This amazing GQ photograph showing Alexey Molchanov starting his free dive bespeaks the notion of Zen in describing a sport demanding both physical prowess and mental transcendence at the same time.
Like other activities in which the sublime is sought, danger is an animating feature. Blackouts are frequent, especially at shallow depths, even for the most skilled divers. Pressure, which builds as one goes deeper, can rupture the soft tissues of the ears, throat, and lungs if it's not properly managed. The risks are deceptive. There is a temptation to go deeper before one is ready, which means that even the world's best tend to bite off only incremental gains in depth. There are no shortcuts in freediving; no cheat codes to water pressure, buoyancy, and gravity. At the surface, after reacquainting with the air, there can be loss of motor skills, uncontrollable shaking, blackouts, blood. Death is rare, but ever present. At this same competition in the Bahamas eight years ago, a young American from Brooklyn who was quickly ascending the ranks of the world's elite divers (perhaps too quickly, some say) died in this very cove, above this very blue hole. Safety protocols are always improving, but the specter lingers. It is not a stretch to suggest that when we humans deliberately cut off our access to oxygen, and then exert ourselves in athletic performance, we are inviting disaster, or at least tempting fate. And yet this is what it's all about. When we tempt fate in this way, our bodies and minds surprise us. This is the allure of the practice of freediving.
There is a moment not much deeper into the dive when the body realizes that it is not getting oxygen the way that it usually does. This is, in part, the effect of the elevated carbon dioxide in the system. Bodies react differently, but among less advanced divers there is often an involuntary panic that sets in, convulsions or contractions; an internal spasm by the cells and alveoli, which scream for fresh air. And yet, if you pass through this traumatic phase, on the other side there is one of those unlocked secrets of the body: more oxygen. If pushed to its limit in this way, the body flips a switch, part of the mammalian diving reflex, like toggling to a reserve tank of gas. It is just one of the body's many extraordinary automatic mechanisms for staving off death—drowning, asphyxiation, brain damage, whatever—and one of the mechanisms that freedivers train to exploit. Blood begins to flow in from the extremities to the core, to the lungs and vital organs, drawing limited oxygen away from less critical body parts to those necessary to sustain life. Alexey can feel the capillaries in his lungs expand and the capillaries in his extremities constrict. A warming occurs all over. A bear hug from the depths.
Read the entire
GQ piece to learn why Zen is so important to the concept of Freediving
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