Latest / 6 Ranch Podcast / The Psychology of Freediving with Dr. Lindsay Bira

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The Psychology of Freediving with Dr. Lindsay Bira · 6 Ranch Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: With something like freediving.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: The point is to stay very calm.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: So we're preserving our air in a different way because we only have so much inside of our lungs.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: So for veterans to be able to switch that gear over and realize it's not about like, let's get in and nail this, it's actually about slowing down, learning how to lower your heart rate, how to breathe up in a way that gets you ready to have a very peaceful dive, and in fact not powering down to the plate at 33 feet and then powering up because, yes, you did it, but no, taking your time.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: And learning how to move slowly and learning how to appreciate the beauty of what your body can do in this epic nature that we have.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: And it's only when we slow down that we keep the frontal lobe engaged and that our awareness grows, our mindfulness grows, and then we can reap the rewards that last more long-term, like true joy, well-being in a moment, presence in a moment.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast.
• 1:09
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• 2:25
  Speaker 2: I would like to start with the story of Alinka Artnick.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: What can you tell me about that?
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So Alinka Artnick has held the world record for women's freediving and I find her story quite powerful because she had a hard time in her life.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: She was not a freediver and in her early 30s, from what I understand this is what I've gathered about her story is in her early 30s she was having a really tough time and was having depression, was suicidal, and basically told a friend that she wanted to kill herself.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And that friend, through conversation, said you know, well, you could do that and anybody could.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: But instead of doing that or before doing that, why don't you do something that's pretty profound, something that pushes your own limits?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: And so somehow and I don't know the story around that but Alenka found freediving and so she had no fear going into freediving because she already didn't have quite the full will to live.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So through having no fear and going literally deeper than she would have wanted to otherwise, she went to a depth that even surprised her.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So that was her getting into freediving, diving, and then through finding the impact of that, so saying I didn't know I could do this and now I just did that gave her some will to live and now she's the woman's world record holder and she's dove over 400 feet deep on her breath.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: That is so remarkably amazing it is it.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: It really is Pretty cool.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, so to set the scene, I'm sitting here with Dr Lindsay Bira in Marathon Key, florida, and we just concluded an ocean-oriented Team Semper Fi, padi basic and level one dive course basic and level one dive course and Team Semper Fi for folks that don't know is a veteran nonprofit that enables veterans to recover through sport rather than through, say, prescription drugs or something along those lines, and it's an organization that I've been a part of for, I think, 11 years now and I've got to participate and guide these events before you and I started having this conversation I think about 18 months ago, maybe longer, and we got linked up through um free diver Steph, who has previously been on the podcast talking about her, her journey in free diving and her world record Wahoo, that she shot with a pole spear like an 86 pound behemoth of a fish it looks like it was bigger than she is.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Uh, she's awesome.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And Steph uh, steph recommended you to be the instructor for this course, not only because you're a great dive instructor, but because of your background.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: So tell me a little bit about who you are, what your background is and what got you into this sport.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I am a clinical health psychologist, which is on the medical side of psychology, looking at the effects of stress, how we manage stress and protect our health from that outcome long term.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And I spent about eight years as contract for the military so active duty and then also worked with the VA system because my other specialty is PTSD both civilian and military.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So I did a lot in the combat trauma land and so as a clinical psychologist working with PTSD and combat PTSD, you know, I started to ask the question why are we waiting until the end point of disease and disorder before we apply treatment?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And a lot of the treatments that actually work to some extent well are things that we can all learn as a society to prevent the development of difficulty after something bad happens.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So I started a private practice, I started my own business, I started speaking on resiliency, taking these tools from research land, from evidence-based treatment, treating the end point of disease and disorder, into the general population to educate people about their brain, their nervous system and how to stay emotionally healthy even in the face of stress.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I worked a little bit for Wounded Warriors for a couple years.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I was going out on expeditions with Wounded Warriors as an educational psychologist, assisting in their adventures.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So I would bring in the components of the mind, the components of overriding fear and growth into the adventures that they had.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And so I've had this kind of journey into my own career, my own business.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I've always been a scuba diver but I left scuba diving behind a few years ago because I just felt like it was artificial.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I was no longer pushing myself, I was getting bored down there, and I helped a university create Operation Scuba, which was for student veterans, a way to bring them together and a way to work on mindfulness through scuba diving.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So it was very fun throughout my career and even while I was a contract for the military and doing these large research trials for combat PTSD, it was also very rewarding and fun for me to get involved in these creative projects.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Ocean Oriented kind of came to life through COVID actually, and has brought many of these pieces together.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: That has allowed me to function both as a performance psychologist and a freedive instructor.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Creating a space where people can expand themselves their skill sets their mind in a container of freediving at sea.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: One of my favorite baseball players is Yogi Berra, and one of my favorite quotes of his is that baseball is 90% mental and the other half physical, and he has all kinds of goofy quotes like that.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: I think that applies to freediving as well.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: It is very much a mental game, but there is a huge physical portion of it.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: The physical portion of it isn't what people think that it might be.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: They think that you would need tremendous cardiovascular, that you would need to be in very good shape, that you need to look like the free divers that we might see on YouTube or on television.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: That's not necessarily true.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: You do need to have some physical ability, but you need to have very strong mental ability.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: And to say that it's mostly mental doesn't mean that it's easy, because it's certainly not, but it is doable.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I saw something truly amazing Lots of amazing things over the last couple of days but one of our participants is a double leg amputee above the knee.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: He took his legs off and he dove 33 feet hand over hand, no fins, no legs.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: You know he had to take breaks and plug his nose to clear his ears and, hand over hand, he made it 10 meters deep into the ocean and came back unassisted.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: That is freaking amazing.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: And if that?
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: doesn't motivate you, goodness absolutely, and that's one of the biggest take-home points, I think, from ocean oriented and free diving is a lot of the barriers that we perceive are just that, our perception, and sometimes we can't see a reality around that.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: But if you get creative and put yourself in situations where you train yourself out of that fear response, you realize that your capabilities are so much more.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: And he was such an amazing model for all of us and you know, even just telling the story.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: You know, and I asked him you know, can I tell your story?
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Can I feature this as a part of Ocean Oriented?
