Freediving, Yoga, and Monofins in Greece - Part 2
Posted By Emma Farrell on 7 March 2003
Tuesday 10th
I think that Aharon and MT deliberately chose a house up the steepest hill they could find. This would be in order to test our fitness as we arrived every morning. I had received the email about the course a few weeks ago, which suggested that a good level of aerobic fitness would be required.
Me? Exercise?
The closest I had got to exercise recently was running after a taxi after I had left my house keys in it. I staggered up the hill, completely out of breath, for our first lesson.
In breathing.
We lay on yoga mats, on the terrace, whilst the morning sun dappled through
the olive branches, listening to the calm, soothing voice of MT as she
talked us through the various stages of the full breath. If Aharon is yang
then MT is yin. Soothing, conciliatory, calm.
I felt incredibly peaceful and was amazed to find out new things about my body, just lying there on the mat. I had done yoga for a few years so thought I knew a lot already, but MT's knowledge was extensive. She then introduced us to Uddiyana Banda and variations, reducing her already tiny frame by half. After feeling so mellow and feeling the urge to go out and hug a tree, we went back inside to watch peace in practice. Aharon and MT showed us videos of them both pulling down to 50 metres so, so slowly. It was so beautiful and exactly what drew me to freediving, the peacefulness of it, being totally in the moment. Aharon then took each of us aside to see how we equalised. I was half way through my prepared speech about how every person I met had tried and failed to teach me the frenzel, how I was obviously a freak of nature, and if he could teach it to me then he would be a miracle worker, when he told me to shut up and just show him what I did to equalise. I did it and he threw his hands in the air before walking off.
'You are doing the frenzel goddamitt woman!'
Oh. Well that was a bloody quick miracle! We all then walked down the hill to go out for the first dive. Aharon and MT have four lines set up at different depths and we were to start on the 18 meter line which was anchored by a yellow buoy, suspended three meters below the surface to avoid boat traffic near the shore. I was amazed at how they would spot it and sure enough, they went up and down, up and down with the boat, to no avail.
Eventually Aharon got in the water to take a look, to find that someone had removed the line, blocks, buoy and all.
Oh dear.
Someone was going to pay. MT tried to find reasons other than malice for the disappearance whilst Aharon blamed a mad old Greek man called Nyonios.
We moved out to the 50-metre line and looked down into endless blue. This was the classic freediving image I had in my mind - a white line disappearing off into nothingness. Perhaps it was the safety briefing that we had had the night before but I was bricking it.
I hid from Aharon on one side of the boat whispering to MT 'I'm really scared'!
She was brilliant. She calmed me down and held my hand as I did my first of two static warm ups, eyes closed, trying to relax. It worked, and I was soon on the line as we took it in turns to pull down to no more than ten metres and hang there, feeling the sensations and allowing every last bit of tension and stress to leave our bodies.
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