Breathing

[twistypencil]

I don't have the air integration for my Perdix, but looking at the dives in subsurface, my average SAC is 21.9l

 

[scrane]

1. Relax.
2. Perfect your buoyancy. Watch your feet. If you are just hanging out and kicking your feet ask yourself why. Will a little more or less air in the BC correct the problem? Remember that every time you change depth you need to reevaluate your buoyancy.
3. Watch your depth. Stay a little above the group.
4. Dive a lot. Look around. Play with the fishies. Have fun. Stop thinking about it.

 

[KristenK]

KristenK - I don't meditate in the formal sense, but I think about certain diving aspects that for me create peace in my mind. I like going to bed at night and instead of counting sheep I think about gear assembly and donning my gear (I do most of my diving in sidemount gear), Gear check, Right to left, Top to Bottom, Front to Back (similar to PADI BWRAF), and the feeling of having a regulator in your mouth and putting you head underwater and starting the dive. That moment when the dive actually begins is when you should already be relaxed. I take myself through that whole process of building, donning, gear check, starting the dive in my head while relaxing to go to sleep. And it is nice to see a women participating in a conversation on this site and topic. There should be more of you.

That’s a great mindfulness activity....definitely meditative! I’m teaching mindfulness to a bunch of corporate execs next week in Chicago. I’ll use that as an example....how not all mindfulness activities involve Buddhist monks chanting in flowy robes. Thanks!

 

[Outbound]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but getting better at buoyancy control will greatly help with the amount of air you use. If you are constantly adding and dumping air to/from your BCD you're going to run down your tank quickly.

I am a beginner diver with only 28 logged dives. In that time I've halved my average RMV. I attribute a large part of this to getting my weighting and trim dialed in and learning better buoyancy control. The second biggest factor for me was learning to slow down. I've always been good about not sculling with my hands, but I had a tendency to swim too fast. Once I slowed down and learned to kick... glide, kick... glide better my RMV dropped quickly (I frog kick, by the way). With all that said, RMV is mostly impacted by fitness level and body type/size. Every new diver can improve it, but the range is going to greatly differ from diver to diver. I'm a medium-sized guy and an avid runner with a pretty high fitness level, and, I assume, a pretty good pulmonary diffusing capacity as a result. My baseline RMV is going to be lower than a guy who is bigger than me, but it will probably be higher than a fit person smaller than me.

 

[scubadada]

I don't have the air integration for my Perdix, but looking at the dives in subsurface, my average SAC is 21.9l

Hi @twistypencil

So, you must not be from the US as you use metric units. Here is a graph combining 2 SB polls started in 2009 and 2016, with 324 responses, that asked the question, What is your average RMV? RMV in l/minute divided by 28.32 is RMV in cf/min. Your RMV is 0.77 cf/min, toward the higher end of the distribution. There are many caveats in looking at this data. The respondents are likely more experienced divers, who calculate and follow their RMV, and participate in threads discussing RMV on SB

 

[tarponchik]

Curious what people think about meditation as a practice that will help with diving. Seems that it would help breathing, focus, relaxing, awareness, and maybe even channeling a shark or turtle.

You can't really medidate underwater cause you need a certain degree of awareness. They often call it "meditation" on this board though in reality this just means "do not fret and stay relaxed".

 

[Outbound]

You can't really medidate underwater cause you need a certain degree of awareness. They often call it "meditation" on this board though it really just means "do not fret and stay relaxed".

I think "mindfulness" might be a better term, and is one that often goes hand-in-hand with meditation. You want to be relaxed and focus on the task at hand and not have a wandering mind thinking about dinner plans, that project at work that still needs to be completed, etc.

 

[tarponchik]

The most important thing I was taught was that I should *never* hold my breath

You should never hold your breath when ascending.

 

[Norwegian Cave Diver]

As the owner of a company I think about work in the morning, afternoon, evening, weekends, and unfortunately sometimes in the middle of the night. But for me scuba diving is a very relaxing thing to do. Getting your mind to a calm place before putting my gear on and going diving is easy for me. Maybe it’s compartmentalizing. And even more important place for me to be considering cave diving is my primary focus.

 

[tarponchik]

I think "mindfulness" might be a better term, and is one that often goes hand-in-hand with meditation. You want to be relaxed and focus on the task at hand and not have a wandering mind thinking about dinner plans, that project at work that still needs to be completed, etc.

You can't be relaxed and focused at the same time. Divers are fretting because they "focus too much on the task at hand", not because their mind wanders thinking about dinner. Being relaxed means being unfocused. Just find the right balance between "unfocused" and "sloppy", and you'll be fine.