The Benefits of Yoga and Scuba Diving

At the surface, scuba diving and yoga appear to be connected because of the importance of breathing in both activities. You likely remember the key phrase from your open water course that the most important rule of scuba diving is “breathe continuously and never hold your breath,” and yogis are notorious for stereotypical sayings like “just breathe through it.” Based on this, we easily generalize that yogic pursuits can benefit divers, but why? We divers are curious; we dive because we want to get closer to what lies beneath. What are the real similarities between scuba and yoga? How do they complement each other?

Breathing
The respiratory system is the only bodily process that can operate on its own or be controlled with active attention. Scuba diving and yoga heighten our breath awareness and complement each other. On scuba, we breathe continuously through our mouth into a regulator. There are hundreds of different pranayama (yogic breathing) techniques designed to help yogis tap into the full potential of their lung capacity.

Complete breaths, especially exhales, are emphasized in yoga for strength, cleansing and meditative purposes. Full breaths are essential for safe gas exchange in scuba diving as well, where we need to exhale completely to cleanse our bodies of CO2 waste. Pulmonary expert Paul Davenport, Ph.D., says that “deep breathing exercises such as those used in yoga training help keep blood gases normal.”

Pranayama training has the potential to decrease risk of CO2 poisoning while scuba diving. This safer way of breathing has the additional benefit of improving a diver’s air consumption. When we breathe slower, deeper and exhale completely, the air in a scuba tank is used up more slowly and bottom time is extended.

Breath and Body Connection
Harnessing the breath gives divers and yogis enhanced coordination. Once we achieve neutral buoyancy underwater, it is the lungs that control our position.

Whether or not you’ve ever tried yoga, you have likely seen a photo or video of a yogi doing something that seems physically impossible. Seemingly superhuman strength and contortion doesn’t come from forcing, it comes from connecting the body with the breath. Practicing basic yoga asana with intent focus on breathing helps us understand the connection between breath and body and has real potential to refine buoyancy underwater. A regular yoga practice attunes us to the power of our lungs and helps us achieve instinctual understanding of how to use our breath effortlessly on dives so we can gracefully ascend, descend and hover as needed.

Certain styles of yoga are physically rigorous. Physical fitness often develops in tandem with coordination. According to Divers Alert Network, poor medical and physical fitness can increase the risk of DCS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans tell us that adults need aerobic and strength training exercise. Yoga can provide both aerobic and strength training activity to improve our fitness, make diving safer and make it easier to move around in scuba gear.

Meditation, Mindfulness and Being Present
In his book, “Deep,” journalist James Nestor cites scientific research on the meditative benefits of diving, including a Harvard study that compares Tibetan monks who practice Tum-mo meditation and freedivers at depth to find similar psychological and physiological characteristics.

Nothing compares to the happy, fresh and peaceful mindset that I feel after a dive. If you, like me, live for that after-dive feeling but can’t go diving every day, yoga might be a way to tap into the mental state of diving when you are landlocked. Yogis attain a similar state from a yoga practice.

Both scuba and yoga are forms of active meditation because honing in on the breath/body connection is a mindful exercise that forces us to be present. Not only can yoga help us find calm, but regular yoga practice can make it easier to enter a meditative state underwater.

In this meditative state we experience heightened awareness that enhances our observation skills. When you act from this place it is easier to spot camouflaged underwater creatures and anticipate potential safety hazards.

Interested in yoga and scuba diving? Check out these upcoming retreats where you can combine both activities:

• Scuba and Dive Retreat on Maui Website: dharmadiveandflow.com

• Whale Swim Yoga Retreat Website: oceandefenderadventures.com

About the Author:

My yoga journey began when I took my first yoga class with my mom at about 10 years old. Yoga has been a part of my life in one way or another ever since. I did my first teacher training in 2012 and since then I have completed a 200-hour vinyasa training, 500-hour ashtanga training, 50-hour rocket training, 50-hour yin and deep stretch training, and a 50-hour barre and pilates medicine training.

Yoga has opened up countless doors, and I’m eternally grateful to the practice. After six years of working as a full-time yoga teacher in California and Arizona, I wanted to incorporate aspects of traditional healing and nature therapy into my offerings. In 2016, I traveled to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to study, teach yoga and immerse myself in a different culture. My first dive was an “aha!” moment. Diving was exactly like yoga, and the missing link in my quest to marry yoga, healing and nature therapy.

Shortly after, I packed up my backpack in Chiang Mai and returned to Indonesia to work on a divemaster internship. When my co-workers learned that I woke up at 5 a.m. to practice yoga before meeting at the shop, they were curious and asked me to teach them. Those first classes with diver friends, around the training pool of our shop, were the beginning of the dream for this retreat.

My classes are an eclectic mix of what inspires me. I emphasize breathing, alignment, and curiosity. It is my goal to encourage students to responsibly explore their own capability and test their edge while raising awareness of the oneness of creation. Namaste.