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: He said absolutely, because I think we as humans need to remember life is hard and weird things happen and we have losses and it seems like the end of the road and it never is.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: We just need community and creativity to push ourselves around that.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: And the community at veteran events is always interesting, right, because people are coming into it, especially in an organization like this where there's the additional aspect of wounded veterans.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: The community that forms around this already has the concept of that trauma bond, but nobody was serving with each other.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Typically we're meeting each other for the first time at these events with each other.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: You know, typically we're meeting each other for the first time at these events and in really short order you get to connect with people in a super interesting way, just because you know or can safely assume something about everybody's background, and because of that there's a sympathy that from the outside might seem like ruthlessness, because it's like, yeah, go do it, like I'm going to throw you in the ocean right now and you're going to figure this out, and I love it, it's great, it's so great.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is your transition from scuba into freediving.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Started with spearfishing.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that you know it's wild to think about.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: But I had left scuba diving behind just on its own.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I just had these big dives around the world.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I had done a lot of scuba diving and I loved it because I loved the underwater world and being a part of it.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: But when I would go on trips with my girlfriends I was the only scuba diver so I'd peel off and go on these scuba diving dives alone.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: What I started to notice was the groups that were on the dives.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: One, I was one of the only females a lot of times.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Two, it was all a competition for who had the best equipment like the biggest rigs of equipment and then it was very a competition for who had the best equipment like the biggest rigs of equipment.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: And then it was very artificial feeling and it didn't quite feel like the community aspect that I wanted to.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: And then we were just down there for a really long time and it was kind of I almost got bored with it.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful, but you can only see so much coral and fish or do these big adventure dives and you kind of say, well, I'm not really pushing myself.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I also noticed that you know it's not a sport, like we're just strapping all this artificial equipment on our bodies so that we can be a part of this underwater world that's not ours.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Something about it that just didn't feel aligned or fair, or of the salt of the earth that I wanted to feel, so I kind of decided.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Kind of like a cyborg at that point.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, you're as much machine as you are human.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, my last dive was in the caves in Tulum, in the cenotes, and we went down 200 feet through all of these nooks and crannies and I mean it was wild.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: But I just started to say, what am I doing?
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I'm just strapping all this on and going on these epic adventures.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: But for what you know, and so I had left it behind, and it was about maybe six months later that I was out with a girlfriend of mine and her husband is a spearfish charter.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: He had a boat, he does spearfish chartering, and we were just having fun.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: We were just out on a nice day and I was diving down, picking up starfish and bringing them up, and he said Lindsay, you're really good, you're really good at holding your breath.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Do you want to try to spear a fish?
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I'm from Texas, my dad has taken me hunting, like you know.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Hey, sure, why not?
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: You give me a gun, I can point and shoot.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: And so he said let's go deeper.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: So we did.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Then he said there's a school of fish down here.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: See if you can swim down and get it.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Now, looking back on that, I had these really weird short fins on Like they were like snorkel fins Like I would not be wearing those ever now.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: When we caught dead in those, I also wasn't wearing a weight belt, so I didn't have any equipment and he handed me like a three-band spear gun, okay, like it was the heavy-duty one.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: And so he hands it to me.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: He says point and pull the trigger.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I say no problem.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I look down, I see the school of fish and in retrospect it was about 40 feet down and so I just I just went for it.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I still can't believe I didn't have a weight belt, went for it, saw the school of fish zoned in on one.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: It was like time stopped and I just zoned in on this one fish.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I pointed, pulled the trigger and I got it.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I still will never forget that moment because I just thought I have a fish on the line.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I looked up, I saw how deep I was and I thought this is.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: And everything was silent.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I was like this is crazy that I just did this.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: So I swam to the surface and he was freaking out.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: He was like how did you do that?
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: I thought you said you never did this before.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I was like I don't know.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: My friend actually snapped a photo on her GoPro of this first fish and I'll get to that in a second and why.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: That relates to why I found it ocean oriented, but we popped to the surface and then we ate that fish fresh, sashimi style in 10 minutes, and so my mind was blown that we could.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I could live in Miami.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I could go out and spear fish and feed myself and my friends lunch.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: That was the opening of something so beautiful for me.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: But what was the nail in the?
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Not coffin, something much better than a coffin.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: But what was the nail in taking this all home was when she showed me the GoPro footage and I saw myself with that spear gun, with this fish that I just got.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Knowing that that created such an amazing experience and it really drove home how beautiful it is to be in the underwater world and how epic and amazing it is to be able to do something like that yourself and, I think, especially as a woman too.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: You see all these videos and photos of men doing things like that.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I think to see that photo of me doing something like that really drove home the idea of I can do this right.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: So then I said, okay, I want to do more spearfishing.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: How do I do this?
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: There was a spearfishing community in Miami.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I reached out to them.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I started making friends.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: A couple people took me out, but then they had a real conversation with me.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: They said you don't have basic freedive training.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: You don't have the rescue skills, you can't really come with us.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: You can't dive with us until you get that.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: So I had never heard the term free diving before, but that's when I started looking it up and that's when I took my first course.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: That's amazing, there's a lot of talk about delayed gratification, and there's benefits to it in some ways.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: I've hunted my entire life.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: I've, you know, a huge amount of the food that I've consumed in my life have been from animals that I've hunted, through fish that I've caught.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: There is something very unique about the experience that you're talking about of getting a fish with the spear gun on the fish's terms under the water and how quickly you can turn that living animal into food, and I think that it's the opposite of delayed gratification.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: In some ways, it's like instant gratification in a way that is pretty unique amongst sporting opportunities where you're consuming food.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Something that I really really love about spearfishing, compared to rod and reel fishing, is that with spearfishing I'm selecting for the species, for the individual, for the size that I'm after, and it's all very, very targeted and discriminant, whereas with rod and reel you might not be able to even dictate what kind of species is gonna bite on at the end of that hook.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you about serotonin versus dopamine, and I've heard it explained that serotonin is for the hunt and dopamine is for the kill.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Is that accurate?
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Can you break those things down as a clinical psychologist?
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard it that way.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Now, my understanding I'm not a neuroscientist so I don't have all of the latest science, but my understanding is that dopamine would still be for the hunt too, because dopamine is still about seeking the reward.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: We get a big dopamine hit when we get a reward, but that dopamine actually comes back around and causes us some reward-seeking behavior.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Serotonin is involved in that process, yes, and serotonin is sometimes considered like a mood stabilizer or something that makes us more consistently happy.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Dopamine is the big hits of like joy and reward.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: This is why dopamine is also involved in the addiction pathway, because you get this huge dopamine hit whenever you get the substance pathway.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Because you get this huge dopamine hit whenever you get the substance that you want, whether that be chocolate, salt, butter or something more intense alcohol, heroin, the list goes on.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: So you get that big dopamine hit whenever you get that substance.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: But then dopamine plays in those reward pathways to cause you to keep seeking the substance, and we can train dopamine for something positive or something negative and harmful.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And so with something like spearfishing we're working with dopamine in a way and the adrenal system.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: So there is kind of some adrenaline involved there too, which they go hand in hand, but we're working with dopamine to improve our reward seeking in a sports model, in a way that's sustainable, hopefully, and we're fishing sustainably and in a way that provides protein in a healthier form.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: That makes more sense and I'm not surprised at all.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And you did mention delayed gratification, which is we talk about unhealthy dopamine hits.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: So this is where we get into this addiction model, right?
