The Lightness of Being, Yoga & Scuba Diving

My personal scuba diving journey began 12 years ago. I clearly remember the day I first dove underwater. It was a lovely sunny day, we were out on a boat and two girls were doing their very first discovery dive. One gave up and decided that she was not going to do the dive. I still don’t know what got into me, but I knew it was the right time to take the plunge. I have observed many times how to put on the equipment and I knew how to use it, but for some reason I had delayed actually doing it myself.

Breathing in scuba….ground rule number one: don’t hold your breath…it takes you up & it’s dangerous.

Weightless…. I love the fact that no matter someone’s shape or size they will float in the water. It takes some practice, but when you figure out the buoyancy, it’s pure magic. Like when you figure out the hammock and how to work with it. Suddenly, everything becomes fluent and you feel one with the hammock and the ground.

Move with care….respect the environment, don’t disturb the fish… Like in yoga. The movements are intentional, you don’t want to disturb or disrupt the others in your group.

Discover a new dimension. Underwater there is a whole new world. So different and yet so familiar. I feel the same while doing Unnata yoga. It’s a completely new feeling and while playing with gravity, feeling the weight of the body redistributed, relying on the floor and changing perspective often it becomes a whole new sensation that can only be internalized.

There is a special kind of freedom being in the water, suspended, surrounded by blue water, looking the fish eye to eye…it changed my perspective forever, it gave me a new understanding of the body, of nature and of my own breath.

I had a similar experience when I first inverted on the hammock. It changed and enriched my view for good. Felling the pressure of the hammock against the skin, feeling the body elongate, finding space while seeing the room and my own feet from a new angle.

Both of these experiences have the power to move our awareness completely from the familiar to the unfamiliar or rather they have the power to expand our perception of the familiar.

They shift the perspective and allow us to see something that we have never seen. They let us experience the body in a new way, they connect to the breathing in a new way, they invite new sensations and new feeling to rise and stimulate the mind.

Hearing the breath underwater while breathing through the regulator is singular and it focuses the attention on the rhythm of the air entering the lungs and the bubbles exiting through the regulator. It is the most obvious connection between our basic need to breath and the environment.

No matter how different some things might look at first glance I have learned yet one more time that if you dive deep enough into basically anything you will probably find out that the differences are less than the similarities.

Happy breathing to everyone.

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