me as an apnea diver, but also athletes, coaches and clubs to look beyond their own sport in interdisciplinary workshops and benefit from the experience from another area. I reply that a good feeling for the water and a sense of well-being in the water is certainly beneficial, but talent would certainly not be decisive.
I have been a freediver for over 20 years and for eight years I have been doing nothing but teaching people how to dive with just one breath. I have seen how the sport has developed from a competitive sport to a lifestyle sport during this time. And yet I still encounter resentment towards my sport. “Too old, not fit enough, too small lungs” and much more seem to keep people from learning to dive apnea. With Relaqua I have created a program that makes the first step to freediving easier – the experience of “breathing space” without any thought of performance, because ….
The Bloodshift is an effect of the diving reflex and ensures that oxygen is saved and that there is no danger to the brain even during longer apnea phases.
“Only those who are relaxed can perform.”
Nik Linder
The fulfilling thing about an apnea or relaqua course is that relaxation is the basis for every action. Freediving without relaxation is unimaginable and therefore physical and mental relaxation is an essential part of a freediving course. “Only those who are relaxed can perform.” With Relaqua, on the other hand, the focus is not on performance, but on relaxation. Relaxation is easier to experience in the water, as this is where the diving reflex acts. If we put the face in the water, the heartbeat slows down, the vital organs, such as the brain and lungs, are better supplied with blood and the spleen releases more red blood cells. In addition, there is the reduction of the senses such as seeing and hearing. Through our eyes and hearing, our brain receives a lot of information that it has to process. In doing so, it consumes a lot of oxygen and the less “it thinks”, the more O2 is available for a longer breathing space underwater.
Abdominal breathing simulates breathing that corresponds to that of sleep, we calm down immediately. The human being is the only living being that can switch between normal breathing, which is controlled by the respiratory center, to conscious breathing. Very few people really exploit this potential.
Although I spend just as much time teaching breathing exercises today, I am well aware of the contradiction: “Why should you learn something about breathing from an apnea diver?”. If you only take a deep breath before diving, try to make as much as possible of this breath. Freedivers are very good at drawing a large vital capacity from the total lung capacity. So it’s not the size of the lungs that is decisive, but how effectively I can use it. But it’s not just more lung potential, it’s also about using breathing to relax more deeply. If you breathe more calmly and slowly, you lower your pulse. A freediver masters the tightrope walk between relaxed breathing and optimal oxygen supply.
Although breathing is the most important key to relaxation, many other relaxation techniques are practiced, including yoga, autogenic training, mindfulness meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation. Apnea training takes place not only in the water, but also on the yoga mat. Relaxation is also a skill that needs to be trained in order to ensure the basic setting for fulfilling experiences under water.
Fewer and fewer freedivers are really drawn to the depths. They are much more likely to say that they are looking for the experience of nature. Relaxed excursions in which they fly through the reef and enjoy the lightness of being. Freediving also means free of heavy equipment and includes the uncomplicated and spontaneous possibility to discover a body of water, even if there is no diving school available. Surface breaks to get rid of nitrogen do not play a role during a relaxed underwater walk on the house reef. Especially in the neutral buoyancy area at depths of up to ten metres, the abundance of colours of the flora and fauna is particularly impressive. Without diving equipment on your back, you can enjoy the agility to change your perspective while floating on your back and watch the sun break through the water surface. The peace and quiet caused by the lack of breathing sounds leads to intense experiences, especially with the large animals of the seas. Whales, dolphins and many other animals are sensitive to noise and prefer to tolerate freedivers in their vicinity rather than scuba divers.
“The experience of looking a whale in the eye can be short, but still have a long lasting effect.”
Nik Linder
Many participants in an apnea course have this threshold fear “I can’t hold my breath for long, what am I supposed to do in an apnea course”. With this logic, you wouldn’t dance, drive or learn a profession. We experience what we and our body are capable of through the guidance of a trained instructor. With the knowledge of what happens in the body and how to awaken the diving reflex, how to use breathing in a targeted manner and how to use relaxation techniques to become calmer, all this is part of the briefing. The result is almost always breathtaking, “I never thought I was holding my breath for so long and it even felt relaxed”. We get this feedback in every course and it is certainly one of the secrets of success that in freediving, an earlier sense of achievement and rapid progress lead to motivating the diver. If you are relaxed, you can hold your breath longer because the low pulse consumes less energy and thus oxygen. If you hold your breath longer, you can also spend more time underwater during this time to interact with whales and dolphins, for example.
In the apnea course, however, you not only learn to hold your breath for a long time, but also to deal efficiently with your last breath. Only with clean technology can we dive in an energy-saving way in order to consume less oxygen. A hydrodynamic and relaxed posture, as well as an efficient fin stroke ensure that you can make good progress on the one hand and save as much effort as possible on the other.
Last but not least, our head also plays an important role. For a beginner, it is unusual to feel a respiratory stimulus. Although we are very well supplied with oxygen, also due to the diving reflex, from a certain apnea time respiratory stimuli come, the diaphragm contracts – the respiratory center reports “I would like air”. This is because our breathing control does not work via the O2 level, but the CO2 level. Those who, like us freedivers, do not breathe, do not breathe out the Co2, which leads to respiratory stimuli. With these comes the mental cinema and an inner critic who constantly wants to protect us from this situation “today is not your day, this is unpleasant, this is dangerous, this makes no sense” and much more. If you enter this phase of freediving, you train your resilience, the psychological resilience to survive difficult situations. Especially in challenging situations, directing attention away from the stress-triggering experience and the negative thoughts associated with it is a successful way. The attention can then be directed to the piecemeal relaxation of the body with the help of the body scan from mindfulness meditation. The motto is: “You have to think anyway, then think of something relaxing”. Automatic and negative thinking must be avoided in freediving, because real relaxation is only possible if it involves body AND mind. If the attention control does not work, then self-talks are very successful in top-class sports. Here you talk to yourself in an instructive and motivating way: “Come on, there’s still something to do”, “stay calm – you’re doing great”.
I started freediving over 20 years ago. I only dealt with breathing, meditation and relaxation techniques because it was the way to successfully dive apnea. If you can relax to the point, you consciously and unconsciously use these skills in everyday life. Challenging situations and stressful times can be mastered much better with the skills learned, which leads to more calm and balance. Follow my example and give yourself a breather.
Author and trainer at the Keidel Therme: Nikolay “Nik” Linder
Nik Linder is considered the best-known freediver in the German-speaking world. In his career, he can look back on numerous world records. Above all, his world records in distance diving under ice are considered the most spectacular and extreme records in freediving. Apart from the physical exertion, the freediving under a closed ice cover is above all a mental challenge due to the only two degrees cold water in higher mountain lakes.
Today, Nik is mainly an apnea instructor, author of books and gives lectures on the topics of “freediving”, “breathing techniques” and “stress management”. He has developed his own relaxation method “Relaqua”, which he passes on in many courses and workshops.
Courses with Nik at the Keidel Therme :
ICE BATHING & HOLISTIC BREATHWORK
