How to 'Flow' in Freediving?

[Kars]

Hi everybody,

After 4 months of little freediving, I set out to get back to my previous skill level, and work to reach some new goals.

I also strife to become an freedive instructor in the near future. I think that through this very special, wonderfull and complete helix sport many people can learn much out the world and themselves, ultimately contributing to a more understanding and pleasant society.


How to Flow in Freediving?

In order to get a better understanding over what we freedivers experience in our most immerse freediving experiences, diving in this harmonious almost abstract mental state called "flow", I want to find out what does and help to induce this 'Flow'.

My guess is that it has a great deal to do with:

1) - Hypnotism
2) - Mindset
3) - Environment

Please join me in on my little quest for finding out how to get into flow in Freediving by sharing your ideas and observations.

Thank you!

Love, Courage and Water,

Kars

 

[dannybuoy]

Susan A. Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly have written a book called 'Flow in sport' about that subject.

Natalia Molchanova describes what she does here:

Ôðèäàéâèíã | Attention deconcentration in freediving

But it's a hard thing to find, this flow. It's undoubtedly good to train for it, but i think you should also train to go without it when it doesn't come.

 

[hteas]

kars,
I've been working on flow a lot during training. I'm using my 2 nights a week for pool time for DNF (kicking only). What works best for me (at this point, at least) is a combination of simple relaxation and the "feeling" of the effect of each stroke of kicking. I can always tell when I get to the right combination because time doesn't matter and everything is flowing.
My only preparation is relaxing as I start a length, and then feeling whether the kick is working.
Like Israel Kamakavivio'ole (a really great Hawaiian musician) said "It's the feeling"

So, I guess, don't think, feel.

Howard

 

[Kars]

Thanks Howard, allow me to summarise your words with the following points:

1) Relax before the dive.
2) Focus on feeling the water.

Daan, thanks for the Natalia Molchanova text, from that text I got this:

3) Slow down metabolic processes.
4) State of Hibernation.
5) Minimize energy consumption.
6) Keep an eye on your organism condition, "the now".
7) Lower anxiety prior to the dive.
8) Attention Deconcentration, uniform distribution of attention on the whole perception field.

I also can add a few points:

9) Rhythm, breathing - movement - heartbeat - all 'in tune'.
10) Association - programming
11) Posture
12) Comfort

Have you girls and guys got some more?

 

[Erik]

Kars you know the answer to this. I know you do. "Above all else, stop the mind". Train and train to stop the mind- everything else will fall into place. And you also know I mean Everything!

Warmly,
Erik

 

[Erik]

I'm going to reword my statement, because it's important. Don't try to stop your mind, rather step outside it and change your attention to something deeper. The mind will continue but you let it be.

 

[fcallagy]

My yoga teacher in his best broken english during relaxation phase
"try not to think of something"

 

[watts]

In my experience a higher state of flow comes from when youve trained your disipline to the point where it turns from concious to subconcious and with high motivation and commitment to the dive you focus all your energy on it and forget about everything else. With clear visualization and i think a higher predive anxiety or as like to call it excitement this state is something that i strive for over time , depth, distance. My favorite dives have been where the hardest part of the dive was the days leading up to it and by the time i dived it was like i was just along for the ride.

nat.....Great thread

 

[DivingDane]

Was wondering when you weregoing to chime in Watts! hahahaha

thread topic very close to your heart!

but i agree with Watts! Flow i think is achieved when the dive no longer becomes a conscious effort of seperte parts of a dive but a continuel experience which is automated by our sub conconscious practises. making the dive "flow" from stage to stage.

i think it is what EVERY diver strives for.

DD

 

[Kars]

