[jome]

I'm by no rights an expert on this, but it sounds to me like you propably subconciously open the epiglottis right when you push the air with your tongue. For me it was really hard to learn to control that. I used to do a sort of "half-frenzel", where I would push air with my cheeks and throat, epiglottis closed, to the nose. But as soon as I brought the tongue into play, I would open the epiglottis and not notice it.

The fact is, if you have your epiglottis closed, mouth closed, nose pinched and soft palate open, the air has NOWHERE else to go, except the right place (nose/etubes). So either your epiglottis or softpalate must be in the wrong position. They are very easy to miss: you think you got it where you want it, but once you start to play around with the tongue, you release them and don't necessarily realize it.

It's sort of like learning to play the drums: the hardest thing in the beginning is to learn to let different limbs go in different rythm. They will want to move simultaneously...But all it takes is some patience and practise.

The breakthrough for me (picked up from a post here in db), was to make a sort of "unngh" sound (the way you would pronounce the "ng" part of a word such as "ending"). While moving the tongue. For a while, I had to make this funny noise every time I tried to do a "pure" Frenzel or mouthfill, but after a while I learned to control it conciously...I just had to realize what was wrong first.

For a long time I thought I was doing a frenzel, but trying a mouthfill on heavy negative packing revealed the truth: every time I tried to move my tongue, I opened my epiglottis and the air would literally get sucked to the lungs...It may be helpfull to try this, but be warned: don't play around with negative packing in the pool alone. Always have someone watch you carefully and take it slooooow. Not only can you black out and get "lung squeeze", but the sensations can be so uncomfortable (if you aren't used to it), that I've seen (and felt) it cause allmost a panic-like sensation even in the pool. Needles to say it could lead to nasty results.

Hope this helps!