Awakening the Heart of Dolphins
The Secrets of Free Diving
Dive in one breath, and you encounter yourself. This is the essence of why free diving is called underwater meditation.
The year is 1957. Miami. A robust 30-year-old man with rich black hair and a thin mustache enters the aquarium. His name is Jacques Mayol, an editor for the French newspaper “La Floride Française” and a correspondent for Radio-Canada. He has been assigned to report on the first underwater surgery performed on a grouper living in one of the tanks. In his autobiography, “Homo Delphinus,” written 43 years later, Mayol reflects, “Unbeknownst to me, I was about to take a decisive step that would completely alter the course of my life at that moment.” Little did he know that on that day, he would also never imagine descending to 100 meters as a free diver 19 years later, and 31 years later, making his presence known worldwide in Luc Besson’s film, “The Big Blue.”
Inside the aquarium, Mayol walks onto the catwalk above the main tank where dolphins reside. He had seen dolphins before, first in the Red Sea when he was seven years old, sailing from China to France with his family. Leaning against the ship’s railing, he silently observed the dolphins approaching the ship. “But what moved me the most were the intelligent eyes of the dolphins, their eternal smiles, and the almost human-like sounds of their breath. (Omitted) Nevertheless, I intuitively felt a message in their gaze and smiles. I felt that dolphins were like brothers living in the sea.”
Learning from Dolphins
Mayol’s encounter with those mystical feelings returned on the fateful day at the aquarium. Standing alone on the catwalk, a female dolphin named “Crown” leaped out of the water. The trainer, seeing this, confirmed Mayol’s feelings, saying, “Clown has never behaved like that with visitors before.” He added, “It’s obvious you caught her attention.”
This phenomenon has been confirmed in research. Dolphins are mammals with highly developed neocortex, capable of self-recognition and experiencing emotions similar to humans. They can feel affection, consciously build friendships with humans, and are even capable of rescuing drowning individuals, sensing the fear and distress of other beings and wanting to help those in trouble. In captivity, dolphins experience loneliness, and isolation and confinement can lead to physical and mental reactions such as depression and psychogenic gastric ulcers. When captured, dolphins, like humans with traumatic experiences, show signs of post-traumatic stress.
“Even if captive dolphins form some kind of group, they are usually composed of randomly selected individuals,” says Mateusz Ciechowski, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Marine Ecology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. “They are killed by longing for family and friends within the pod or by the stress of being separated from them. That’s why the aquarium’s clown, tired of unsuitable companions, could sympathize with Mayol.”
Mayol knew about this, but at the time, there wasn’t much discussion about the happiness of captive animals. What practical skills could be taught to dolphins? What use was there in commanding them to do foolish things? Can humans truly love them? Afterward, he answered his own questions sarcastically, “We are taming and enslaving them for our pleasure. Yes, of course, within the limits where they are useful to us. But is this love?”
Driven by such thoughts, he thought, “I need to meet dolphins and hold my breath underwater in my territory.” Starting by breaking the aquarium rules, during lunch breaks without shows when his boss was eating, Mayol would discard his work clothes, jump into the pool with only his swimsuit, mask, and snorkel, and swim with the clown. “I was in her home, but I had nothing to teach her. On the contrary, I wanted to learn various things from her. She taught me to hold my breath longer every time I dived, to sink my body, to be swayed by the movement of the water, and to integrate myself completely with the water, moving slowly, effortlessly, and efficiently. She taught me how to go breathless underwater, just like a cat behaves on land. What she taught may seem trivial, but it was very important. Thanks to these lessons, I was able to walk the path that led to a 100-meter dive later.”
At first, Mayol and the dolphin would surface every 30 seconds. Eventually, they started competing to see who could hold their breath longer. 40 seconds. 1 minute. 1 minute 10 seconds. 1 minute 30 seconds. 2 minutes. 2 minutes 30 seconds. Sitting at the bottom of the pool with crossed legs, he meditated. 3 minutes 30 seconds. Swimming two laps in the pool in a single breath and swimming 150 meters with fins. “I became less of a land human and more of a water human,” he would later say.
Mother Sea
Jacques Mayol’s ability to hold his breath for such a long time was due to what is called the “diving reflex,” a physiological response also used by dolphins, seals, and otters. It occurs when the mammal’s body stops breathing with its lungs. This reaction is particularly strong when holding the breath underwater. It reduces heart rate and restricts blood flow to muscles and internal organs, reducing oxygen consumption. This allows for prolonged endurance underwater. In the case of dolphins, approximately 10 minutes. For women, it’s 9 minutes and 3 seconds, and for men, it’s 11 minutes and 35 seconds. The official records for static apnea, recognized by AIDA International, are held by the late Natalia Molchanova from Russia and Stéphane Mifsud from France.
Humans perform the diving reflex for the first time at birth. Marcin Baranowski, a physiologist at the Białystok Medical University and a free diver, explains, “During childbirth, there is a moment when the child experiences oxygen deficiency as the blood flow to the placenta is temporarily interrupted due to uterine contractions. The body protects itself with the diving reflex, sending oxygen-rich blood to vital organs, namely the heart and brain.”