Ok, today was for me a very good day in the pool.
The day before I sweated out some 'illness' in the afternoon in a 4 hour 'nap' that was planned to be 1. With a reasonable good night I was fairly rested this morning. So I enjoyed a pot of herbal tea, and two bananas and prepaired some food for after the training.
Carrying my monofins, suit and weights I cycled to the public pool 7 KM away.
Being better rested than usual made me already more relaxed as I put on my suit.
When breathing up for my first dive, usually the best dive of the day, I concentrated on breathing through the 'crown chakra', very slowly trying to feel the right breathing speed, hitting that vibration that gets me into a trance and let's my body 'light up'. For your information, when I was reaching my 6' in static some years ago, I just quit doing warmup dives. I could at the time turn my body 'on' through breathing with the right speed, rhythm and visualisation. When I'm relaxed laying on the surface and I do this, my body reacts by giving me a sensation of lightness (weight and radiant white light) starting with the lower legs, and creeping up. After some more time the arms light up to.
Today as I took some more time to get centered and relaxed, I noticed my legs were getting this 'lightness' sensation (!). I do not recall I had it standing up in the water, so that's a first
Ok, after I think about 4 minutes I exhaled and inhaled slowly, made a lazy duckdive and let myself fall down to the bottom, - 3m. As usual I wear only a noseclip, because it's much more immersive and nice to feel more water flowing over one's face. I did not wear my D3, but I quess I relaxed on the bottom for about 2' - maybe some more. The contractions I got were gentle and not a strong distraction. A nice moment to start 'flowing' and softly jumped off the bottom forward, feeling the water flow past my face, enjoying the sensation of flying an falling, arms in a limp fasion forward for the landing, eyes closed, just feeling. after the landing another jump, and a few others back to the point where I started minutes ago. When I returned I was still very relaxed and it felt I could go on with plenty of margin, but to safe energy I decided to slowly go up after this long 'flow dive'. I did not record the time but my quess it was close to 3' or maybe even a bit more. When comming up I did notice the bloodshift effect as the fluid returned to the limbs. A great start of the day, week!

The following dives were also very nice, comfortable, long and relaxing.

After about 1,5 hours of lazy diving I was getting a little cold, so like my divebuddy I also did some surface swimming. I choose to do breathold monofin without fin(s) - good for technique and warmth. Swimming just the width of the pool (12,5m) I noticed 1 lane breathhold was becomming easy, so I decided to try for two. When I surfaced I noticed some bloodshift again! (hoeray!) - great! I figured I may be able to do 3 lanes, so my buddy swam allong and I did 3, though close to samba, but still a nice effort. According to my friend with a divetime of about 2'. What I noticed here was that the close to samba surfacing did cover up most of the bloodshift sensation of this surface dynamic.

What I learned today that being rested and having an empty belly is very important.
So I'll add:

13) Being rested

Thank you Erik, Feargus, Watts, Diving Dane for your support and helpfull caring words.
I hope we can add some more points in the future, because like DD said "i think it is what EVERY diver strives for." is indeed what makes freediving so special, flowing endless deep blue.

 

[DivingDane]

CONGRATULATIONS!

it seems many of us had a great training weekend!

for the first time in a long time i actually enjoyed swimming in the pool! easy training session in the sun empty stomach, no time frame just stretching and breathing in the sunlight, slide into the pool and do a comfortable bigger dive.

some simple 50m apnea dives with turn, push off and armstorke. what a magic saturday.

to cap it off up to our favourite lake for some constant weight training, again beautiful weather SUN out no clouds, still water in the middle of the rainforrest.

i'd been having problems with my equalisation for the last while which was limiting my depth for quite along time.

Pranayama, stretching and some visualisation on the grass infront of the lake soaking up the sun.

paddle out the 50m or so, slide the rope down to target depth. relax on the surface, EASY warm up dive long and slow to 20m, small static hang, cruz back to surface.

slo everything down again, begin mind sequence before target dive, relax and breath, again enjoying the sun on my back, could have easily fallen asleep! bend over 1 armstrong and begin soft focused undulations, 20m and glide..............., 28m Mouth fill, hold equalisation open until the plate, turn and go, everythingis feeling great relaxed effortless focus, safety (watts) meets me at 15m slow down the kick, 10m stop kicking 1 armstroke and glide to the surface, hands on the bouy 3 hook breaths, and surface protocol!

it was perfect one of those magic dives that just felt effortless, like i was along for the ride but someone else was doing all the hard work. the entire dive "FLOWED"

without doubt one of the best depth dives of my life!

DD

 

[Kars]

GREAT story, with some photo's ready for the Deeperblue frontpage Björn!

Now you've experienced (again) why I find flow in freediving so important

So I guess we can add Sunshine to?
Less distractions / solitude also help to focus and flow.

Thank you Björn!

 

[Erik]

like DD said "i think it is what EVERY diver strives for." is indeed what makes freediving so special, flowing endless deep blue.

I would suggest that everything we ever do is based on that quest, unconsciously in earlier in life then consciously later on... maybe. Freediving certainly opens the window to deeper states of consciousness.

Warmly,
Erik

 

[cdavis]

Getting into flow is something that is very "activity specific" for me. In the pool, I can get into flow fairly often, feels almost like I am just observing the dive, along for the ride and its real comfortable. Seems to depend on a combination of warmup time, breathing technique and lack of other stimuli, like talking to my buddy. I can concieve of how to make that work when line diving, but how do you guys get there when sight seeing or spearing? Those activities are so outward directed that flow seems impossible to me. I can still get relaxed enough for some very good dive times, but the flow feeling eludes me.

