fins
Unplug.
Every dive starts on the surface. You take your last breath, leave the noise of the day up there and switch off the prompter in your head.
I first tried freediving in December 2023. Once I understood that you need to unplug in your head, I held my breath for over four minutes.
Back then I turned around at twelve metres and wondered how anyone stays relaxed past a hundred.
The urge to breathe.
About a minute in, the urge to breathe arrives. It is carbon dioxide building up. You still have plenty of oxygen.
Let the alarming pictures in your head go by. It feels strange because you expect imminent doom and nothing is happening. Then it turns into meditation, a way to calm down the body and mind together.
Move smoothly and the urge comes later. Trust the water and it stops pushing back.
The voice in your head.
Deeper, out in the blue, with tens of metres of water above you, your body and mind get scared and broadcast that fear. You hear it as thoughts in your head, in a voice that sounds exactly like yours.
The work is to settle your nervous system and tell it the truth: nothing is happening, all is well.
Letting go.
You are really diving into yourself, and you go as deep as you can relax and let go.
You cannot dive angry, hurt or irritated: each of them eats your air. Freediving is letting go of everything. Every dive should feel easy, and so should life.
I left every grudge I carried on the seabed off Racha Yai. Free as in freedom.
The wall.
Sooner or later you hit a wall. I have hit them in depth and in breath-holds. They feel different, but underneath it is the same thing: anxiety, fear, existential dread.
The instructor test includes a hundred metres underwater on one breath, in the pool. Seventy-five you can force. The last twenty-five open up only when you let go of the fear.
I pushed off from the edge of the pool thinking: this is the worst part, and nothing is going to happen. I came up at a hundred, and the wall inside me was gone.
All that fear was only sensations in the body. The wall is a process, and you learn to pass through it.
Free fall.
Past the wall comes free fall. You stop swimming, and the depth carries you down on its own.
In May 2026 I passed my last instructor test in Bali, and the pressure was off. Forty metres became light. I stopped counting and controlling.
We live wrapped in a thin film of fear. In Bali it burst. I fell head first and nothing happened. No fear, no discomfort, no me. Only the water, gently holding me.
The same in life.
Then you surface and breathe. Let go of everything and you rise on your own.
Now I mostly dive with students, and every dive is a lesson. Depth no longer worries me, so I scan my body for whatever is still tense.
Everything the water teaches works on land too: find what is still tense and let it go. It was all in my head. It was only discomfort.
And you start to feel free, inside yourself and inside your life.