From the moment a child is born and takes its first breath, the diving reflex weakens with each passing year. Interestingly, many free divers compare the first breath taken after resurfacing from deep-sea diving to the moment of birth. It’s as if the memory of holding one’s breath is imprinted on the body, and when diving, it unconsciously returns. “Our origin is the sea, and the origin of motherhood is an extension of that. Diving into the deep sea, although it may be professionally distorted, inevitably evokes the image of the maternal womb. Conversely, the image of the deep sea cannot help but bring to mind the maternal womb. Even before starting experiments in free diving, I considered the sea as the enormous uterus of a woman.”
If we follow this metaphor, the sea can be seen as the place that gives us life, connecting to the world of the first free divers. In other words, they were nomads underwater, hunting fish, crustaceans, snails, oysters, algae, and sponges. The oldest traces date back to the Mesolithic era, around 10,
Simply Diving!?
Until the 1980s, the Ama, the traditional Japanese female divers, did not wear wetsuits and only began using masks in the 1960s. They feared gaining an unfair advantage in visibility over marine life when wearing a mask compared to when they were not. In his book ‘Deep,’ journalist James Nestor believed that by connecting with the sea in a human form, one could restore balance to the world.
Nestor sought to uncover the secrets of freediving by finding Ama divers. With the decline in their numbers due to advancements in fisheries and technology, the ancient tradition dating back 2500 years was fading away. However, from 82-year-old Masanosuke Fukuyo, he obtained the answer to his intriguing question: “Just dive.”
For Ama divers, breath-hold diving might be a simple affair. Mothers pass on to their daughters, the future Ama, from an early age that water is a natural environment. As they themselves fear not the water, the fear does not transfer to their daughters, allowing the children to swim freely. The close relationship with the sea is passed down through generations. In contrast, Westerners have lost this essential and positive contact with water. Hence, freedivers not only learn techniques like relaxation and yoga practices to expand their chest muscles but also face the fear of being in an unnatural environment for humans. The fear of running out of oxygen in their lungs, the terror of being unable to reach the surface for air, the fear that they are forever a part of “The Big Blue.”
These fears exist only in the mind and have little to do with reality. Our lungs hold much more air than we think, and even when holding our breath, we can survive much longer than assumed. In moments of panic, meditation proves to be useful. Regular practice reduces oxygen consumption, slows down breathing, eases muscle tension, and consequently, research confirms, decreases the need for oxygen. Marcin Baranowski, a physiologist at the Medical University of Białystok, notes a study on Tibetan monks practicing deep meditation, reducing oxygen consumption by 50%. Baranowski states, “For freedivers, minimizing oxygen usage is crucial. The world’s top freedivers say that the mental state during diving is similar to meditation, akin to a trance, detached from reality theoretically but intensely present and focused in reality.”
A Place Unmarred by Silence
In the past, divers using equipment claimed that scuba diving allowed them to explore and understand the underwater world. However, freediving enables an encounter with oneself. Thus, freediving is referred to as “underwater meditation.” In the underwater realm, a vast expanse of blue extends endlessly. If one relaxes the body, the water wraps around and cradles it. It may evoke thoughts of a comforting embrace, like that of a loving mother or a caring babysitter. In the water, smartphones are absent. There are no emails, messages, or Facebook notifications. No one calls, and there are no push notifications from subscribed newspapers. Spotify or YouTube switches cannot be turned on. Before you know it, you are in a place where you can truly experience silence. And there is nothing to disturb that silence. Yet, thoughts arise, and emotions bubble up. Accepting them becomes a confrontation with oneself, leading to a sense of development and freedom. Mayo recalls the dormant dolphin within us, free and guided only by essentials. One should imagine awakening it and incorporating it into one’s being.
Guillaume Néry, a legendary figure in freediving and the protagonist of the short film “Free Fall” shot in the Bahamas, offers brief advice, “To succeed in freediving, you need patience. Forget your goals and enjoy, relax underwater.” Hanli Prinsloo, South Africa’s record-holder in freediving, who quit extreme sports after 13 years to pursue spiritually enhancing diving, consistently imparts the same advice to her students, “Freediving not only involves holding your breath but also changes your perception. It brings about a shift in awareness. Enter the sea with peace for yourself and the environment.”
According to Prinsloo, freediving allows squeezing the body into a state of full-body meditation that cannot be experienced in other ways. Fortunately, this doesn’t necessitate diving nearly 100 meters deep; remarkable changes occur at just 12 meters. She explains it to Nestor, “It’s like there, as if gravity reversed, and instead of water buoying your body towards the surface, it stops and starts pulling you down.”
In the conclusion of “Homo Delphinus,” Mayo writes, “Humans who dive into the water without breathing, not only return to themselves but can instantaneously return to the origin of all things. They understand that they are not detached beings from the sea, the ocean they must respect and love like a mother, or the universe reflecting the small universe. They become humans who comprehend this.”
