Freediving, Yoga, and Monofins in Greece - Part 3
Posted By Emma Farrell on 10 March 2003
Friday
There was a huge storm the night before and so it had been very difficult to sleep. That coupled with the curry the night before made me worry that the next morning as we lay on the yoga mats I would fall asleep. MT was taking us through visualisations and a guided meditation concentrating on the breath. I was amazed that I didn't nod off but came out of it feeling refreshed and calm.
In the water we went to the re-installed 18 meter line and after our warm ups we practiced techniques we might need if we or any other diver got into trouble. How to get rid of cramp, taking a fin off at depth and then finning back with one to simulate a broken fin, taking off and putting on weight belts in water, rescuing someone from depth and learning how to deal with them on the surface. It was exhausting and when I had rescued MT very badly and far too slowly, I got cramped. 'She would have been dead by now!' said Aharon.
'Well better one than two' I muttered.
Back at my room I was exhausted and managed to rip open my suit on the door handle. How glamorous. No, it wasn't the shark, a rock or the boat. It was a door handle...
I took my suit up in the afternoon to get help in fixing it. The afternoon was more rescue techniques, with CPR adapted particularly to freediving. There was so much to take in as we manhandled poor MT. Learning so much under them both made me feel so secure in the water with them there. Aharon has saved so many people's lives after diving and other accidents that if I were ever to have a problem in the water I would hope that he was nearby.
After we had killed MT off several times we sat outside to do a dry walk, a
very powerful exercise in dynamic training. We wore a heart monitor and sat
on a chair while another person made note of the time and the heart rate. We
ventilated for 3 minutes, did a static of 30 seconds and then continued to
hold our breath while walking through the olive grove and up the steep hill.
What Aharon wanted us to see was that despite us walking up the hill while
holding our breath, our heart rate actually went down. We could see the
breath hold reflex in action. It was incredible and we all walked much
further than we had imagined.
As the sun went down I sat on the balcony over-looking the bay as Aharon mended my suit. I couldn't believe that we only had one day of the course left, and also that I had been so wrong to think of Aharon as Mr Angry.
Saturday
The storms returned that night and in the morning it was very overcast. The sky was so clear that we could see the snowy peaks of the Atlas Mountains in Albania, and the water had become the most incredible blue.
We learned how to correctly safety dive for our buddy and went up and down the line looking out for each other. Aharon then fixed up the lanyard system off the back of the boat and we were shown how it worked.
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