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Even sedentary activity sitting on the couch too long is these almost unhealthy dopamine hits.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: So your dopamine system is getting rewarded by doing nothing.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: The opposite of sitting on the couch is doing something.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: That's effort, that's energy, that's like a punishment, right?
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So we as a society, our dopamine systems have almost gotten like rewarded for doing nothing or doing unhealthy things.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So when I work with people one-on-one in my private practice as a psychologist, I always challenge them to look at what are their unhealthy quick dopamine hits that we want to get rid of.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's sitting on the couch.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's scrolling through Instagram and seeing epic video after epic video.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's sitting on the couch.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's scrolling through Instagram and seeing epic video after epic video.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Maybe that is something like a drug or an unhealthy relationship that keeps that system online and instead getting back to that.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: What that is is that's getting out of this quick dopamine hit and getting more into things that require a lot of planning and a lot of training until you get that dopamine hit.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So in a way, yes, spearfishing is kind of a quick dopamine hit.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: But I would actually argue that it's still delayed gratification because in order to continue doing it, in order to be good at it, you actually have to get the gear, you have to do all the preparation, you have to be prepared to wait sometimes and do the techniques of hunting.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: My quick dopamine hit with getting that first fish.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: That was definitely a quick dopamine hit.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I did not plan for it, I did not expect it to happen.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: It was wild.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: But that triggered me to then go along this path of very delayed gratification and that's why I did not like free diving in the beginning.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Where was the dopamine?
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: And I think because I had that big dopamine hit with spearfishing that first time.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Then I was chasing that dopamine.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I was like are you kidding me?
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Free diving, like it's such a waste of time.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I just want to get the fish right.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: But then I learned and I got my brain trained that through that delayed gratification there's actually bigger rewards and bigger dopamine hits on the other side.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: So it is a way like we train our dopamine reward system through the things that we choose to use it with.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: It does you know, before this course, my deepest dive was a very frustrating 32.94 feet and to the engineers at Garmin, who I know are listening right now, I wish you all had just rounded that up, but 33 feet was my goal and I didn't quite get it.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: So, coming into this, one of the standards for passing the PADI level one was a 33-foot dive and after all the workup, the education, the time that we did in the pool my first time out, I was able to get it right.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: So as soon as I got that, even before I was back to the surface, I was like I want to go deeper, I want more, I want longer, and that is something that's really alluring to me about the free diving aspect of this that is connected to, but different from, the spearfishing is there, there is an endless limit to deeper and longer.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Right, we're constantly pushing that, people are constantly pushing that, and I don't have to compare myself to a linka art neck and try to get 400 feet beneath the surface I need to get deeper than 33 feet.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So as I continued working, yesterday I got more comfortable with a 33 foot dive.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I cheated myself down to 35 feet, which is as far as the tether would let me go, and then today we got to stretch it out and go all the way to the ocean bottom, which was 52 feet, got down there no problem and was able, yeah.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: So I just want to say a big happy yes, thank you got down there no problem and was able to turn around and stand negatively buoyant on the bottom of the ocean and look around for a second at this quiet living world that I had no business being in, and then calmly ascend back to the surface.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I just can't describe the feeling of accomplishment that came with that.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: But the same thing on the way up I was thinking I want to go deeper, I want to stay longer and I love having that thirst that is going to carry me, you know, into the future of this but also to be safe doing it and learn all the safety precautions and mechanisms that are involved.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: I'm just extremely grateful for everything that I've learned from you here, but even more so than that in looking around at the other Team Semper Fi participants who have come to this.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: They're visibly different people than they were four days ago Amazing.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: In what way?
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: In what way?
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: They're more confident in their actions, they're happier.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: My roommate came into this with some misconceptions about what freediving was and I don't know if you remember.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: But he said you know, I'm interested in this because I don't like people and I feel like if I dive to the bottom of the ocean there won't be any of them around.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: And today he was talking about trying to find other members of the community so that he can go out and do this with other people together.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Wow Right, that's a radical shift and we know how important the value of community is for mental and physical health.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: What a difference.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: What a difference.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: And so for him being drawn to this because of the isolation component and the serenity of being in the water by himself, he actually found community that he's more attached to, that he's now going to use his tethers to other zones in life, which I think is absolutely amazing.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for sharing that story with me, because I didn't know the insider information on that and that's very cool.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about the mammalian dive reflex.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: This is super interesting and I'm going to be completely honest with you.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: When I started reading about MDR the mammalian dive reflex I thought man, this is a load of crap.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: This doesn't make sense.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: One of the first things if you start to read about this yourself, one of the first things you're going to come across is well, we're not the only ones that have this.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Other mammals have it, like sea otters, dolphins, whales, et cetera, like marine mammals especially, and I'm like that doesn't make sense.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Like you know, we are many, many hundreds of millions of years away and splitting off from those species.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Why would humans have this?
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense that I have a biological mechanism that helps me survive if I'm 30 plus feet beneath the water in cold conditions.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Why would we have ever needed to adapt to that?
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: But I'm sold on it, I believe it, I experienced it.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: I'm sold on it, I believe it, I experienced it really for the first time on this trip.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I want you to tell me about it, okay.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Well, this is what sold me to free diving.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: So, as I mentioned earlier, I was annoyed that I had to learn free diving and in level one I finally found a free instructor, free diver Steph.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: She was my level one instructor, love her, she's like a sister to me, spent so much time in her boat in the Bahamas.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Anyway, started my free let dive level one course with just kind of annoyance with it and then learned about the science and then learning that it's a perfect trifecta of the physics acting upon our biology.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: But we need our psychology in order to trust that process.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: So the MDR, the mammalian dive reflex, is part of the biological side of that and that reflex is activated by the physics of the ocean.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: So we have that embedded within us.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Everybody has that within them ready to be tapped.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: But the only way we can access that and experience it is through psychology.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: So you have to have the trust that you have that system.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: We develop trust through knowing the science and knowing that this is a validated scientific thing.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: We also develop trust incrementally over time as we experience something a little bit more and gather data that says, oh, I am okay.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: So that line is now fine, right, we find our edge, we go beyond it, we keep pushing it right.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: So, finding the MDR.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: So that line is now fine, right, we find our edge, we go beyond it, we keep pushing it right.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: So, finding the MDR.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: So what the MDR is?
