Water up nose

[Angelo Farina]

Practice closing off your nose passages while on land-- throat too. So nothing gets through (water will always go in the nostrils of course, but that won't hurt you).
SB member Angelo Ferina is very well versed in this area. His research says that one in 10 (I think) are not capable of breathing through the mouth with the nose exposed. But there are ways to somewhat make it work.

True. It is a common problem.
@tbone1004 described a number of useful excercises to practice, for getting complete voluntary control of the two valves controlling your airways:
- the soft palate (aka velum), separating the nose from the mouth
- the epiglottis, separating the mouth from trachea (lungs)
There are reflexes which control these valves, and which can interfere with breathing underwater without a mask. But you can take voluntary control of the muscles actuating the valves, overriding those reflexes...
For breathing underwater without a mask, the soft palate valve must be closed, and the epiglottis must be open. The natural reflexes tend to do the opposite.
Here a picture:

 

[TMHeimer]

True. It is a common problem.
@tbone1004 described a number of useful excercises to practice, for getting complete voluntary control of the two valves controlling your airways:
- the soft palate (aka velum), separating the nose from the mouth
- the epiglottis, separating the mouth from trachea (lungs)
There are reflexes which control these valves, and which can interfere with breathing underwater without a mask. But you can take voluntary control of the muscles actuating the valves, overriding those reflexes...
For breathing underwater without a mask, the soft palate valve must be closed, and the epiglottis must be open. The natural reflexes tend to do the opposite.
Here a picture:
View attachment 588731

Refresh my memory--- I think you mentioned that because the natural things that happen to protect an infant from drowning can never be overcome and done manually by a very small % of people, these people are always at risk diving (should their mask come off)-- correct?

My thought for years was similar to that of Norwegian Cave Diver, though I could never understand why anyone would sign up for scuba who didn't have complete airway control, and that doing that is easy-- until you explained it.

 

[Angelo Farina]

The risky reflex is the glottis reflex, which closes your throat impeding breathing at all. This is difficult to overcome, albeit with a lot of exercises I have seen a couple of students to finally manage the reflex well enough.
Most of my students suffering of this did simply give up.
The topic here is another problem, the lack of closure of the soft palate. This is much easier to control, everyone can close it voluntarily, for example when filling a balloon with your mouth or when sucking a drink through a pipe.
In a couple of hours doing the proper excercises you can get perfect control of your soft palate.