Since I try to use this blog to go deeper on topics that I only mention in my Substack, today is the day to dive deep — into reality and freediving.

That even sounds strange to me, but I know there’s a connection, and I’ll find it while I write.

Over the last months, I’ve found a new passion: freediving.
I actually surprised myself with this one because I only wanted to do the course for the whales and maybe to feel a little safer in the water.

I was always fascinated by Luc Besson’s The Big Blue. But watching that movie made me feel two things at once: awe, and the solid certainty that I could never do what those divers do. To dive into the deep on one single breath felt so unreal, so far away from what I thought my body could handle.

I mean, I’ve always hated the feeling of breath restriction. Sometimes I even tried to hold my breath for as long as movie characters did (any advernture movie would do), just to prove that I was right: my breath hold is terrible.

But this fascination stayed. Quietly.
I’ve been eyeing freediving courses for years, maybe because it seemed mysterious and daring, maybe because it felt like something only a few people do. Something special, almost secret.

So when I finally took the course, I went with zero expectations, zero hopes, zero trust in myself. I was ready to fail. Maybe just learn to snorkel.
But maybe because of that attitude, I was relaxed enough to hold my breath for over three minutes in static apnea and to dive 50 meters distance in dynamic (with the worst fins possible).

I went home hyped after the first day, full of confidence for the open water session the next morning.
And then, of course, I completely failed. I couldn’t make it past 4 meters deep because of equalization problems.

Still, I couldn’t let it go. I booked a coaching, learned to relax more and found out that my body has a strange kind of superpower: I can equalize hands-free. I can’t even do it on purpose. My body just does it. (A pretty useless superpower in daily life, but a great one for freediving.)

Which brings me to the diving reflex, the hidden reflex inside all of us.

When you hold your breath and your face meets cold water, something ancient wakes up.
Your heart rate slows down. Your blood vessels tighten to protect your core organs.
Your spleen releases extra red blood cells to carry more oxygen.

Your body literally reorganizes itself to keep you alive underwater.

It’s called the mammalian diving reflex, and we share it with whales, seals, dolphins, and even otters.
It’s a reminder that our bodies are still wired for the ocean, for the deep.

I’d tried to trigger this reflex before, by dunking my face into a bowl of cold water. Not for diving, but because I’d read it’s good for the vagus nerve. And a strong vagus nerve is something every anxious artist would wish for.
Sadly that's no superpower of mine.

But in the water, something happens.
The body remembers.
It’s like a switch flips, from thinking to sensing.

When I started reading about the diving reflex, I realized it’s not just a physical response, it’s also a kind of embodied narrative our bodies tell themselves to survive.
A story so old that we no longer know we’re repeating it.
The story goes: you are a mammal, the water is your origin, trust the depth.

Every time I dive, that story starts again.
My pulse slows down, the noise disappears and I am whale, gliding down to the place I actually belong.
(Please, just lock me somewhere in a cellar if you ever hear me say things like “I am a mermaid.”)

It fascinates me endlessly.
My fear of the water and the deep was so profound from the outside and yet it’s completely gone from the inside, just because of this old instinct that kicks in.
This is how I think our body and brain work together to create our reality all the time.

What does it take to survive this moment?
What are the possibilities we have?
And then we use them.

What might sound like it takes the soul or the spark out of humanity because it makes us sound like brain machines (which I think we are) actually puts so much magic into us.
Because there is nothing outside our body that we have to search for.