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: It's this reflex that gets activated by the physics of the ocean.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So the first thing that happens is our heart rate starts to slow down.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: And when you're at depth, so when you're at the third atmosphere, which is beyond 66 feet or 20 meters beyond that, your heart rate can slow.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Let me break that down real quick.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: So where we're sitting right now above ground, we're experiencing one atmosphere of pressure, like barometric pressure is a way to think about that.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: When we go under the water, we have the weight of the water above us, adding pressure the deeper that we go.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: So once we're at 10 meters or 33 feet, we've doubled the amount of pressure that we're experiencing on dry land.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, and then that continues on down.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: So the second atmosphere is at 20 meters.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Third atmosphere is at 30 meters.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: And what's crazy about that is one atmosphere of pressure.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Where we're sitting right now, where our listeners are sitting, that's from here to the edge of the atmosphere, which nobody has really agreed.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Where the edge of the atmosphere is, it's kind of like nebulous in a gradient Right.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: I mean the stratosphere atmosphere like whatever, wherever we're breathing and hanging out in one atmosphere.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: That's one atmosphere.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: That's a long, long way away.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Right To get that same amount of pressure underneath the water is, like you said, only 10 meters or 33 feet.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: That's that same amount of pressure.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: And so that physics happens in such a fast way, which is why it creates a vehicle for us to work on ourselves and that's what ocean oriented is about but also activate our mammalian dive reflex, so that physics of the ocean is what starts to bring it online.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: So the deeper we go into the different atmospheres, then our body starts to change how it functions because it's trying to preserve energy, specifically preserve oxygen.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: So one thing that happens is our heart rate slows.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: And in the third atmosphere of pressure, and even deeper so the competitive divers, their heart rate is a half to a third of what it is at resting.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: So if their resting heart rate is right here on land, if it's 60, then it's 30 or 20 in the third atmosphere and lower, which is amazing and it has nothing.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have any effect on our consciousness and our awareness.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: In fact, we become even more aware and more conscious because of another thing that happens Our blood.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: We have vasoconstriction, so our blood shunts from our fingertips, from our legs into the core of our body and, most importantly, our brain, so that, at depth, we have more rich, oxygenated blood in our brain and body than we ever have ever, because it's shunted to be in that area.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Another thing that happens is and this happens after a few dives is our spleen, which we normally don't use and don't need.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: That's a sac, it's a little reservoir to hold very oxygenated red blood cells, so that spleen is doing its job by just holding this extra reserve of red blood cells that have high oxygen in them.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: When you dive a few times and your brain starts to read hypoxia, which means you're holding your breath long enough to where you're having low oxygen, much lower than what you need at the end of our dives, when our brain reads that and enacts that part of the mammalian dive reflex which says contract your spleen, so the spleen will contract and push all of those rich blood cells into our blood.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: So again, even more so, we have more oxygenated blood in our brain than we ever have, ever at the surface, which allows us to be highly effective underwater.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Crazy.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: It is crazy, it's so crazy.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so some other things that happen to the body is that gases compress when they go underwater.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: So I think maybe people have had the experience of like having some type of airtight container, like, say, a water bottle, you know, in their vehicle and they go up a mountain and down a mountain and they might hear their bottle crinkle up or pop or something like that and down a mountain and they might hear their bottle crinkle up or pop or something like that.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: So this is what's referred to as Boyle's Law, and Boyle's Law states that if you double the pressure on a gas, then the volume will be cut in half.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: So we know that at 10 meters or 33 feet, since we've doubled the pressure under one atmosphere, that we now have lung capacity that is half of what it was on the surface.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: So when we go to 20 meters or 66 feet, our lungs are now a third of the size that they were on the surface.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that we've got less oxygen.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: It just means that it's taking up less space.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: We've got the same number of oxygen molecules that we started with.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: I found it really interesting when you were talking about how long people under anesthesia can go without needing oxygen.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Can you explain that?
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: This was on an ocean-oriented experience that I led in Miami, and one of the guests was an anesthesiologist who had never free dove before, didn't have much experience in the water, had a fear response to the water, but was willing to try.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And so we were on a little island and we were doing the very first breath hold.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: So the facial immersion, static apnea.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: This is where everybody has their face in the water.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: We're activating the mammalian dive reflex through the coolness of the water on our face and then we're holding our breath to our peak breath hold while your buddy is timing you.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: And so I was running them through the science and talking about the breath hold and talking about actually how long we can go holding our breath.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: All of our alarm bells will go off because CO2 is building.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: So our brainstem starts to say what are you doing?
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: It activates our limbic system, which makes us emotionally triggered and have fear.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: It makes us uncomfortable and want to stop.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: But those are alarm bells that we just say oh hello to and we don't let them drive our behavior because what we?
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: know is our oxygen level stays high.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: This is why ocean-oriented isn't just a free diving thing, it's also resiliency, because this relates to every other area of life.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Our brain is constantly playing tricks on us and the alarm bells that we feel might not be true, and so we need to really all examine where we're being held back or why we aren't pushing ourselves, or what might another reality be.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: We might be living in one reality, there might be something else.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: So I'm explaining all of this to them to let them know they can really push their breath, hold beyond one minute, beyond 90 seconds.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: They have high levels of oxygen.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: That oxygen does not drop.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: The only thing that happens is the CO2 builds, and that's what makes it so uncomfortable.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: I'm explaining this.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: He raises his hand and he says I have something to share as an anesthesiologist.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I say sure his hand and he says I have something to share as an anesthesiologist.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I say sure.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: He says okay, this is blowing my mind, because in my work I know that when we wheel a patient back and we give that patient that first round of anesthesia, so basically they're paralyzing the central nervous system, paralyzing the body, so that patient cannot breathe on their own.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: That's why they have to intubate them as a part of a surgery.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: There's an external breathing apparatus, right?
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: The anesthesiologist's job is to sit there to sedate the patient, intubate the patient and then sit there throughout the procedure and monitor the oxygen levels, right?
