water up nose problem

[g1138]

Hey tinaffy
Do a little google search and look up 2 things
1) Epiglottis
2) Soft Palate

In order to solve this problem you'll need to be able to control both. The epiglottis, when closed, holds your breath from the throat and down.
The soft palate, when closed hold your breath from the nose down. Closing the soft palate prevents you from breathing through your nose, where as closing the epiglottis prevents you from breathing all together.

When you're breathing through your reg you'll need to keep your soft palate closed to prevent breathing through your nose.
A nice exercise is to keep your mouth closed and puff up your cheeks. Keep blowing out your mouth but with your mouth closed so your cheeks are puffed up. Now purse your lips quickly and you should then be exhaling through your mouth. If you feel a pause then you were using your epiglottis.
Or if you were unable to do this without exhaling through your nose, then you don't have soft palate control.
Keep doing this but alternate between releasing your breath through your mouth and through your nose. Your cheeks should stay puffed until you exhale.

There are surprisingly a lot of articles about soft palate control. Try a google search.
For one more particular to diving you can try the Frenzel technique
It's an equalization method which requires control of your soft palate and epiglottis. Usually in a tutorial there'll be a step by step process on how to gain control of both, before going into the actual equalization method.

Hope this helps

 

[diveprof]

Waterboarding is no fun, I gave up on this as a recreational pastime in ow class. Breathe in and out through your mouth. Kneel in the shallows to practice perfecting this.

 

[LivBlue]

Similar issue myself. Try this. Get a pair of cheap goggles with no nose covering. I got ones that looked like a mask with no nose because they had a good looking strap on them. I hooked my snorkel to them and then hit my pool. I need to keep my eye closed while the mask is off because of a an eye surgery. With the goggles I could keep them open which surprised me how much it helped. Plus it let me do the next part which is just motor around the pool while feeling the water move on my face. I then started working on putting the mask back on. Like others said keep the head down when putting on. Try to not force it on too hard cause the suction will force water up the nose. Good luck, I know this issue really bothered me. With a couple times in the pool I had this issue all fixed up.

 

[MichelG]

I had a lot of problems with that in my OW class... The trick that I found is to put some water in your mask over your sink and put it on. You will have a half filled mask and then practice breathing while you watch tv, cook, whatever you like. I overcame my panic problems with water in my nose that way. Yes I know, you will look stupid with your mask on indoors but hey, if it worked for me...

 

[tinaffy]

Thanks all for the advice - I'll definately be trying these things out & g1138: From your explanation I know I at least have half that down and now I understand why I can hold my breath underwater without any problems - yet when I breathe though my mouth I encounter the water running into the nose issue. I hope I can re-train my brain using a combination of methods in and out of the pool...