YOGA and APNEA Enjoy the Underwater Life Yoga and Apnea
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YOGA AND APNEA Enjoy the underwater life Yoga and Apnea It is universally recognized the ability of yoga to work alongside with many disciplines or sports, but alongside with apnoea becomes a fascinating and “deep” path. Apnea was probably born from the simple need to stay under water as long as possible to fish and only at a later stage this need was replaced by the people’s desire to prove themselves, challenge themselves with the breath and the depth. At the time when apnea meets, embraces yoga and breathing techniques (Pranayama), it becomes a thoughtful sport, useful in a deeper way for body and mind. According to many free divers staying on the land some more minutes and practicing yoga and pranayama allow them not only to stay underwater longer, but, above all, to feel better there. The first things that attracted me when I decided to pull the yoga philosophy together with the apnoea discipline were: the figure of Umberto Pelizzari (the Italian world champion of apnea), my natural attraction to the water element (solid or liquid) and the condition to keep the air in the lungs. What is apnea? The term apnea derives from the Greek word “άπνοια” (a-pnoia) which literally means “without breathing”. The origin of this word doesn’t have any connection to water, but in the modern athletic terminology, “Apnea” has become a synonym of freediving, that is to dive on one breath of air, without using equipment which would help to breathe underwater. Freediving was practised in ancient cultures to gather food (The Bajau people from South-East Asia live in stilt houses and fish underwater for up to five minutes on one breath), to harvest resources as sponges and pearls and to help aid military campaigns (defences, such as underwater barricades, were often created, against enemy ships). Freediving is unique because is performed while holding breath. This peculiarity cannot be ignored because of its effects on the body from a chemical, physiological and functional point of view. Breath retention When you hold your breath, carbon dioxide levels in your body start to rise. In that phase, called by the free divers ‘the struggle phase’, you yearn for breathing. Over time, the oxygen levels in your body begin to fall. Fisher, a professional Australian free diver, said: “It’s really important to note that we have both these amazing reflexes in our body, which ensure that we still have high levels of oxygen in our brain and in our heart, and all of these vital organs that might be susceptible to be damaged by oxygen lack.” Majol - connection pranayama and freediving Yoga for freedivers has been a popular and well recognised complementary training since the days of Jaques Majol. Majol was a Yoga instructor himself and he revolutionized freediving with his use of Eastern Yoga and meditation traditions. Majol popularized Pranayama yoga techniques, which relax the mind through controlled breathing. Using these exercises, he was able to slow his metabolism and control his heart-rate at his pleasure. Such feats, as the metabolism slowdown and the heart-rate control, took years of practice. Indeed Majol prepared himself for deep dives by training with a yogi in India. The pranayama master Andre Van Lysebeth thought Majol the techniques that he practiced since the seventies. Majol dedicated whole periods of the year to study and to exercise yoga by going to Buddhist monasteries. From his stories it is easy to understand the seriousness, the rigor and the commitment needed to embrace the entire discipline. According to yoga every organ in our body reaches the highest functionality peak in a particular time of day, and since for the lungs, this peak is reached at three o’clock in the morning, Majol was used to get up at that time in order to train. He achieved world fame in 1988 with Luc Besson’s movie “The Big Blue”.This beautiful work is still considered the best visual representation of the freediving “Zen”. Majol and Pelizzari Pelizzari, who was himself a student of Jack Majol, uses breathing techniques, yoga, pranayama. He uses the time before the diving trying to practice the relaxation and concentration methods together with the breathing techniques. Answering the question “To deal with sport competition or a record requires a particular concentration; how do you prepare yourself? Which techniques do you use to relax before diving?” Pelizzari said “I have had as teacher Jacques Majol, who was the first one to apply yoga to apnea. All about Pranayama concerns breathing in yoga and it is at the root of everything in this type of discipline. In all the “asana” (the posture maintenance in a firm and stable way) and in all the various forms of yoga it is fundamental the respiration: there is no posture