The wall

I swim three pool lengths, turn around – and realize: I can’t do the fourth. Everything before this was easy. But this – this is my real limit. I won’t make it.

The freediving instructor certification requires swimming 100 meters on a single breath hold. Four pool lengths. After three I hit the wall.

I’ve had walls in depth and in breath hold. The sensations differ, but the mechanism is the same – anxiety, fear, existential dread. You push through – and the wall simply vanishes.

It was all in your head.

The urge to breathe isn’t a lack of oxygen. It’s a reflex, just a signal. “I can’t do this” is a story that arises in the mind.

All you need to do is relax. The body isn’t convinced by arguments. It needs a lived moment: I met this, and nothing happened. You can’t understand it. You can only do it. Trust.

At depth, the most relaxed survives. Tension fights, panics, burns oxygen. Relaxation – glides.

Don’t fight, don’t speed up, keep the same pace. And you see – it’s not a physical limit, but a limit of perception that you took for real.

You can’t dive angry, offended, irritated. Tension is the character. All the roles, masks – they stay on the surface. At depth there is no you. There’s body and attention. Scuba divers look around; freedivers look within.

The wall is you.

And not just in the water. We live in a maze of invisible walls. They vanish if you walk through them. There’s only one way – don’t believe them.

Freediving isn’t about overcoming. Without joy, you can’t dive. And you can’t live. Let go of everything and rise to the surface.