Ocean of insights

Finding wisdom in Open Water SCUBA Diving

Introduction

Back when I was a kid, I had a globe I loved to fidget with. I would play the game of spinning it full power, then stopping it abruptly with one finger. Wherever my finger would land, I'd image what it would be like to discover that place. More often than not, my destination would be in the middle of an ocean. I'd dismiss the spin and try again, until I'd land on land.

It was only much later when I started watching nature documentaries with my dad that I learned about the vast life under water. I always wondered how those documentaries were filmed. Then one day, they showed the behind the scenes. I was amazed! People could, equiped with the right clothes and tools, dive and stay under water. I wanted to be there with them, under the surface, surrounded by fish and sealife. I imagined it to be so quiet and calm. A place where humans weren't supposed to survive, became a place of exploration. All of a sudden, my toy globe, and my world view grew immensily. I wondered what this expanse would feel like and what lessons it would hold.

Okay, I admit, I probably didn’t have these profound questions back then. But I did think it was the coolest thing ever, and it sparked a profound curiosity in me. Years went by and the fascination ebbed away. The underwater world became a stranger again. I spent my travels exploring land, from mountains to caves, from beaches to lakes, but never beyond.

Traveling along the carribean coast of Colombia, I encountered the opportunity to get my SCUBA diving licence, and my old fascination came floating back up. I wanted to do it so bad, heck, I almost felt like I had to! Long story short, I did the first Open Water Course, loved it to bits, and returned two weeks later to do the Advanced Course. Over this period of time I’ve gathered 355 hours of diving, so I’m by far an expert of any kind. Yet, my time under water has taught me some valuable life lessons, that I’d love to share in this blog!

Always keep breathing

Always keep breathing! Never hold your breath. That’s the first rule in diving. The lungs need to stay in motion through the changing pressure under water. Descending causes the air in your lungs to compress, while ascending causes the trapped air to expand. Without keeping the air flowing, this can lead to lung over-expansion injuries. There are other risks as well, such as air trapping and decompression sickness. All of them stem from the same source: we stop breathing.

Breath is our life force. It’s what keeps us going. The alchemy of oxygen is vital for our body to do what it does best: survive! The continuous ins and outs, lays a foundation for the ever-changing reality of life. Through my Vipassana meditation practice I’ve learned that the intricate truth of impermanence is embodied in the simple process of breathing.

As important as we know breathing is, we tend to stop doing it when life gets difficult. Persistent thoughts, difficult emotions, or strenious activities, which are all moving energies, tend to stop us in our breathing tracks. The moments when deep breaths are the most important, we fall into shallow puffs of life. We forget about the one element that has the ability to transition us from hard to soft: from ice to water, from water to gas.

Big breath, deep life

Small breath, shallow life

You might find this blog post by the meditation app Headspace quite insightful. It delves into the topic of how shallow breathing can impact your entire body.

Follow the flow, don’t fight it

During my advanced diving course I performed a currents dive. Essentially this means that you enter the water, knowing there’ll be a current, which will carry you to another location. At first it was scary. I’d catch myself breathing hard. I was paddling continuously, trying to stay in control of the direction I wanted to go in. My instructor signaled me to observe the movement of the flora. I watched the underwater plants sway back and forth for a while. It calmed me down. I noticed how my body was moving by itself along with them. 

When the water pushed me back, I gave in and relaxed. When the water pulled me, I paddled forward. I was using the flow of the water to my advantage; allowing me to rest when there was no way, and then using that saved-up energy to propel myself forward.

This paragraph from SDI theory book captures it quite well:

The secret of enjoyable drift diving is to simply go with the flow: do not hold onto rocks or static objects, and resist the temptation to swim against the current. Drift diving is relaxed diving and once a diver gives in to the current and moves with the water, all sensations of current disappear. An experienced diver once said that drift diving in high current is like window shopping from a moving walkway. With practice, a diver can learn to use current to move with little effort and to identify spots where natural eddies and back washes allow divers to “rest” to take photographs.‘

Giving up control is one of the hardest things in life. Knowing that there’s a small slice of life that can be controlled, makes us crave that feeling all the time. It’s only by realizing that we’re on a spectrum of control that we learn that we weren’t in control in the first place. Nature is too random and abrupt for us to make sense of it, let alone tame it. I’m a firm believer that the only thing we can control, is the one thing we do next. This all starts with being in the present and taking one full step forward. If we can encapsule our entire will into this one step, we gain control and advance with purpose.

Repeating such steps, gets us in a flow-state. What appears as difficult from the outside, is child's play from the inside. We’re just executing, one step at a time, knowing that we don't need to look further ahead to find out the way.

How to slow down time

Time is your most important resource while diving. Your time underwater is limited. Your oxygen supply, body temperature, and no-decompression guidelines put you in a constricted time frame. My average dive time is about 40 minutes. I could stretch it out a bit, but not by much.

While the time spent physically underwater during a dive is limited, I have a concept that suggests we can extend this experience by shifting our internal or relative perception of time.

Imagine this as an inner time frame that can make our underwater moments feel richer and more immersive. This idea is not about overcomplicating things; rather, it's about enhancing our connection with the underwater world by mentally savoring each second, observing the subtle movements, and embracing the serenity. 

By being fully present and attuned to our surroundings, we can create a sense of time dilation, making even a short dive feel like a much longer and more fulfilling exploration. It's about capturing the essence of every moment and expanding the depth of our experiences beyond mere minutes or meters.

Basically, it's a practice that emphasizes mindfulness and the art of being in the present, transforming the way we perceive time underwater.

This concept can be applied to any situation in life. We can take mental pictures of stunning landscapes, find meaning in the silence between sounds, and savour every sip with a deep awareness of these fleeting moments. Everything is always changing, and sometimes we cling to a static state, when it should change to make space for something new to appear. This is what my blog post Iceland: an antidote to a stressful life is all about.

The expression "Fuckin’ Iceland" is when everything falls apart perfectly, in order to make space for everything to come back together perfectly. There’s no point in fighting it because in doing so, you don’t allow the flow of nature to do it’s thing.

Luckily, we can train ourselves to live the beautiful moments with a bigger intensity.

Instead of wasting time on wishing it to stay, spend it on fully living it!

Conclusion

Being in an underwater world, with its own laws and ground rules, forces you to adopt to it. The breath is everything. How you breathe, is how you live. As long as we keep breathing, we can keep growing, expanding, and exploring.

The flow of water is merciless. Whoever fights it, is immediately punished. To go against it, is to brake the laws of nature. Instead, the ocean teaches us to give in to the flow: to relax when it pushes, and drift along when it pulls. We save our energy for the moments that really matter by hitchhiking on nature's drift.

Accepting a lack of control in life allows us to sink deeper into the here and now. The energy we save goes into enjoying the precious moments with a wider scope. Awareness and gratitude for the little things allows us to expand our internal time frame. Knowing that time and experiences are always fleeting gives us an opportunity to go deeper in them. Instead of paddling in shallow waters, we get to expand the depth, layer by layer. We enrich ourselves by using our resources to the best of our abilities.

Learning how to dive has been such a rich learning school to me. More than just the physical activity, it’s been teaching me to navigate through life with more intentionality and peace.

Blog out,

Durim Morina

San Gil, Santander, Colombia

26/08/2023