"It's only in your head"

Freediving is probably the oldest extreme sport human kind have made up. It's simply diving under the water without additional air. Since I have been into under water rugby, I wanted to learn more about freediving techniques. It turned out that there was only one freediving school on the island. Therefore I singed into a freediving course offered by a spanish guy Eusebio.

Modern freediving is as much about technique as mental control, said Eusebio. Both of them comes with practise, he continued. Because of the full moon party on Koh Phagan, I was the only student on the course. The education started with practising correct breathing tecnique. Forming an O with the lips. Sucking air painfully slowly first using muscels in the stomach then filling up the chest. Beathing out slowly and controlled. Again, again, again and again. Clearing the mind from everything. Just relaxing and sucking air. For some reason, the lesson reminded me of the scene in the Star Wars episode V, when Yoda is trying to teach Luke Skywalker some Jedi skills.

After practise in the class room we drove out with a boat and dropped a line into the water. There was no way to see the bottom. The end of the line was visible, however. It ended to 13 meters depth. By the end of the day, I would be able to touch the end of it, said Eusebio. I was feeling something between fear and pure terror. My deep-water phobia had awaken despite all the practise I had done to kill it. However, Eusebio's favorite phrase seemed to be Don't worry, it's only in your head!, which for some reason reminded me much of an other Spanish guy I met on Svalbard. It turned out that they both were right.

Eusebio said that even though the correct breathing technique enables to saturate your veins with oxygen and it is possible for anyone to survive witout breathing, at least for three minutes, a nerve in the brain doesn't understand that. The nerve says that you have to breath. It turned out that my breathing nerve was all-mighty. Apparently the nerve just wants to keep me alive and says it's very determined opinion quite clearly in 5 meters depth. Stop, equalize, wait that it goes away and go down an other metre, I was instructed. After immerse mental fight and limit breaking, I somehow managed to proceed to the end of the line in 13 meters depth. The feeling was something similar to the feeling when reaching the finish in Spitsbergen Marathon. I had won one of the biggest trolls, I had ever encountered inside my head.

After all it was only in my head. Unfortunally including my left ear, which didn't like the quick descends and fast equalizations at all. In the next morning the pain was too strong in order to continue the course. I went to a doctor instead.

A moment, I thought that also my diving plans are going to fail, but fortunatelly the doctor knew what she was doing. Althought it was pretty scary. The conditions were quite basic. She injected Coke in to my ear in order to wash it. After that she dug out stuff from my ears with a 5 cm long spike. I was shaking from fear during the threatment. She said that she had done that for 30 years and for tens of thousands divers. I just decided to believe her. I had no other options.

Now, few days later I can hardly feel any pain in my ear. I went diving and there was no problem at all. I can continue my diving education and start the Divemaster course, as planned. The relief. That's enourmous.

More about SCUBA diving, the Divemaster course and stuff follows later...