without respiration, there is no concentration technique which is not accompanied by a proper breathing. In simple words, all the yoga techniques which study the correct breathing and allow to facilitate and to use an ampler breathing, which is six or seven times larger than the thoracic one.” If I have chosen to combine yoga with apnea, it is definitely thanks to Umberto Pelizzari. His figure aroused admiration and curiosity in me since the middle of the eighties. Now, years later, I heard again about him casually talking with a friend, which is a free diver. Umberto Pelizzari (born 1965) is an Italian free diver, widely considered the best free diver of all the times. Of his era, he is the only one to have established world records in all the disciplines of freediving existing those times. In 1995 he has founded the freediving training society called Apnea Academy and from that stage he started to explore and to learn how to teach freediving to the others. After 20th years from its foundation, the Apnea Academy continues its important role to train and to teach to freediving future instructors. The course covers topics as relaxation, breathing, respiration physiology and auditory system, diet, psychology and group control. YOGA AND APNEA BENEFIT COMBINATION Starting to write this research I did not expect to find so many confirmations on the use of yoga and pranayama in freediving. World champions as Gianluca Genoni said: “To dive is largely a matter of the head. Clearly you have to be trained, but if you cannot reach the right concentration, you cannot dive too much. In order to hold the breath for so long I adopt relaxation techniques with yoga and diaphragmatic breathing.” Why it is necessary to combine asana and apnea? One important reason to practice yoga is because this discipline considers the human being as a whole taking into account all its aspects. Obtaining a good performance is not the goal, but it becomes the consequence of a path through the listening to one’s own body. ASANA-PHYSICAL YOGA FOR FREEDIVERS The mobility is very important both to support advanced techniques and to allow the body to stay relaxed during the free diving. Each free diver has his own problem areas, which are not as flexible as they could be. Purely on a physical level, the practice of asana gives us strength, flexibility and good motor firing patterns. This process gives us fluid and let us to have less movement waste in water: this means that we can stay longer under water and in higher comfort conditions. The ability to consciously disengage muscles, which is an important part of the asana practice, lead to have less Co2 production in static training or in slow free dives. Exercises are important in apnea to coordinate movement with breath. Taking postures as the one of the cat or the one of the cow helps in this coordination aim, by developing the middle part of the rib cage. This process tones the upper back muscles and improves the shoulder and shoulder blades mobility by simply varying the posture with the chin on the floor. PRANAYAMA-BREATH YOGA FOR FREEDIVERS nPranayama is the breath control science and the subtle awareness. It correpsonds to the fourth limb in ashtanga yoga and it has very obvious benefits for the free diver. This practice lead to inhale and exhale naturally the biggest air amount with the less effort and let more favorable apnea both in musclular and psychological terms. Increased awareness and breath control important tools to develop confidence and relaxation in the water. Diaphragmatic breathing is a technique taken from pranayama and then adapted to the apnea preparation needs, by the highest level free divers experience. The term “diaphragmatic breathing” is used similarly in pranayama and apnea, even if the techniques are different. The main characteristics of this technique are the wise and trained use of muscular respiration and the control of the abdominal girdle. The free diver initially has to learn how the muscle acts, then he has to train the muscle elasticity, in order to maximize its potential and to move higher air amounts. Controlling the diaphragm is also useful in the balance that is when descending and increasing pressure pushes on the ear drum. In order to balance the pressure, the diver forces air up into the Eustachian tube. The diaphragm has to be relaxed to have more available air to realize this operation. BHANDAS- PSYCHO-MUSCULAR YOGA FOR FREE DIVERS Bhandas practice helps to develop the core strength for a good free diving technique. It also prepares the body for deeper dives pressure below residual volume by increasing the thoracic flexibility. Bhandas practice helps the free diver to develop a greater control over the nervous system and a deeper body awareness, leading the freediver to maintain inner stillness in challenging situations.