beginner questions about swimming under water

[tomyum]

Although my last post was a bit naive, or not clearly expressed in technical terms, I found a pretty good discussion about basically the same thing on the deeperblue forum:

increasing the effectiveness of hands free equilisation

 

[JohnniG]

So opening your jaw and swallow. How do you open your jaw without getting water in your mouth?

What is the technique called?

 

[tomyum]

blah, after all that reading and thinking and watching videos, etc. i went snorkeling and scubaing for 10 days and it was easy to equalize while scuba, but i can't do it for snorkel.

when scubaing, i can always equalize by breathing in for a long time and opening my jaw and getting my ears set, just so. it works really good for me. repeatedly, on command, it always works. but i can't or don't like to do it any other way.

when snorkeling, i can't equalize because none of the other ways work for me or are very uncomfortable, stressful, and i don't like hurting my ears just to try to figure this out. at this point in time. perhaps in the future, i can fool around with it.

 

[AfterDark]

Just block your nose and try to exhale thru it. Do this on the surface and again as soon as you start your dive. The thing you want to do is stay ahead of the need to equalize. As soon as you feel a little pressure repeat. After awhile you'll be able to just swallow or move your jaw back and forth. The body adapts to the demands placed upon it. The more the muscles involved are used the stronger they get and the easier it'll be to equalize. The sure fire method all things being equal,no internal problems, is to try to exhale thru your nose while blocking it. You can do in your living room. Just don't exhale so hard that it hurts. Start slow and build up the pressure until they "pop".