descent
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The Disappearance of the Worlds Greatest Free Diver
by Alec Wilkinson
The New Yorker
August 8, 2015
by Alec Wilkinson
The New Yorker
August 8, 2015
It seems clear that the great free diver Natalia Molchanova is dead. She was diving last Saturday off the coast of Spain, giving lessons to a rich Russian, when she made a dive of her own and didnt return. She was almost surely the greatest diver in the history of her sport, which, as mentioned in The New Yorker in 2009, is sometimes described as the worlds second most dangerous activity, after jumping off skyscrapers with parachutes. ...
Molchanovas technique for concentration was based on a procedure she called attention deconcentration. She said it came from ancient warriors and was used by samurai, and that in Russia it had been adapted and developed for people who held very boring jobs. It involved moving ones attention to the periphery of ones awareness, against the imperative of the eye, which is trained to focus. It was a form of meditation. As one advanced into it, the left cerebral hemisphere, which deals with words, grew quiet. This allowed parts of the mind and body more resistant to the frightening stresses of free diving to take over. ... (more)
