Yoga Report

Crashing heart rate from 57 to 33 in less than a minute – Walt Johnson

Pranayama Stages described by an authentic Himalayan Yogi

You can find yoga sold as a package to suit different activities. Yoga for rowing, yoga for running and yoga for health to name a few.

In my honest opinion I think you would get more out of joining the local yoga club for a beginners class. Just make sure the teacher is the real deal with at least a 200 hour certification.

If you want to be beautiful or successful with yoga I have to burst the bubble and state a few facts. Beauty is mostly genetics and you will not get to the cover of Elle with yoga alone. It can give you a better posture and more deep breathing and this is about it.

Yoga as a tool to become successful in a sport or in a career is a bit tricky. People doing hardcore yoga in India usually give up there belongings and travel around. Are they successful ?

Sure we can train our muscles and get ourself a nice house but everything we do for an egoistical purpose will be washed away when we die. When we truly realise that all we do is to build castles in the sand will hold on to it ?

To develop in life you need friction. This is summarised in the following verses:

When I Asked God for Strength
He Gave Me Difficult Situations to Face

When I Asked God for Brain & Brown
He Gave Me Puzzles in Life to Solve

When I Asked God for Happiness
He Showed Me Some Unhappy People

When I Asked God for Wealth
He Showed Me How to Work Hard

When I Asked God for Favors
He Showed Me Opportunities to Work Hard

When I Asked God for Peace
He Showed Me How to Help Others

God Gave Me Nothing I Wanted
He Gave Me Everything I Needed

Author: Swami Vivekananda

I arrived early at the pool. For some reason I decided to lay down and relax on a bench close to the water. I felt this calmness that I feel at home when I meditate and now it was like the whole place was more friendly and open to me. I visualised how I swam slowly and relaxed for the whole length of the pool, close to the bottom. Then I decided to do an apnea walk at the side of the pool to see how far I could walk, that proved to be 75 meters. We did the usual warm up in the pool and I was a bit surprised when the coach told us to do a 8 x 50 dynamic apnea since the longest we have dived so far is 25 meters. I get a reaction of panic very shortly into my dive and I have no clue on how to manage the whole length. Then this sensation fades away and I do 20 more meters without problems and then I want to see how much more I have to go. As soon as I see the finishing line, far away in the distant, I get depressed. I decides to hang in there until I get some signs of the breathing reflex. All of a sudden I am at the end of the basin and I am happy that I made it. Then it struck me that this is just 1 out of 8. With some struggle I made 7 more and I am quite surprised that it was possible !

I think it helped a little bit that I visualised the dive beforehand. I think it also helped that I watched quite a few videos on youtube with freediving. I got a tip, increasing the amplitude of my dolphin kick, and as soon as I followed that I got a better flow.

Just after shaving I did three breath holds in succession. First one was  2’00” and I thought this is my limit today. Decided to go through my whole body from the inside on the second attempt to make sure I was relaxed and got 3’00”. In the last try I stared at the watch and got 3’20” . If you are interested in this kind of training there is an on-line tool you can use:

freediving tables

When you get into more advanced sequences of nadi shodana pranayama there are a few things that can happen. When you feel the need to breath the tendency to counting faster is there. I think the use of a metronome can correct this.

I found an on-line metronome which I set to 60 bpm.

The sequence I do now is a 10:40:20:20 which I clocked in at 12 minutes and 22 seconds. If the timing is in seconds and I follow the metronome strict this should take me 15 minutes. I stress especially when breathing out and I found that out with the metronome ! I will stick to this sequence until I have it more stabilized.

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 !

Since I have intensified my cycling, cardiovascular training I will calculate an average. I used Google maps to count the distance. Back and forth to swimming stadium 2 x 11 kilometres. Language school 4 days a week x 2 x 6 kilometres. Yoga place 2 x 8 kilometres. 22 + 48 + 16 = 86 kilometres  / week . No wonder I am a bit tired right now

I know an apnea walk is supposed to be measured in distance but I walked for 1:10 minutes today as I was holding my breath I also held my breath for 1 minute with as little air as possible in the lungs. I want my muscles to be accustomed to anaerobic conditions.

photo: Stig Åvall Severinsen

Finally I had the chance to meet the 4 times world champion Stig Åvall Severinsen. We met in the Copenhagen Dive Show and of course I was a bit nervous to meet this legend. In connection to yoga I have done a bit of  breath retention and my fascination for free-diving started with the Big Blue where free-diving is pictured as a very beautiful and spiritual practice. Stig has an athletic build and comes across as a very friendly person . He talks with passion about breathing and how important it is for us. During  the lecture he walks us through the breathing process and we are encouraged to try some techniques. Straight after the lecture it is time to put on  the wetsuit as I am one of the guinea pigs for the demonstration.  Static Apnea, the art of holding the breath under water proves to be quite challenging. The wetsuit is really tight and there are people watching us from all around the pool.  Stig guides us through the session with relaxation techniques. At first I am tensed and the wetsuit is holding me in a very tight grip. The scuba mask is forcing me to breath through the mouth and this feels really awkward.  During the first dive there are a lot of thoughts circling around in my head “all the other guys are experts” ” just stop the practice and give up”. I notice these thoughts and I decide to get to the point where the breathing reflex starts and then go up.  Before the second try we do a meditation together.  The second try is much better and I feel the breathing reflex but it does not bother me that much. I hear the referee say 3 minutes and I decide to stay in there for a while. I am quite happy with 3 minutes and 25 seconds in my second try. I have done breath retention in a meditation posture before but this is cold water and with all kinds of distractions.

He really sparked my interest for free diving and I can see myself doing this in the red sea with just a pair of shorts on and a diving mask. Definitely something I want to try again !

Something that really scares me is deep water and I remember one time when I was snorkelling in the Red Sea and the water was clear but I could not see the bottom. That really scared me and maybe free diving will the therapy I need ?