It's not a Spectator Sport!

They watch me floating face down in the water of that far-away pool. So many moons and loves and dives ago. I'm completely relaxed. Not a single muscle is tensed.
I'm playing dead. My then quite new wetsuit looks shiny compared to it's present day state of patches and scratches.
Today the guys are huddled around my computer in the dim-lit wood cabin that serves as office and HQ for the Blue Wilderness dive operation on the KZN South Coast. We've done yoga, we've stretched our lungs, we've done deep breathing , they've experienced breathing contractions for the first time.
I've talked them through the theory of freediving, the history, the physiology, the philosophy. Now I am showing them this bad quality clip filmed on the judge's camera at a competition almost two years ago.'It's not a Spectator Sport!' I hear myself say, the guys laugh, as I knew they would. No, watching someone lie face down in a pool is not ice-skating. I laugh with them but the laughter gets stuck in my throat and I'm left with an uncomfortable jarring thought at the back of my head. But no time to ponder... getting changed into suits, grab masks and off to the pool.The guys float on their backs and when it's their turn I talk them through their three final breaths, the last deep deepest breath, and then he rolls over.


Face down. Playing dead.
'Relax your neck, relax your shoulders' I repeat, gentling squeezing his shoulders, encouraging him to relax. His head drops a little deeper, his body lets go. My voice echoes in my head... 'It's not a spectator sport...'

I am so wrong.

Freediving is the greatest spectator sport of all time. Greater than ice-skating, basketball, pole-vaulting (I love pole-vaulting!), gymnastics or even parkour.
The only difference is, there is only one spectator. You. The diver. And you are not only watching. You are seeing yourself from the inside. And you are not only seeing. You are feeling, experiencing, assimilating, learning, shifting, adjusting, growing. This is the ultimate experience. It just happens to happen within one person. For no-one else to see.
The breath-hold I had shown the guys as an example, I remember as if it was yesterday. My warm-up, my nerves, the song I had in my ipod just before. The first stage of holding my breath, the relaxation, I remember the thoughts, coming and going, memories, feelings, hopes, uncertainties... this quiet revolution going on inside.
Contractions starting, destroying the meditation, the focus, the die-hard kicking in. Sebastian's voice urging me on, supporting me, carrying me. My elation at feeling my body meet my mind in these perfect minutes of mind-body communication. Oxygen swirling through my blood, caressing my brain, deserting my toes. I know this. I know what my beautiful body is capable of. Beautiful for what she is capable of, for the dive response she harbours. Glorious, magnificent half-seal that I am. All this becoming as I lie there, face down. Dead to the world. Alive as never before. This is the greatest spectator sport of all time. And I am the only ticket-holder.


Rene, Rob, Anthony, David, Mike and Rowan, welcome to your stadium!

dive for dreams and live by love

an extract from the poem by e. e. cummings

dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind) 
trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward) 
honour the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at the wedding) 
never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for good likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth) 
in spite of everything
which breathes and moves, since Doom
(with white longest hands
neating each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds 

beautiful words after a tough day

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.

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...

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

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...