Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
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Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
We all know that freediving is a safe sport but, let's face it, freediving is not a game of golf. Are we aware of the potential dangers related to our sport, does that stress us and, ultimately, does it affect the outcome of our dives?
Here's how Harry Chamas deals with it, as stated during E1 of the Alchemy freediving podcast.
Going back to the Stoics, the only thing that you can control in this life is how you react to the things, you can't change what happens to you. You can only change how you react to that input. This thing that's happened, whatever it is, doesn't have to make you angry, upset, sad. That's your reaction. You can take this thing and make whatever you want out of it. For me, when I start the die, I don't give a s**t about nothing. I'm ready to die. I don't think I'm gonna die, otherwise I wouldn't do it. But I‘ve completely submitted to that dive, I don't care.
It's already happening. Cause if you even have that fear in there, if there's something about, something that you're not prepared for, you're never gonna be able to fully give into the dive and just enjoy the dive, enjoy that moment. There's gonna be like some tension, some apprehension, something that doesn't want you to keep freefalling, you know, you've gotta completely submit to it. It's like "I'm doing this dive". I know, it's f********g crazy what I'm doing, but it's worth the risk. It's okay to me if I die.
I fully accept the potential, absolute, maximum consequence of what I'm doing. And the reward that you get from that is to be able to just enjoy that moment of actually like freefalling through the water super fast. You feel like the kind of turbulence that speed is creating. The whole body is kind of like rippling, just the feeling of that water flowing over the face, over the body. To just be in that, with like zero anxiety, just with it fully, there's nothing like it in the world. There's no ever experience that I can compare it to, you know? And to take it even further to be like, how grateful can we be for that? Like this is such a special time in the evolution of humanity, nobody's ever experienced this. Nobody's been diving that deep. No. And like ancient history or anything. It's just us, like now, cause slowly we've kind of realized that we have this potential, you know. It's a freefall for 50 meters or 60 meters, 70 meters, hundred meters even. So like in that moment I'm just like, like, “wow, this is amazing”. You know, like just, just be on it. I wouldn't even be saying to myself, this is amazing. I'm just there, you know, and just grateful that I can have this experience. It's like the intensity of the experience. And some people crave these intense moments, you know like I think that's the draw for a lot of extreme sports people you know.
But I've had quite a few experiences. Like I've done plenty of crazy s**t in my time and about quite a few moments where I was like, oh, I'm gonna die. Or this could be it, you know, and it's never been a scary thing for me. It's always been like, I'm surprised at how much I just accepted it. But I'm being like, okay, this is it. Like, no adrenaline, nothing. I'm like, oh, this is it. I've lived a great life already. I'm only 35, but like I've done so much, man. Like things, people dream of. And I'm at the point anyway where I'm like, it's okay. It's okay if I go.