Yoga Report

I came to this workshop expecting a lot. Last time I got coaching from Stig Åvall Severinsen was during the Copenhagen Dive Show and it was a personal break through to try apnea/kumbhaka/breath-hold  in water (read more about that in the blog post). Since then Stig have appeared in media a few  times and he have two new world records , the Guinness ice world record and the Guinness World Record for breath-hold . The workshop was intended for people with previous experience of breathing exercises and most people had some experience with yoga or similar . It started out with warm up exercises very similar to pawanmuktasana if you are familiar with Satyananda yoga. The intensity increased with a culmination at lunch time. I recognised a few of the practices, Headstand Shoulderstand ,Plough etc,  from hatha yoga , and on top of that he added a few techniques developed in the freediving world. The focus was as the title suggests on breathing and with quite a few practices to increase the lung capacity it delivered on the premise. I now  have some  powerful exercises to work with.

What really makes Stig stand out as a teacher is that he have combined the yoga techniques from the east with the latest knowledge in biology. It feels safe to go beyond your mental limitations when you know what effects the practices have on your body. At one point we were instructed to take a deep breath in and walk as far as we could on that single breath. He reported the times at regular intervals. I tried this some months ago and stopped at 1:10 . Now I stopped at 3 minutes and since the last time I have been training some freediving so it is by no mean a magical feat . I got dizzy and disoriented and this is the first time this year where I am close to my physical limit, or at least it feels this way. Stig  talks openly from his own experience and even if his track record is very impressive he comes across as very humble.

For me freediving is an excellent way to achieve more knowledge about the human body and I am surprised with myself when it comes to results. I do not see myself as a competitive person but it is really rewarding to add a few seconds to your personal best in static apnea for example.

I would say that this workshop is a must if you like freediving and want to improve your performance ! It is great to learn from the master directly and he patiently answered all of my questions.

I really like the combination of relaxation and challenging tasks. It felt totally safe to go beyond what I thought was my limit.

Many of us broke our personal records during this day and my neighbour added more than 2 minutes to his static apnea time.