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: So they have all that measured.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: He said we take the patient back, we give them the first round of sedation.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Their airway is completely a non-working airway.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: They cannot control their airway.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Paralyzed, paralyzed okay.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: The next step is to intubate them.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: So they have an external airway and they're getting the oxygen they need.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: But he said I have 10 minutes between the time that I sedate them and paralyze their airway until the time that their body, their numbers, are showing low, dangerous oxygen before I need to actually intubate them physiologically.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: So their body does not have a physiological need for oxygen until 10 minutes have passed.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Now why is that?
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Because we are a self-contained system.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Our body is highly efficient at taking care of itself.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: We have all of these layers of mechanisms in place for survival.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: So there's a big leeway, set point range around paralyzation and then when you actually have a dire need for oxygen.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: So he is an anesthesiologist, he knows this, he does this every day.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: He sits with that person.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: He educates his resident on different procedures, he's timing it, he's watching the O2 level.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: He knows he has 10 minutes before he needs to give that body oxygen.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: So that him putting that link together made him say I didn't think I could hold my breath past one minute or 90 seconds, and now I know I can probably go beyond three minutes.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Now, why does this become so hard whenever we're awake?
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Because we have all of these interpretations and we're feeling our alarm bells, we're feeling the discomfort.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: We have these thoughts like I don't even like this.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Why am I doing it?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: This must be bad for me.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: If I hold it longer I'm going to pass out and if I pass out I'm going to die.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: All these assumptions that are actually activating our sympathetic nervous system, which is our stress response, which heightens our heart rate, which burns oxygen.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: So we, being awake, thinking beings, we are going to burn through that oxygen way faster than the person who's sedated.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Their brain is not online at all, they're just laying there as a self-contained body.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: They have ten full minutes.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: We would have major difficulty reaching that awake, but we can absolutely reach three minutes or four minutes like pretty easily, as long as we stay calm plenty of free divers who make it to 10 minutes, some that make it to 11 minutes by putting their face in cold water and relaxing after they've breathed up there's also people who have kind of supercharged their body with pure oxygen, who have made it over 20 minutes doing this.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: It's crazy, I think the longest was 25.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: And yeah, they use supplemental oxygen.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: But the main thing with that is keeping their body so calm.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: And I saw a video with that guy who just got the world record and I think it was 25 minutes with supplemental oxygen and that's what he talked about.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: He just goes into a complete meditative state where he is lowering his heart rate just through his mind and through conditioning practice.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: He's burning oxygen super slowly, he's not using any of his muscles, he's relaxing everything.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: So you know there's a practice around that and a conditioning that comes with it.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's pretty amazing what we're capable of.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about buoyancy a little bit.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: I think buoyancy is very interesting.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: It's something that we all depend upon in various ways, but if you've received goods or services in your lifetime, chances are that some of them have come from ship, and ships work extremely efficiently about 10 times or 100 times more efficient than a train, which is then that much more efficient than a truck Absolutely amazing.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: It's all capable due to buoyancy efficient than a train, which is then that much more efficient than than a truck absolutely amazing.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: It's all capable due to buoyancy.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: And you can have massive amounts of weight on a ship and it still floats.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Everything's made of materials on that ship that would otherwise sink.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: So why is this?
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: The upward force on a body in water is equal to the weight of the water that the object displaces.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: So, as I'm diving, when I'm on the surface, I'm buoyant.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: So if I don't kick and wiggle around, I pop up to the surface and can breathe and everything's fine.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: So I have to fight my way down and I do that with, you know, fins and by, you know, orienting my head towards the bottom and things like that.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: I'm also out here not wearing a wetsuit, because the water temp was 86 degrees.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: And I didn't need one.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: I was wearing three pounds of weight.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: So I swim down to that first atmosphere 33 feet.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Now I'm neutrally buoyant and at that point I can just coast down.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Now the upward force that is on my body has changed because the amount of water I'm displacing has changed, because now my lungs are smaller, exactly.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: And what's also amazing is what you just described of how much easier it gets and then how much more rewarding it is the deeper you go, because you're not fighting against the physics of the water.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: At the surface and 10 feet below we're fighting against that buoyancy because our air sacs, our lungs, are the biggest possible, so we're displacing that water and the water is pushing back against us.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: But the deeper you go, just like you described, the smaller your lungs get and then the easier it is to move through water.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: We don't have to fight it and it becomes super fluid.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, we reach neutral buoyancy anywhere from 33 feet to 50 feet, just kind of depending on your body.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: And what a beautiful place that is to be to just hang out in neutral buoyancy.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: They actually do space training with astronauts in neutral buoyancy because it feels somewhat like space.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, bonkers, okay, one of your taglines is be smarter than your brain, and we've talked about that a little bit, how there are portions of your brain whether it's the brainstem or the limbic system or the amygdala or whatever I don't know how brains work that are sounding off these alarm bells that say, hey, you need to get to someplace where you can breathe, because you need to right now.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: But we know, because we are trusting in you as a doctor and as an instructor, to say, actually, you don't need to breathe right now, you can keep holding your breath, you're okay, you can keep doing the thing.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: On the 33 foot dives yesterday, at 20 feet, every single time, there was something that occurred within me that said stop and turn around and go back up.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: I didn't do that back up, I didn't do that.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: This is this is going to get a little bit nebulous.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: So when we're saying be smarter than your brain, who is the you?
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: right.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Cause I I tend to think of my brain as as my consciousness, but it's not right.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: So it's almost like a split between some kind of rational thought or intention, and then you know whatever signals I'm receiving from this mess of gray matter.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly Such an interesting question.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: So scientists have agreed upon that our consciousness is something different than our brain.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: We also know that we have neurons that extend into other areas of our body, even our stomach, which is why the gut-brain connection is being discussed a lot now.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating and wild, and so we know that our consciousness is not just our brain.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Nobody has been able to explain what consciousness is though.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: So when I explain consciousness, it's the observation of our experience, living.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: We also call this meta.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: So let's break down meta in a couple of domains for a second, so we can have metacognition.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: What am I thinking about the way that I'm thinking?
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: We have meta emotion.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: How do I feel about the way that I feel?
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Quick example of that is I might be really angry about something and then I feel guilty about the fact that I'm being that.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I feel angry, right?
