Yoga Report

One way to understand the greatness of an achievement is to replicate it, or rather try to replicate it. That is the reason I started the practice of free-diving. When I struggle to get past 3 minutes under water I think about the guy who held the breath for more than 11 minutes under water. What makes him different from me ? I feel the pressure down at 3 meters and that is roughly 1.3 times the Mean sea level pressure, MSLP. The world record in free diving is more than 200 meters down and I wonder how the human body can handle a pressure which is roughly 20 times what I experience in my everyday life ?

The more I study, the more I realise the risk  involved . When Enzo Maiorca dived down to 50 meters the doctors considered it impossible and they were sure about his death.   At 50 meters the pressure is 5 times the MSLP and the doctor thought that the chest would implode ( It is interesting to note that we have to go to 5,486 meters to get down to 0,5 bar, which is half of the MSLP).  Maiorca survived the depth due to the mammalian diving reflex and more about that later. What made him do the dive ?

The mammalian diving reflex is triggered when cold water, below 21 degree Celsius, hits the face and there is a great pressure.There are 3 changes in the body:

a self portrait I did in 2008.

• Bradycardia – when cold water hits the face the heart rate slows down ten to twenty-five percent
• Next, peripheral vasoconstriction. When under high pressure, induced by deep diving, capillaries in the extremities start closing off, stopping blood circulation to those areas. Fingers close off first, then hands and feet, and ultimately arms and legs stop allowing blood circulation, leaving more blood for use by the heart and brain.
• blood shift -When this happens, organ and circulatory walls allow plasma/water to pass freely throughout the thoracic cavity, so its pressure stays constant and the organs aren’t crushed. In this stage, the lungs’ alveoli fill up with blood plasma

Example:

When  Mayol broke the 100m barrier in 1976 he was monitored by scientists. Tests showed that during this dive his heart beat/heart rate, HR decreased from 60 to 27 beats/min. A normal healthy HR at rest is around 60-80 bpm and for top athletes it is lower. Tour de France cyclist Lance Armstrong has a resting HR around 32 bpm.

Jacques Mayol was the one who introduced yoga to freediving. Many Yoga poses have their inspiration from animals and their behaviour. Mayol took yoga a step further when he studied dolphins and especially a female dolphin called Clown. By Imitating Clown, he learned how to hold his breath longer and how to behave  underwater.

In the hatha yoga tradition the breath hold is a very important practice and there is a whole area of practices called Pranayama. Pranayama is the science of controlling the prana, energy through breathing exercises .

“the one who controls his breath is the ruler over his mind and body”

according to Prana, pranayama and prana vidya by Swami Satyananda Saraswati

“”the word kumbhaka means “vessel”. It implies holding or retaining something. In pranayama this term is used to describe retention of breath. There are three types: antaranga kumbhaka or internal retention, bahiranga kumbhaka or external retention and kevala kumbhaka or sponaneous retention. This last occurs when the breath automatically ceases, no effort being applied. Many authorities believe that the practice of kumbhaka alone constitutes the real pranayama. When the breath stops completely, or when there is an almost limitless extension of kumbhaka the state of dhyana or samadhi can occur. Inhalation can be described as an active, positive breath and exhalation as a passive, negative (in polarity ) breath; so it can be said that khumbhaka between these two represents transcendence of duality.”

Could we say that the current record holder in breath hold is a guru ? Static Apnea is  a free-diving discipline where the participant holds his breath for as long as possible. The world record is  11:35 minutes  and that is a quite a long kumbhaka !