Olivia Møller
Freediver - Activist - Explorer
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Olivia Møller
Freediver - Activist - Explorer
In the quiet, freedivers enter a world with no sound, no weight, no breath. It is here that they meet the body’s most primal sensation—the urge to breathe. Yet what we casually refer to as an "urge" is in fact a profound cocktail of physiological triggers and psychological interpretations. This discomfort, often mistaken for impending doom, is more illusion than emergency. And the more we understand its origins, the more control we gain over it.
Freediving, unlike most other athletic pursuits, is not a contest of strength or stamina. It's a negotiation with biology. And at the center of that negotiation is the sensation every diver eventually meets: a tightening in the chest, a twitching of the diaphragm, a pulsing message from deep within the body that whispers (or screams): breathe now. But here’s the twist—this urge doesn’t mean you're about to die. In most cases, it doesn’t even mean you're in danger.
Most beginners assume that the urge to breathe is the body signaling a lack of oxygen (O2). That’s false. The feeling of "air hunger" is primarily caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood.
Chemoreceptors in the medulla oblongata and peripheral areas like the carotid bodies monitor CO2 levels closely. As CO2 builds up—due to holding your breath and not exhaling—the pH of the blood drops, triggering a cascade of neurological signals interpreted as discomfort and panic. These signals are what we experience as the urge to breathe. They are loud and persuasive.
Meanwhile, oxygen levels can continue to fall silently without making much fuss. That’s the real risk in freediving: hypoxia. You can feel fine—or even euphoric—and suddenly black out. This is why freedivers don’t train to ignore the urge; they train to understand it.
Once CO2 passes a certain threshold, the body initiates involuntary contractions of the diaphragm. These are not indicators of imminent collapse—they are merely the body trying to maintain homeostasis. This is the start of what divers call the "struggle phase."
For some, this phase begins 1–2 minutes into a breath-hold; for elite freedivers, it may not come until after the 4-minute mark. Either way, it’s a critical point. Here, divers begin to learn the difference between suffering and danger.
A 2013 study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology showed that trained freedivers had markedly different brain responses to breath-hold stress compared to untrained individuals. The experienced divers demonstrated increased activation in areas related to emotional regulation and interoception—suggesting a learned tolerance of discomfort rather than a different physiology.
In short, the body does not dramatically change with training—but our perception of its signals does.
Just as important as physiology is expectation. If you believe the first diaphragm contraction means you’re in trouble, you’ll panic. If you’ve trained through this moment, it becomes just another signpost.
What happens here is a psychological reframe: discomfort is recategorized from a red alert to a yellow one, or even just background noise. The top divers don’t feel less—they interpret what they feel differently.
This is where freediving begins to resemble meditation or even spiritual practice. It becomes an exploration of the boundary between thought and instinct.
To shift these boundaries, freedivers use CO2 and O2 tables—systematic breath-hold workouts designed to increase comfort at higher CO2 levels and lower O2 levels.
In a typical CO2 table, breath-holds remain constant in duration while rest periods decrease. This forces the body to tolerate ever-higher levels of CO2. Over time, the diver becomes familiar with the sensations triggered by high CO2 and no longer sees them as panic-inducing.
Dry training, static apnea tables, and hypoxic walking exercises are all tools in this adaptation. But the goal is always the same: change your relationship with the message, not erase it.
One of the most dangerous practices in freediving is pre-dive hyperventilation—rapid, deep breathing that expels CO2 from the blood. This can delay the urge to breathe, making the dive feel easier. But it also removes the body’s primary alarm system.
Without CO2 buildup to sound the alarm, divers may never feel the urge before blacking out from hypoxia. Shallow water blackouts, in particular, are often the tragic result of hyperventilation—a preventable mistake stemming from misunderstanding the urge to breathe.
Modern freediving education, led by organizations like AIDA and SSI, explicitly warns against this practice and trains divers to respect rather than mute their inner signals.
Interoception refers to our ability to sense internal bodily states: heartbeat, breath, fullness, temperature, and yes—CO2 buildup. In elite freedivers, interoception is not only sharper but more nuanced.
A 2021 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that trained breath-holders scored higher on interoceptive awareness scales and showed enhanced neural activity in the anterior insula—an area linked to processing internal body signals. This heightened self-awareness allows for a more accurate and subtle interpretation of discomfort, reducing panic and enhancing control.
It also suggests that mental training in freediving is not just metaphorical—it has measurable effects on the brain.
The first time you feel the urge to breathe underwater, it feels existential. Your chest tightens, your thoughts scatter, your body screams for oxygen. But with time, something surprising happens: you begin to trust yourself.
This trust is not blind. It’s built through exposure and evidence. You feel the first contraction and remind yourself, I’ve been here before. I’m okay. That’s when the dive changes—from an escape from discomfort to a dance with it.
And this moment has ripple effects far beyond the water. Divers report that freediving changes their relationship with anxiety, control, and even mortality. It’s not just about holding your breath—it’s about holding stillness in the face of fear.
In a world obsessed with metrics—depth, time, tags, cameras—it’s easy to forget that freediving isn’t supposed to be performative. The best dives often happen off-record, unnoticed, undocumented.
When your goal is presence rather than performance, the urge to breathe becomes a guide, not a threat. It’s the body asking you: Are you still here with me?
This is why many veteran divers speak of the ocean as a teacher. Not in a romanticized way, but as a feedback system that doesn’t lie. If you’re not listening, it will tell you.
So what is the urge to breathe, really? It’s not danger. It’s not failure. It’s not a weakness to be conquered.
It’s the voice of a body doing exactly what it was designed to do. It’s the check-in. The pulse. The reminder that, despite all our gear and goals, we’re still human—still animals with wet lungs and sensitive hearts.
To freedive well is to make peace with that voice. Not to ignore it. Not to fight it. But to listen with curiosity and answer with care.
Because ultimately, the best divers aren’t the ones who push the hardest. They’re the ones who know when to turn, when to surface, and how to hear what the body is really saying beneath the noise.
The urge to breathe is not your enemy. It’s your compass.