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Another example is I'm feeling really sad and depressed and I feel worthless or insecure or just bad about myself because I'm stuck in a sad and depressed state.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Right, there's even meta attention paying attention to how I'm paying attention.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: So we have all of these basic processes, things that happen automatically to us, thoughts that happen automatically to us, emotions that happen automatically, and even the way that we pay attention.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: That's our automatic process.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: But we are something more than that, I know.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: But we are something more than that I know.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: So it's the power that we get in embracing and harnessing that something more, because then we can be smarter than and override those basic automatic processes.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: And so the meta skills are definitely a skill.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Some people naturally have them more than others.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: It's something that we can absolutely develop, and consciousness is about being able to observe this entire experience of reality and understand that our reality is not the only reality and it might not be an accurate reality, and so we need to examine it, step beyond it and then make decisions that might be best for a greater purpose.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: And so with freediving, yeah, we're overriding some really big alarm bells, some thoughts that this is bad for me, some feelings that something is not right, this is not okay, this feels bad.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Therefore it must be bad right.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Even our attention, these automatic attention processes.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: We're paying attention to maybe some of the threats, all of our alarm bells, the scary things of the ocean, how far we are from the surface and what that means.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: So you can see how the attention weaves back into thinking, weaves into feeling, it all weaves together.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: What we're doing through freediving and this is why I founded Ocean Oriented freediving is a petri dish that we are able to use and exist in and then, in real time, observe our relationship to those automatic processes.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: And then, also in real time, we're able to improve our relationship to those automatic processes by gaining more meta skills, more frontal lobe executive function strengthening, because we're keeping that frontal lobe online as those automatic processes are happening to us, so that we stay in control.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Those aren't driving our behavior by saying "'F this, I'm out" or "'I'm popping to the surface'".
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: It's like no.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I feel that and I'm using these moments in this Petri dish to practice skills that relate to every other area of my life with consciousness, emotion regulation, behavior regulation, executive function skills, reappraisal all of these things that we actually measure and research and relate to how we feel in the world and then how does that carry into trauma and in healing from that PTSD, tbi, like the things that a lot of veterans are dealing with, but also higher level performance for CEOs, cfos, people who are leaders in various fields.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start with veterans.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: So free diving is a little bit of an adrenaline sport, like when you touched that plate at 33 feet or went beyond.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Even today.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: You felt really awesome, right, like you got that adrenaline hit.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: But in order to get there you actually have to keep your nervous system calm.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: And when we were in the pool the first day doing the facial immersion and static apnea, my co-instructor Steb he was observing one duo who, one guy, was having trouble reaching to 90 seconds.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about what static apnea is, real quick, just so people can be with us.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Static mean not moving.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Apnea meaning holding your breath, so in this scenario I'm laying or whoever is laying face down in the pool.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: I've got my arm stretched out, resting on the forearm of a partner who is monitoring me and also giving me a heads up every 30 seconds as time has passed.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: I want to get more into what that experience is, but keep going, yes that's exactly what's happening.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: So the point of this is we want to hold our breath, being completely still to reach our peak breath hold so that we know what it feels like as we hold our breath longer and longer and we know where our limit is.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: And for freedive training we have certain set points for different levels, so you hit certain breath holds and know what that feels like.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: So that's what we were doing in the pool as kind of a first step in this training, and one of our guys he was having trouble getting to 90 seconds and his buddy and actually a couple other people there.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: They started saying come on, you got this, just like power through.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: You got this man, you got this, which would make sense, right, we want to build our people up and we want to empower them to do well, but in the world of freediving, that pump up mentality is actually the opposite of what we need, because what we need in freediving is we need complete calmness, serenity, keeping that heart rate super low, stepping into trust of ourselves and others in the environment, and so that was actually having the opposite effect.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: His breath hold was getting shorter and shorter and he was getting more and more discouraged, so his brain was not getting the data that this was okay.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: His brain was getting the data that I can't do it and if I would have held longer I would have not been able to make it.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: So my co-instructor very greatly stepped in and said hey guys, you're doing it wrong.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: So the military mentality and people coming out of the military, especially when we look at things like PTSD and other disorders that naturally develop as a function of many things, but it's almost like in hijacking of the adrenaline system and it causes people to have these types of reactions where we, our brain and our nervous system thinks the best way to function is at this heightened level and the other thing that happens is we seek out adrenaline experiences.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: So so with PTSD, I call PTSD it's a hijacking of the nervous system and the nervous system only feels good functioning with that kind of adrenaline hit.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: So PTSD makes people seek out adrenaline experiences so that they're having that same kind of chemical hit and that can put veterans and other people with PTSD in actual danger.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: In fact, one of the criteria is when we're assessing for PTSD.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Criteria for diagnosis is are you doing any type of reckless behavior?
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Are you seeking any type of adrenaline activities that could even be speeding over the speed limit.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: If you get a stretch of highway, you know gassing it to 100 miles per hour and getting that hit.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: So when we look for patterns of that behavior, because that's an indicator that PTSD is there, wanting more adrenaline, because that's how we know we're safe.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: When we get an adrenaline hit it's part of the survival process.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: So we feel in control, we feel safe.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: That's why we seek those things out With freediving.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: This is why I love freediving for veterans.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: This is why I helped found Operation Scuba at a university in Texas for veterans.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: We embedded a mindfulness program with Scuba because with Scuba you want to preserve your air.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: So the slower you breathe, the more air you have.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: So we embedded a whole mindfulness training program within Operation Scuba.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: That was just so much fun.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: But with something like free diving the point is to stay very calm.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: So we're preserving our air in a different way because we only have so much inside of our lungs.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: So for veterans to be able to switch that gear over and realize it's not about like hoo-ha, let's get in and nail this.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: It's actually about slowing down, learning how to lower your heart rate, how to breathe up in a way that gets you ready to have a very peaceful dive and, in fact, not powering down to the plate at 33 feet and then powering up because, yes, you did it, but no, taking your time and learning how to move slowly and learning how to appreciate the beauty of what your body can do in this epic nature that we have.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: And it's only when we slow down that we keep the frontal lobe engaged and that our awareness grows, our mindfulness grows, and then we can reap the rewards that last more long term, like true joy, well-being in a moment, presence in a moment, satisfaction and really being, you know, present, with the feeling of gratitude that you're there in a space that, like, we're able to experience because the work that you did to get there so it's not that like heavy, quick adrenaline and dopamine hit, it's doing the work to train your system to be calm, so that then you get that reward.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: So, for veterans, I think it's an amazing, amazing practice.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: And one of these guys practices jujitsu at a national and world level and when he went out to initially make his first descent on 33 feet, he did exactly that he tried to bust down there as fast as he could.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: He's trying to minimize his exposure to what he was perceiving as a threat, which is a very normal response to do, whether you're in a military or a jujitsu type situation.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: And he outran his ability to clear his ears and had to turn around and come back up, and the structure of this forced him to slow down in order to succeed, and I think that that's something that's special about this underwater venue is there's no other way to do it.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: And he told me an interesting story when he was having trouble slowing down and when he was fearing blackout.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: He came to me and he said when I do jujitsu and I'm in a in a choke hold.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: And he said I'm really good at staying super calm even though my brain is not getting any oxygen.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: He said I've realized that when I stay super calm I can last much longer in a blackout than some other people I know.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: And he said I know that's because I'm staying super calm.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: And he said so he's like I'm kind of gathering.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Is freediving the same kind of thing?
