Cultivating wellbeing- Ears and Sprouts

So, you might ask yourself, what do ears and sprouts have in common!?

Hanli's list of similarities between ears and sprouts:

1. They are both important to my freediving:
1.1 If I can't equalise, my dive is ruined
1.2 If I'm not healthy, my dive is ruined

2. They both rule my world:
2.1 I speak to my ears, tell them they'll be ok, they can eqaulise, I love them, I'm with them all the way... (no, they're not always sure of this, rather insecure yes)
2.2 I speak to my sprouts, I tell them I love them, that they're beautiful and that I will eat them with respect
2.3 I rinse my ears in fresh water after each salt water dive
2.4 I rinse my sprouts every morning
2.5 I then pour alcoholic spirits into my ears to kill all bad things
2.6 I rinse my sprouts at noon
2.7 I then let my ears dry out before putting in some olive oil (cold pressed extra virgin organic) to stop beloved ears form drying out too much
2.8 I rinse my sprouts every evening
2.9 I say goodnight to both before bedtime, neither answer

3.0 I will share them with my dive-buddy, Stefan:

Good night ears, good night sprouts, I love you.

SOUTH!!!!... well, halfway...

Just a quick note- from Arlanda Airport in Stockholm, I'm going back to Dahab! The last couple of days in snowy Stockholm (yes, winter oused spring and came back and froze us!!) have been mad... finishing the rough-cut on my film... not enough sleep and dreams of warmth!

So, I'm off- 5 weeks of dusty dark blue freediving... and some exciting new lifestyle and training decisions, more about those soon... but let's just say- I have over 10ks of seeds and grains with me...

Ok, my flight is boarding.... more soon!

Sharks, starfish, Baba Dioum, and I

Senegalese poet and naturalist Baba Dioum said:
'In the end, we will protect only what we love.
We will love only what we understand.
We will understand only what we are taught.'

For quite a while now I have been quoting this wise man without knowing it, and now that I know I was I am again so happy for collective consciousness or whatever you want to call it!
Because isn't it very true???
Very very true... when it gets to sharks... misunderstood- therefore unloved- thereby unprotected- and so killed. The finning of sharks for shark fin soup claims up to 73 million sharks per year (sciencenews.org) yet the numbers are hard to estimate, so I might be wrong... but what upsets me also is the killing of sharks for 'trophies' or 'acclaim'.

Recently two such events have made the news- 13 year old Aidan Murray Medley kills a bull shark (for Fun!? Fame!?) and a while back spearfisherman Craig Clausen kills a tiger shark, in self defence, he claims... yet it is clear to see on the footage that this is a very debatable point. (Read more about these stories on OceanicDreams)

Find the love, Aidan, find the love!!!

Now I had the misfortune to be pounced upon (by somebody who does not know me) for caring about these 'insignificant' incidents, as opposed to the massacres through finning and by-catch. But seriously, do we have to rate and ration our caring?

NO!

My dad used to tell me the story of the starfish on the beach. Millions of starfish have washed up on a beach and a man walking along the beach sees another man pick up a starfish and throw it far back into the ocean. Despondently he walks up to the thrower 'There are too many' he says, 'what difference does it make?!' And the starfish thrower replies, 'For that one, it made all the difference'.

So NO, I will not only care about the massacres and the statistics and I sincerely hope my love and my heart remain big enough to keep caring, keep understanding, keep sharing knowledge... so that others can learn to love and thereby protect.

... all the difference...

Have you ever seen a dolphin surfing??

Well... have you? And how envious were you? On a scale of 1 to 10?
11??? Me too!

Have you heard of Sub-surfing?
NO!?
It is exactly what it sounds like, a combination of three of my favourite things:
Ocean... surfing... FREEDIVING!
It is surfing- INSIDE THE WAVE...

The time has come... when I get back to Cape Town May 1st- Bottlenose I will be! Right now I'm checking out what fins will be the best to become a SUB-SURFER, and thinking OH NO NO NOOOOO, not another passion, I don't have time...

Below you can see Kelly Slater playing Dolphin... sigh...

Public Breathhold at Stockholm Outdoor Fair

Today I did a static 'exhibition' at the Stockholm Vildmarksmässa / Outdoor fair. As it often comes about in these crazy things I do and wonder 'why the hell am I doing this again?'- the answer is Sebastian.

So there I was in front of a crowd of non-freedivers, having promised Sebastian at least 4 minutes. As I got into the 27° water of the temporary pool in the middle of the conference center, I regretted my loyalty to the tall Swede once again. I so did not want to do a static.
My mind was all over the place, at 1min I was thinking of breaking the static.... but managed to rein in my racing mind... and ended up doing 5min 15sec.
Not close to a PB or anything, but a good mental exercise!

Breathing-up before the breathhold.



Happy after... well... relieved!

Photos: Martin Lundgren

Pull yourself towards yourself!

Ok, I'm sitting on Annelie's foldout couch with ankle-deep snow outside... and have just recovered from hysterical fits of laughter, because it truly was a 50-50 toss-up whether I should laugh (hysterically) or cry (hysterically). (Hysterically was mandatory, not optional.)

I got back to snowy Sweden late last night, had a day full of meetings in Gothenburg today and a plan to travel up to Stockholm with Annelie and some other randon adventurers in a car early tomorrow morning. The best of plans made with the purest of intentions...