Connor

 

[azapa]

i always try to crack a smile on my best dives. maybe it's not a Chesire cat beem, but I'm smiling on the inside. The sad part for me, is that I very, very rarely disconnect during the dive. I sometimes wonder if that I because I spear so much that I continualy monitor what is around me? Even on statics, which should be an ideal "zoneout" opportunity, i just end up thinking the whole thing through. Room for improvement for me!

 

[cdavis]

There is another kind of flow, or is it really the same thing, that active athletes get into, where they talk about time slowing down and total focus on whatever the game is. I get like that body surfing. Things are happening way too fast to think about what to do, automatic reaction is the only option. Sometimes time does slow down and it feels like a long time up on top of a wave when it is only a second or two. Seems like those two things are different, the second closer to spearing. Any thoughts?

Connor

 

[Erik]

. I can concieve of how to make that work when line diving, but how do you guys get there when sight seeing or spearing? Those activities are so outward directed that flow seems impossible to me.
Connor

There's the crux of the matter amigo. Analagous to anyone's search for enlightenment: easy to be One with the universe etc when sitting on a mountain top, but how to achieve that in a traffic jam, late for the airport or when you can't pay the rent?
The answer is training. Learning to focus on the true "You", not the mind/body, but the You that is underneath everything you believe and experience. It's actually very simple but takes some dedication and practice.

So there are a few different levels here: intense focus on the experience which leads to a certain pleasant level of freedom because there is no longer the babbling mind being paid attention to. Beyond that is the immense freedom that comes from keeping focus on the real entity that you are, while the mind and body carry on with whatever it is they are doing ie: hunting, resulting in a pure, wonderful experience.

Adrian could probably speak to this with great wisdom!

Cheers,
Erik

 

[cdavis]

I think I need to observe some demonstration of all this. You(Adrian can come too) need to come dive with me for a week or two.

Connor

PS: that's and invite!

 

[Kars]

i always try to crack a smile on my best dives. maybe it's not a Chesire cat beem, but I'm smiling on the inside. The sad part for me, is that I very, very rarely disconnect during the dive. I sometimes wonder if that I because I spear so much that I continualy monitor what is around me? Even on statics, which should be an ideal "zoneout" opportunity, i just end up thinking the whole thing through. Room for improvement for me!

Well Apaza, I'll bet you're in constant 'searching mode' having your eyes wide open and analysing every change in your view.

Maybe try a different approach.
Like martial arts fighters, don't focus, just stare at the centre in a sort of inward state. Raise your treshhold level to 'wake up' and only go for 'the big one' that will 'present itself' when your not looking (searching) for him. Swim slowly with ONE rhythm, let yourself dissove in the water.

When 'the one' appears, don't go into 'fight-mode' - take your time to exhale and inhale partially (FRC) and just fall to the location where you both will meet. As most spearfishers know, fish do sense the 'intention' of the spearfisher. So maybe change that one into 'gratitude' for the Neptune's offering to you?

Maybe when you get good at it you can write a book called "The Zen of Freediving"

 

[Alixir]

I recently read a piece about how cannabis use seems to help certain skilled athletes get into the "flow".

...To investigate the effects of cannabis use on performance... how this relates to the psychological state of flow known colloquially as being “in the zone” or “in the groove,” and... that regular cannabis use [produces] should facilitate getting into this zone and what this should mean to the novice versus skilled athlete.

The article, which is interesting and rather long, mentions several skilled athletes notorious for their cannabis use including Michael Phelps. No freedivers (unsurprisingly) - although ex-wrestler Rob Van Damm is quoted as saying:

I’ve found that agility and gracefulness are not affected, only attitude in a positive way. On the other hand, I do believe that a slight measure of respiratory stamina is sacrificed, meaning the performer may breath just a little bit harder when intoxicated — which is offset by being in great condition. If the competition is a breath holding contest or maybe even a long distance run, it is possible that a lot of toking could work against you, but I also believe that the amount of consumption is a huge factor at that point, meaning one or two tokes (prospectively) may benefit that same runner.

Not that I'm suggesting it's something to be tried and tested, but it's no real surprise to learn that many top athletes are tokers :t

I think if you want to get into "the flow" then you must behave accordingly not only during training etc, but constantly, all the time. It's like meditation: a meditative state of mind does not imply sitting cross-legged and chanting "om" for an hour or so, it means doing it all the time; being constantly aware of our mental state; trying to free our mind from everything except this one, unique, present instant of existence.