Johnny on a Journey

WARNING: This post is pretty damn long

In my last post, I touched on how my Static Apnea went. So in this post, I figured that I would go into more detail on that whole process. I apologize in advance, but this one is kinda long (although I think all my posts are pretty long). So let’s begin…

First off, just to clarify in case there was any confusion, Static Apnea refers to the process of holding your breath for as long as possible while in a stationary position. This is basically just like back when you were in school and you would see who could hold their breath the longest. I actually have some previous experience with Static Apnea because my brother, my dad, and I would practice holding our breath in our pool all the time. However, the longest I had ever gotten before was somewhere around 3min (I can’t remember the exact time). Because of this, I was already somewhat comfortable with the exercise even though I had not done it yet in a formal setting.

I wasn’t too confident in how long I could hold my breath since I hadn’t practiced the skill in at least over a year. To prepare for this exercise, my instructor, Tex, laid out a yoga mat in the shade and showed me the proper breathe-up techniques. The breathe-up is basically a five minute period before the breath hold (what freedivers call the Big Breath) where the person practices different breathing techniques in order to expand and prepare the lungs for the Big Breath as well as calm and relax the mind and body. My breathe-up consisted of 2min of Belly Breathing followed by 3 cycles of 2 Section Breathing with Flushes. Belly Breathing is basically just inhaling but filling up your stomach instead of your chest, and 2 Section Breathing is taking a much deeper breath by filling up your stomach and then your chest full of air. Flushing is just normal breathing and is set after the 2 Section Breathing in order to relax and calm the body.

After showing me the proper technique to prepare for the Big Breath, I put on my nose clip and began the preparation. I closed my eyes while doing this, and just tried to calm my body and my mind; Tex’s mellow voice would sometimes be heard to help pace my breathing or just offer some encouragement for the task ahead. Finally, after the five minutes of prep, I took my Big Breath. The Big Breath is just a large 2 Section Breath. If done correctly, you feel like you have too much air in your lungs–and that’s exactly how I felt. The sensation soon passed after about 15 to 20 seconds, and it actually turned into something that gave me confidence–the overfull feeling inside my lungs just reminded me that I have more than enough oxygen to make it through this trial.

The instructors advise the students to go to their happy place when doing Static Apnea in order to space out and make the time go by quicker, however, I don’t really do that. For as long as I can remember, I have always had no problem spacing out–my parents would say I’m going to “Johnny World.” So when asked by Tex what my happy place was before the trial, I simply replied with, “I don’t really go to a happy place. I just kinda zone out and sit in the darkness behind my eyes.” He had no problem with that, and sure enough, as soon as I took my Big Breath my mind went blank. No thoughts, no distractions, just the darkness and the sound of the wind and waves.

After some time, I started getting the urge to breathe. It was very subtle but I could feel it in my stomach. I was having my first contractions. Contractions are basically your body’s way of telling you, “Uhhhh hey dude why aren’t we breathing? You need to breathe. Take a breath now please.” When you have a contraction, your stomach/abs/diaphragm tighten very quickly in an attempt to get you to breathe. For a mental picture, try sucking your stomach in very fast and letting it out again–it’s kinda like that, but more forceful and you can’t control it. The interesting thing about that urge to breathe is that it’s not actually your body telling you you’re low on oxygen–it’s your body telling you that your CO2 is higher than it usually is. This fact alone means that even though my body is telling me to breathe, I already know that I have more than enough oxygen to keep going.

In his mellow voice, Tex started counting my contractions. They were far apart in the beginning, then gradually got closer and closer together to the point where they were back to back. I forgot to say this in the beginning, but the point of doing this on land first was to have 10 contractions so that I’m comfortable with them and know what to expect. After the 10 contractions, I kept holding my breath. Tex’s calm voice encouraged me to keep going, constantly reminding me to relax my body, my neck, my stomach, my tongue. A little while longer went by and I heard him say, “Alright, Johnny, you’re doing great. I want you to keep holding your breath while I count down from 10 and then I want you to breathe. 10…” I swear on my life I waited an eternity for him to say 9. Each number it seemed like had an ungodly amount of time in between until finally he reached 1.

I exhaled first, then started my recovery breaths. Recovery Breaths consist of a passive exhale followed by an active inhale. The goal is to get as much oxygen back into the body as possible. After my recovery breaths, I removed my nose clip and started to debrief with Tex. I told him how well the breathe-up worked for me and how his final countdown from 10 felt like it lasted an eternity. I couldn’t really tell anything based on his facial expressions and honestly, I didn’t think I did as well as I had hoped. He asked how long I thought I went for. I told him I really wasn’t sure but it didn’t feel like too long. In my head, I thought no more than 2min. He flipped the stopwatch around showing me the 4 minute time. He told me he had no doubt in his mind that I would blow this away, and I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The only reason he stopped me at 4min was because they don’t allow more than that for the first time.

Next, we moved to the water. In the water, your breath holds are (usually) significantly longer. This is due to the mammalian dive reflex, which is basically (I’ve realized at this point that I’ve used “basically” a lot in this post but this isn’t for school and I’m getting tired so I’m just gonna keep using it) triggered by a nerve in your brain that senses the water on your face and sends signals to the rest of your body telling it that you need to hold your breath. For the Static Apnea submerged in the water I pretty much did the same thing so long story short I was able to get my breath hold time up to 4 minutes and 40 seconds. This also could’ve been pushed longer but towards the end of my breath hold, I was having some pretty severe contractions. The nose clip I was wearing was not a freediving nose clip and so it didn’t clamp my entire nostril shut. This was a problem because as my body started contracting severely, some air would escape through my nose. Now exhaling bubbles is a very bad sign in the freediving world because it’s a sign of hypoxia (the stage that leads to loss of motor control and black outs), and because of this Tex pulled me up in order to be safe and keep me from blacking out. When my face broke the surface and I started my recovery breaths with no problems, I heard Tex say, “Shit I should’ve let you keep fighting.” I wasn’t mad at all, and I was actually glad that Tex was making sure I wouldn’t black out. I was incredibly pleased with the time and now I knew that I could make it to 5min. A goal for another time.

If you made it all the way through this post I thank you for your patience and your interest. I realize this is a long one but I hope you at least learned about how amazing the human body is and that the only limits we have are the ones we set ourselves. See you next time!