Freediving, where people dive underwater to swim down as far as they can on a single breath, is enjoying a surge in popularity. But aside from the thrill, some divers are discovering that taking the plunge comes with unexpected benefits to their mental health.
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00:00 On a sunny day in Perth, 200 metres offshore, these freediving trainees are learning how
00:07 to rescue someone who's blacked out. When you're in the water, it's a matter of life
00:17 and death.
00:18 There's a number of inherent dangers. The biggest one is holding your breath too long
00:21 until your oxygen levels drop too low.
00:23 Point your toes down to the bottom, find your neutral spine.
00:28 For almost a decade, this marine scientist turned freediver has been teaching people
00:32 how to reach the ocean's depths safely.
00:34 If you're holding your breath, you can actually sense or hear your own heartbeat, but really
00:39 very little else. It's quite quiet.
00:43 But her own journey wasn't smooth sailing. She became an instructor after her partner's
00:48 death 13 years ago in a freediving accident.
00:51 He went freediving with a scuba diver, with a whole bunch of them diving on a shipwreck.
00:56 I was somewhere else doing some snorkelling and he passed out. As far as we were aware,
01:02 he was found on the bottom and they brought him to the surface and he was not able to
01:07 be resuscitated.
01:11 She enrolled in a course not long after the tragedy as a way of honouring her late partner's
01:16 legacy.
01:17 There was a need to resolve the trauma in a way and I think changing or feeling like
01:21 I could help change the safety culture here was a driving force.
01:26 Some of the training sessions she runs have a strong focus on mental health, while others
01:30 are about learning the freediving basics.
01:32 Around about five years ago I started developing this idea of freediving therapy. Having had
01:42 an experience of post-traumatic stress disorder myself and finding that freediving was really
01:48 quite therapeutic for myself.
01:50 These students say being underwater is a feeling like no other.
01:54 It's really hard for me to relax on land. I tried a lot of mindfulness, meditation and
02:01 everything and it just doesn't work for me. And underwater, as soon as the water hits
02:07 my face, I just start being relaxed.
02:11 I think most people, including myself, don't have any idea how tense they are most of the
02:15 time.
02:16 Instructors say factors like COVID-19 restrictions and social media have boosted the sport's
02:21 popularity in recent years. And freedivers are using the skills they learn underwater
02:26 to better their lives on the land as well.
02:29 In order to complete their course, these freedivers must hold their breath for 90 seconds underwater,
02:34 swim down to 10 metres, swim in a pool horizontally for 25 metres and perform a rescue.
02:41 Helping the body to condition to those challenge states will mean that the body itself, the
02:48 brain itself will be less likely to go into some kind of fight or flight state.
02:52 I guess a noisy world, yeah it's quite captivating. If you take away some of the competitive elements
03:01 of spearfishing or deep, deep diving, it's really quite relaxing, there's no agenda.
03:09 Diving down to look within.
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