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“I FIND IT HARD TO RELAX.
BUT AFTER A COUPLE OF YOGA NIDRA
SESSIONS, IT IS MUCH EASIER TO
FLOAT CALMLY IN THE WATER AND
LITERALLY LET IT ALL WASH OVER.”
emergence of Frenchman Jacques Mayol in the 1970s,
that the discipline really started to push the limits
of human endurance. By studying the movement of
dolphins, Mayol set a 100mworld depth record. Then,
in 1988,
The Big Blue
– the cult Luc Besson movie
based loosely on Mayol’s life – won freediving a wider
audience. And a quarter century later, as predicted by
Mayol, a new generation of devotees has descended to
more than double the depth he set as a benchmark.
Of course, these are not the kind of achievements
my fellow guests and I are ever likely to equal, but that’s
not to say there aren’t ways – even for amateurs like us
– to improve. “Most freedivers will at some point do yoga
Trainee freediving instructor, 18-year-old Tabitha
Rowden, is practising swimming with her monofin: as
the name suggests, this is a single, broad-bladed flipper.
With both feet attached to this artificial whale fluke,
Rowden uses a powerful undulating dolphin kick to
propel herself through the blue like a turbocharged
mermaid. I’ve never seen a tank-encumbered scuba
diver move so fast or so gracefully. This is precisely the
kind of equipment that professional freedivers have
favoured over the years, as they’ve looked to go down
deeper and for longer.
The modern sport, known as ‘apnea’, first originated
in the middle of the last century, but it was with the
“AFTER DINNER EACH NIGHT
WE PRACTISE YOGA NIDRA UNDER
THE STARS: A HYPNOTIC HALF-HOU
OF LYING ON DECK WHILE EMMA’S
SOOTHING VOICE LULLS US INTO
A SLEEPY SEMI-COMA”
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F R E E D I V I N G
S H A R M E L S H E I K H
