Do I breathe too deeply? Depth sometimes varies 5' between breaths.

[TT_Vert]

fairly level, a tad bottom heavy when Idle. I'm working on that, the bcd i had last week was fairly loose and wanted to float off my back. Only had a comber-bun clip, nothing mid body. I use 3 mil boots which should help bring my feet up a tad also. I was using a weight belt which was tight and not falling down my waist at all. These are not weight integrated BCDs, I may try to loose some weight off the belt and put a pound or two on the tank valve using ankle weights or the like to assist in leveling my trim.. I do not like to stay vertical as I've got horrible eyes and like to have my head close to what i'm looking at (usually low on reefs)

Dave

 

[RikTikTavi]

You sound like me - I seem to breathe quite deeply and was annoyed at the up-and-down movement until I learned it was a great way to see more when I wall dive. Also, by breathing deeply, you are using air more efficiently by getting more air in and out of the lungs instead of wasting it in the windpipe area.

Relax, enjoy the experiences and you'll hit your stride soon enough.

 

[TSandM]

It's all about rhythm.

When you inhale, you begin to rise -- but the process isn't instantaneous, and the rate isn't linear. If you exhale just as you are beginning to come up, you start to fall, but again, it isn't immediate. With practice, you develop a rhythm where you inhale until you just start to float, and exhale until you just begin to sink. If I'm sitting in midwater, I rise a fall a few inches with each breath cycle, and everyone will do this.

If you are really going up and down several FEET, you must be holding the inhalation and exhalation too long, or you are breathing very, very slowly. In addition, I'm kind of surprised that you can arrest a rise of five feet simply by exhaling. If you have much air in your BC, it begins to expand as you go up, and past a certain point, exhaling alone isn't enough to stop the rise. My Rec 2 instructor gave us a ballpark figure of about 3 feet as what we could likely control with breathing. This was in the middle range of diving depths (say 60 feet) and it would be far less in the shallows.

At any rate, try playing with the rhythm of your breathing to see if you can begin to damp the oscillations. Don't take very shallow breaths, but breathe in until you feel or see yourself beginning to rise, and then exhale until you feel or see yourself just beginning to fall. See if that rhythm works to make you feel as though you are getting enough air. It just takes practice.