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: And I said exactly so, because your brain is not getting the same amount of oxygen but in a different way.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: It still comes down to the exact skill that you've learned to master in jujitsu.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: You're just going to parallel that, extrapolate that skill into this new environment.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: You feel safe in that environment.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Shockingly, you feel kind of safe in a choke hold I wouldn't right.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: But now you're feeling unsafe in this environment because it's new.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Your brain's alarm bells are going off.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: But if you can take that skill that you've somehow mastered in the choke hold and apply it to freediving, you will literally go to new depths.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: And it was that day that he was able to touch the plate and go slower.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was awesome, super cool.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: I want to hit on my static apnea experience.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: So when I was in the pool 90 seconds, no dramas.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I've been working on my CO2 and my O2 tables for months now.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: 90 seconds, no dramas I had full confidence in that.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: The longest breath hold I'd ever had was 2 minutes and 14 seconds.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: So after the 90 seconds and everyone had passed that, he said all right, for folks that want to try it a little bit longer, you can try 2 minutes, nobody go over 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: I was like all right, I've got to air this out a little bit and I went for.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: I was going to try and go for two and a half.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: At two minutes and seven seconds I came up and LeRong one of your instructors who's phenomenal.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Uh, he's like why did you quit?
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: And I didn't have an answer for him.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: I quit without having a reason to do so and I was horrified.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: I was horrified.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: So I sat there with that relative failure for a while and I was like all right, I'm going to try again.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: So I did my breathe up, did it again Two minutes and 33 seconds.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: But I got to tell you the feeling was pretty uncomfortable after two minutes and the contractions I was having in my stomach and then up into my chest.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: You know it was starting slow and it was getting big and then it was like double pumping.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: But I kept trying to think, while I was distracting myself from what I was feeling, that, okay, these things that I'm feeling aren't necessarily true.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Right, that goes back to the be smarter than your brain thing, which is not an easily done.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Uh, that's not an easily solved problem.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: But that that's what I was leaning on.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: So, um, I was, uh trying to think about like every single body part in sequence, and I was going through each one of my toes and trying to think about what my toenails look like and you know, sort of distracting my mind away from what I was feeling.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: But those feelings were getting stronger and demanding more and more attention.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: I was able to do it for that amount of time and even then, when I came up, my very first thought was I had room.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: I had plenty of room to keep going and as I get the opportunities in the future, I'm going to do that.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's pretty amazing.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Wrapping back to the second part of the question I had a little while ago what does this do for a CEO or a leader in industry?
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, so this is when I started Ocean Oriented.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: My first group was involved in YPO or EO, which is Young Professionals Organization, entrepreneurs Organization I can't remember exactly what it stands for.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I should know that.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: But these groups, they have requirements of the amount of income you have to make to be a part of these organizations.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: So it's for business leaders to connect with each other and support each other, and so my first couple of expeditions were heavily leaning with attendees from those organizations ocean-oriented to challenge business leaders and the world's top performers in a new vehicle of experience as a psychologist to actually lead them through science-based exercises that relate to performance and growth.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: And so when we look at somebody who's in business like an entrepreneur, they're facing crazy stress every day.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: The people they have to manage that's one of the biggest stressors is managing other people and wanting other people to do the level of work that you're capable of.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: Having bad business news happen, business tanks there's all kinds of stuff that people have to manage, and so there's a high level of stress in this group.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: And so what better way to work on that stress in a package that has a beginning and end in beautiful nature with me, I have my PhD.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I focus on the science behind everything that we're doing, the neuroscience, and I know the skills that we're going towards, because I know what we measure in outcomes of research, what makes people healthier, and so I embed all of that into the experience of the underwater world and challenging yourself in freediving.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: And what I love about freediving is I don't care who you are, I don't care if you're running a billion-dollar business and you are so effective in every area of life.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: If I put you in the water and tell you to hold your breath and even go 10 meters down, your nervous system is going to freak out, and so it's the best way for anyone to work on themselves very quickly, very hands-on, and get those skills that are gonna help them manage stress in other areas.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: May I offer you a criticism?
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Absolutely please.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: Currently, and maybe in perpetuity, you're called ocean-oriented.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: However, coming from the inland, I would like to see these offered in freshwater.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: I would love to see you move out of the salt and get people doing this in places where more of them live.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: You know the coast is a fraction of our population and, you know, while a lot of us have the ability to come to you or go to the Bahamas, you know you've been operating internationally.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: You've been in Italy, you're heading to Spain.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: You know you're doing really well with this, and rightfully so.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: I See no reason why you shouldn't be doing this in freshwater as well.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: I think you're right, but what am I to call it?
