Freediving – as meditation

In 2025 I was invited to be a safety diver at the AIDA World Championship. I hadn’t planned for it, but a chain of events led me to the heart of one of the biggest freediving competitions in the world. By then I had been freediving for a little over six years — training, going deeper, holding my breath longer. All of that progress rested on one skill: putting full attention on relaxation, technique, body position, and equalizing. Those of you who’ve tried freediving can confirm — during a dive you slip into a peculiar state where it feels like nothing else in the world exists. Just you, the water, that dive — and nothing more. It’s especially vivid when diving along the line in the blue.

To get there, I had to:

1. Dive to 45 meters depth
2. Dive to 40 meters, surface, recover for at most 30 seconds, then dive to 25 again
3. Dive to 30 meters with a 10-second preparation before the dive
4. And probably make a good impression on the organizers )))

I did it all the same way — narrowed my focus, cut out the noise, and dove. Then a bit of luck — and I was invited to the World Freediving Championship in Limassol.

I dive to 70 meters; safety divers work at 30 — depth wasn’t really on my mind. Crowds and responsibility usually would be, but for some reason not here. What did bother me was imposter syndrome: I was sitting at the same table as some of the best safety divers in the world and didn’t quite get what I was doing there next to them.

But overall I felt calm )

Chaos

Worrying in advance is one thing. Being in the middle of it is another. Athletes, coaches, instructors, media with cameras, underwater drone operators, judges, spectators. The sea, the waves. And your team — they work underwater in tough conditions, six hours in the water every day with no days off, and anything can happen.

Staying focused before a dive, waiting for the athlete at depth, then surfacing with them — in all that chaos it turned out harder than I’d thought.

In the first two or three days I got so worn out that I couldn’t imagine who in their right mind would come back a second time. Or a third. Or a fourth.

A Minute of Silence

On the third day I asked myself: why isn’t it working? Why do even 30 meters feel endless? Why is every dive stress? I started doing what I’d been taught all those years. Focusing on my breath. Listening to my heartbeat. Looking for tension in my body. Going inward.

And then — splashing. And Federico’s voice; he was coordinating the team that day. I look up and he says he’s been trying to get my attention for over a minute. A minute. I’d tuned out for a minute — at the world championship, where I’m responsible for people’s safety.

A Different Way?

So I thought: how do I get that same relaxation without going inward? How do I stay calm without tuning out the world?

And I started trying. I came up with a simple practice — keep moving my gaze. Look here — all good. Shift my gaze — all good. Again and again. Don’t fixate, don’t get drawn in. Just scan everything that’s going on around me.

Before, I’d put all my attention inward — shut everything out. Here I had to learn to look outward. Not stare, but scan. Not stop — everything around keeps changing.

It turns into a game. Not analyzing with my head, but listening to intuition — that inner voice that shows up when something feels off.

And it started working.

The Team

What surprised me was something else — what happened with the team.

When you keep looking around, you start noticing the people next to you.

In the morning we ran through scenarios — what to do if an athlete blacks out at depth, panics, or doesn’t surface on time. We argued and debated. I suggested things that aren’t in the manuals but made sense to me. And we actually tried them instead of dismissing them because they were “not by the book.”

We could repeat them underwater after one or two tries. We swapped roles — safety one, two, three — on the fly, without words, depending on the situation.

Maybe nothing really changed. Maybe it was only in my head. But I felt calmer — I knew that if I messed up, someone would have my back. And that someone was counting on me.

That feeling is why I want to go back.