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It's problem solving with my mind, it's problem solving with my body, with the environment, and really being able to control what's going on around me and not letting it affect my dive. It's a huge mental sport. I think it can really help a lot of people. I used to suffer a lot from anxiety and it's definitely helped. I don't really have it so much anymore. ere's a huge degree of mind control and that's crucial to being able to hold your breath for a long time and know that you're going to be OK. What are the different forms of competitive freediving and what's your focus? When you discuss freediving, there are three types. One type of competition is held in an Olympic- sized pool and you have athletes who are going to compete in three disciplines. One being static breath hold where guys are holding their breath for, what I believe is the world record now, over 11 minutes. You've also got no limits freediving where you have someone like Herbert Nitsch who has been down to approximately 214 meters (700 feet). In no limits you have a sled, with a drop weight. You hold onto the sled and just plummet a line on one breath. Once you get down, you have to inflate a balloon that brings you back to the surface. I'm not into that. It's very extreme. Finally, you've got your normal freediving championships all over the world. It's a group of athletes coming together and the disciplines are: constant weight where the athlete has a monofin; no fins where the athlete does breaststroke all the way to the bottom and all the way back to the top; then free immersion is where the athlete uses a line to get down and back up again. It's completely based on mental and physical ability. You don't have someone helping you up the line or someone offering you oxygen at the bottom. You're completely on your own which is why I love the sport. It's entirely reliant upon self-belief and knowing that you are capable of incredible things. What goes into the training regimen for someone like you? How do you prepare yourself? Essentially, as a freediver training to compete, you're training your body to maximize your oxygen and your mind to be still and in the moment. e key to freediving is relaxation. Before I enter the water for a competition or training, it's all about having mental control. You have to practice a deep sense of meditation that nothing can hurt you. You trust yourself and you trust your body. We're mammals. We're meant to freedive. We have something called the bradycardia dive reflex which is an evolutionary adaptation that we have from our ocean ancestors. ese adaptations are seen on a larger scale in aquatic animals like otters and dolphins. It's a series of adjustments that happen to our bodies when we're submerged in cold water, and some of those adjustments can reduce our heart rate by 10 to 30 percent. Once your heart rate drops, your metabolism slows to the rate that you use oxygen. When you've been freediving a while, for instance, my heart rate slows down to about 50 percent. It helps me enter a deep meditative state and that comes with just trusting your ability to maintain that breath hold. It's very euphoric. You feel like a mammal; you feel like a fish. It sounds so crazy but I love when I've been training for over a week straight and I am so used to the feeling of holding my breath that I don't think about it anymore. I just cruise the ocean floor, 20 meters (65 feet) down with no breathing apparatus, I might swim through a little cave—it's awesome. You don't have the urge to breathe because you've transformed, you're like a real underwater mammal now. Your small blood vessels constrict, your heart rate slows, your facial nerves transmit information to the brain which then activates a vagus nerve which then causes bradycardia—this is all the dive response. P H O T O B Y K A L I N D I W I J S M U L L E R V U E N J . C O M 95

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