Static as sport, or art form?
I don't like static apnea, except when it's short or enjoyable.
For every competition I have to persuade myself that it will be over before I know what I've done....
And yet, sometimes it's pure art.
The French team in Ibiza and at many other competitions seemed to enjoy it, coming up with smiles on their faces, wagging their fingers at the spectators as if to say, "there's more to this than you think."
The art comes when you've slowed your body down, your muscles are like jelly and let yourself slowly ease into the water. Minutes pass before you feel anything, your mind wanders, you watch the shifting filigree of moving water on the bottom of the pool, voices bounce off the surface, sometimes punching through and reveberating underwater.
The contractions come but then it is a simple task to accomodate them, shush them, since everything else is erased by the concentration it takes to ignore your body. I think of it as a Zen koan, a mantra of convulsions.
Here's the danger, the singularity of your mind and the absence of input makes it easy to slip beneath consciousness. But most of the time, you remember to persuade your mind back into the realm of air and breathing.
For me, this happens only once and a while and these special apneas are not necessarily the longest ones.
Sometimes, I'll hold my breath in public places--just long enough to hear my heart thumping in my chest and to listen to the sounds around me when I really need to listen. On the bus, in a park, at the beach. Or talking with a friend (but so they can't tell I'm doing it).
But overall--I wouldn't be sad to see static go from competition.
Pete
Only 18 days left....
