Freediving experience

This week, for the first time in my life, I was about to try freediving. It consumed most of my mental energy outside of my day job, and I think I have some interesting takeaways, apart from the actual physical act of diving.

Freediving is more than just submerging underwater. The whole experience and preparations are a fascinating journey. There are so many things to understand about your body that you don’t think about when you live your day-to-day life. The first thing that amazed me was how prepared we humans are to dive and do things underwater. I was stunned to learn that when your body detects that you are about to dive, it changes things like your heart rate. Additionally, the breath-hold experience and realising how long you can stay under the water without any risk is an interesting discovery. We all have a lot of undiscovered capabilities that are below the surface of our consciousness and are there to be unfolded once we need them.

While preparing to dive deep, I realised how important concentration is. Freedivers use a technique called body scan to relax their bodies, thereby conserving precious oxygen for activities that require it. I guess in coding, we have the flow when we feel everything goes great and the solution comes to our mind without effort. To achieve this, I believe we can employ similar techniques that focus on our mindset and the issue at hand, and begin to disregard the environment. I get into a similar space pretty often, even while writing this text at the moment. The more you do it, the more natural it becomes. Unfortunately, nothing comes without a price. Tunnel vision at work is acceptable for coders, but the risk of overlooking crucial communication can be significant. I have tried the Pomodoro timer in the past, which helped me split my time into focus time and break/communication time. I think it is a brilliant idea, just being consistent with it is a bit hard. I believe that in everything you do, you need to stop and look around before you go too far or before something significant happens next to you, and you do not realise it. Also, not everything is worth the flow. When creating a habit to get into the zone, consider the conscious judgment of the situation and whether it is worth ignoring everything around you. Sometimes, small, unimportant things can capture your focus, and you don’t want them to. At least I don’t. And this is something I’m personally working on to create a habit of always getting into it voluntarily, not by default, without thinking.

Anyway, back to the freediving experience, I’m looking forward to going deep into the ocean, but unfortunately, due to the bad weather, I will need to wait another week. But with all that, I’m already in the experience. Discovering the limits of my own body and mind is a fantastic journey beyond freediving.