And then, the unthinkable happened... On buss #1 on my way from meeting #5 to Annelie (imagine slow buss through slushy snow, dark, cold, talking to Sebastian on the phone about vitamins) I jump off the bus (into the slush, talking to Sebastian about minerals) to change to buss #2 that will take me to A, and I think Hmmm, what a schlepp to drag my big traveling bag through all this slush... and then, suddenly all hell breaks loose...
I'VE FORGOTTEN MY FRICKIN BAG ON THE FRICKIN BLOODY DISAPPEARING -INTO-THE-DISTANCE FRICKIN' BUSS!!
No, no no, the customer care at the transport department is not open at nine at night, no I don't have a car to catch up with the bus, and NO, no knight in shining armour shows up to rescue me...
So, as it sometimes goes with the best of plans... I miss buss #2 in my crazy phoning, stressing- unhelpful running around like chicken with chopped off head.. and decide to walk my anger off to A's house, 30min through the above mentioned cold, dark, slush, in thin-soled Dahab adapted sneakers... Which is how I arrived at Annelie's door, choosing to laugh hysterically... Luckily A and I are the same size in clothes, she has lens fluid and a tooth brush and a sense of humour and another friend will send the forgotten bag to Stockholm (assuming it's been delivered to the lost and found- I'm assuming for now...)

Over a cup of honey-infused Rooibos Annelie placidly asks me so what do you think the universe is trying to tell you tonight... and as usual... I have to throw my hands into the air and say OK, Ok... I'm listening.
For days now I've been stressing about things outside of my control; money, practical issues, future plans... and I f#*k up on something right in front of me, so completely within my control... that I miss it!
Too much focus on the outside things, the clutter... losing touch with what is near.

So as somebody once said to me... Pull yourself towards yourself!


A pic of Annelie and I in another mad state of hysterics another time... but the madness is the same...

I saw the arch... and now I have to leave!

After two weeks in Dahab I'm now getting ready to leave again. Too soon, too soon... she cries!

I'm trailing bits of my heart behind me as my travels continue, what I have left of it that isn't in Cape Town, will now be left for safe keeping in the Blue Hole... just under the arch...

Oh, my last few days of diving have been magical. I am so in love with the ocean! Still... again, forever... deeply. My ears have been co-operating, more or less, and my dives have been deeper than ever before, deep enough to get stunning views of the majestic arch, you see it clearly the first time around 45m and below 50 the view just blows you away... iridescent blue light streaming in through this window in the coral. Spectacular, or as a very special friend said, 'a spiritual experience' - indeed!

So, tomorrow at eight Ahmed will come again to pick us up to go one last time to the Blue Hole, one more breath, one more dive... one love!



Photo: Annelie Pompe, Ras Muhammad

Elusive and Alluring- the musts of Motivation

Today I took another small step forward in my quest to diving deeper than I've ever dived before. But it must be said, the focus here must be on the word 'small'. The step the quest the dived the before are all just supporting actors. The star of the sentence is the 'small'.
No, I am not diving as deep as I hoped I would after a week in Dahab.
No, I'm not sad.
Why?
Because of my starry-bright beloved main actor- 'small'.

I've spent a lot of time thinking and rethinking the beauty and the challenge of motivation. What keeps us going? What will make me get up again at 7am tomorrow morning to go back to the Blue Hole, dive again, possibly deal with more shallower-than-wished-for dives, and still come back the next day.
I have had the privilege to work with a S-African sports psychologist by the name of Tim Goodenough, the author of a great book, 'In the Zone'. We spent some time really turning over the meaning freediving holds for me, and exploring this.
My meaning with my freediving is easy, my deep love for the ocean never having been in doubt, but the other side of it... the competitive side holds demons for me, and I needed help.
So, what will motivate me to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning to go for a run in the slushy snow in Stockholm when I get back?

Somebody I care about deeply sent me an sms today that he'd lost all motivation. Which is what inspired this rather rambling post...

Motivation is derived from the word move- and is, in all simplicity, the willingness of action.
So: to move- willingly. In order to move, we must have a next step in mind- the dream. That will make me want to move from this position, to the next. In his book, Tim speaks of making that dream as real as possible. For me, it's that really deep dive. For an athlete, an olympic gold medal. And you have to dream in 3D, in surround sound, in smell, taste, touch. What will that gold medal feel like in your hand? How heavy will it be? Can you smell the flowers the pretty girl hands you where you stand on the podium?
And when you can smell those flowers and you can feel that medal... then suddenly it might not be that hard to pull on those running shoes- what is an hour anyway compared to that very real dream?

What is your dream?


What wills you to move?

Visit Tim's site: Coaching Unity
Photo: Annelie Pompe

Blue Hole Revisited

Today, at last, my Swedish dive-buddy Stefan and I took the bumpy pick- up on the camel-trafficked path out to the Blue Hole. A deep, deep coral surrounded place of beauty, where freedivers play and scuba divers die. Morbid, but the call of the deep is strong, and the naturalists have a better chance at survival. The early morning air is chilly, we have come at seven, so we are the only divers here. I drink some hot lemon with honey to warm up, we stretch, kit-up... at last, my dry season is over.

How I have been yearning for that rich blue expanse others call nothingness, I call everything. I take my last breath, leave the surface, the bustle, the voices- the world above, and dive...
I close my eyes, looking inward, as my body gets heavier as the pressure gets more, and then I fall... free-falling, allowing the water to pull-push draw me down. LIke a hundred arms of a hundred lovers the blue envelops me, holds me, cradles me... and this is enough. I am enough. Here... - I am.

I keep it easy, my recent illness still in my body, and I stop at 40- open my eyes at last, take in the silence and the solitude, before starting my ascent. My lungs want air but my soul wants more... more time down here, more depth... more!

Then I'm at the surface, breathe again, smile at the sun, my heart still beating... at depth.




This pic was taken by Annelie Pompe, my freediving soulmate, and really captures the feeling...