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: I think you can just roll with the ocean.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because really all water systems are connected anyway, right, whether it evaporates and then rains in the ocean or runs into a river system into the ocean.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: But I think you're right.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, that could be another version of it.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Right, we could call it ocean-oriented freshwater experience.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: You know there's so many ways to spin it, but you're right and I would love that there's so many.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, you were telling me about the body of water that you spearfish in and that it's clear and cold.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: But that's what wetsuits are for.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Sure, we can defeat that.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: We've got the power.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: We got it.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for that.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: I do think that you're going to continue to see a lot of success with this and that there's huge value in it for all of your participants.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Success is going to be defined ultimately by the participant.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: It's not going to be defined by Patty, it's not going to be defined by you.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: It's going to be defined by the people that show up to learn from you and the difference between their capabilities when they leave versus when they got there, and I feel really confident everybody that participates in this is going to have a shift in their abilities in a positive way.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Ultimately, the way you're doing this is very safe and it's positive and it's truly incredible.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: I think that what you've done for me and what you've done for this group of veterans with Team Semper Fi is profound.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: It's profound and I'm incredibly grateful for the experience.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that means so much for me to hear, and let me tell you it was a lot of work, pulling Ocean Oriented together and fighting against two seemingly opposing things my practice as a psychologist and everything I was doing in that world academia I'm an.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: In that world academia I'm an adjunct medical professor you know completely separate.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: And then I was going out in the ocean all the time and following this thing that I knew was so profound and there was so much power and potential that had not yet been tapped to bring it, you know, to other people.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: And so to bring these two things together, which is really the definition of innovation, two seemingly unrelated things and really making them match, was such an exercise for me.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: And people saying you know what are you doing and why are you doing it, and I don't really get it.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: And so to be able to be on this journey and hear that type of feedback it's like I want to bottle that and figure out how to listen to it later and, you know, use it as fuel to keep going, because it has been really powerful and profound.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: And when I hear that from people it's just so meaningful and for me, I am just so grateful that, as a psychologist, I have that training but I can sit across the table and do one-on-one therapy forever and it is helpful, especially if somebody is showing up in that space and wants to work on themselves.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: But they still have a nervous system that's functioning automatically in ways that they have not trained out of right.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: And so I'm so grateful that, as a psychologist, I've been able to found Ocean Oriented and use that, as we've been saying, that little petri dish or that vehicle or that rapid test that in real time, very quickly, you can observe those automatic processes.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: You are activating your frontal lobe or keeping that online.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: You're really training your brain, exercise for the brain to come out better.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: On the other side, and it's like I fully believe in this with my heart and this is what's kept me going and I think you know not only the fuel for success for Ocean Orangeented in general, but my fuel as a person and you know leading this is hearing stuff like that.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: So thank you.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, how can people get a hold of you?
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: Get involved?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: How can they sign up?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, follow Ocean Oriented on Instagram.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: You can also follow my direct Instagram, which is DrLindsayBira, and I have Ocean Oriented linked to that and vice versa.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: You can DM me.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: You can email me from my website.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: There's also OceanOrientedcom so you can view all of the great photos fromyou mentioned Laurent, one of my co-instructors earlier.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: He's also Ocean Oriented's underwater photographer.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: He's phenomenal has taken all those amazing pictures.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: So please follow just to see what we're up to, and I try to create content that for even people who aren't accessing the water with us, they're still able to benefit from the experience and what we post there and what we capture the experience with.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I mentioned the GoPro photo.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: That was kind of like the nail in driving me through freediving and spearfishing.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: The artistic side of ocean-oriented is capturing the experience.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to put together the video.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: I get goosebumps thinking about it because I geek out on this.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to put together the video from the Semper Fi ocean-oriented expedition because I want to express what we experienced here to people who are viewing it and for you guys to really see.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, I did that, you know that, you did it, you experienced it.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: It was epic, but then to see it, it is just awesome.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: So that's the artistic side of Ocean Oriented that I really enjoy, and so please follow the accounts to be able to see that.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: You know I don't do a lot of advertising.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Just, you know, in terms of, I just post what we do, but it's word of mouth.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: So if this resonates with a listener, please reach out.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: If you know you think it could be useful to somebody, please pass it along, just like you did James.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: You reached out to me, then passed it along to Cammie and we got this whole ball rolling.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: And then here we are, just finishing, you know, an amazing ocean-oriented weekend.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: So that's how I work and that's how ocean oriented stays alive.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: So please, anybody reach out to me and we can design all kinds of things.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: You know I've designed a day experience, I've done one-on-one work, so it's really great because we can be flexible with it.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: So please don't hesitate to reach out yeah, I talked to half a dozen different instructors before I made my recommendation to Team Semper Fi that they go with you and it was a really obvious fit for this class and I would endorse really anybody to sign up for this if they can pull it off.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been great.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: I look forward to seeing those videos and I tend not to like to see pictures and videos of myself doing things.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: Like to see pictures and videos of myself doing things, but this experience in particular is so internal and so cerebral that I think it will be like an out-of-body experience to to get to see it from from Laurent's lens, I think that's going to be a lot of fun, definitely okay and then the last thing I want to bring up that I think is a little bit slept on is the lives that you do Like your Instagram lives, where you answer people's questions.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: That is a tremendous opportunity for people to speak to a really smart person and get an honest answer, and you've been doing those once a week.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, I do those Mondays at 6 pm Eastern on my Dr Lindsay Bura Instagram.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: I try to keep that alive and keep that going.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: I love it because I get to hear from people what they're naturally interested in and all kinds of people pop in there and I say, hey, it's Instagram Live.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: I'm a psychologist.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: You can ask me anything.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: So people ask a range of questions related to their lives and I like to put my thinking cap on and help out.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: So I really encourage people to join that Instagram live.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: That's something that I'm keeping going as I'm developing other content.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: So I am about to launch my own podcast and I'm going to be developing some content so that people can access good resources without having to do full therapy.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: Just everything that I've learned as a psychologist in PTSD and trauma, in resiliency, all of this stuff that works so well when we have conversations about it.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: I want to package it.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I want to make it available for people.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: So that's a major project I'm working on right now, but keep in tune with the lives and keeping those going and I have all the information on everything else there.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I asked you a question on there a couple of months ago about, you know, when I was trying to hold my breath, I was having some invasive thoughts that were trying to, like spartan, kick me out of my concentration on that process, and something that you recommended as a tool was, like try to make those invasive thoughts worse.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: I was like good God lady, like why would I do that?
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: They're already bad, you know, they're real bad.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: And I thought, well, I'll give that a try.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: And it worked.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: And then, not long after that, I had to put down my dog, my best friend, there, and it was so hard.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: I was like, what am I going to do?
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: And I leaned back on that and I was like, what would be even worse than this?
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: And I was like, well, to have never had this dog at all, to have never had this, this love and these experiences and all these hunts together.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: That was a sentence and a 30 second response on your Instagram live that had such a huge impact on me.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you for that and again, I think that that's very slept on and something that people should be tuning into when they get the chance.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, everything, ocean oriented Dr Lindsay's Instagram, her website.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: All that is down there in the podcast description so you can click the links to follow in on all this stuff, and if you do, chances are you're going to see me struggling down a rope to get to death out here in the Atlantic.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Ocean.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: We'll make it look good.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: It did look good alright, thank you so much, thank you appreciate you very, very, very much thanks for not only being a part of Ocean Oriented, but also helping make it happen for Semper Fi my pleasure.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who sent emails, who sent messages.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: I think that that's fantastic.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: You guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.