Yoga, breath training, bodily awareness, relaxation and meditation are really the foundations of personal balance, on the physical level and beyond, and an important part of freediving. Sportsmen of many disciplines, freedivers and their respective trainers all agree that Yoga and meditation are essential tools for optimum living and focusing to reach personal targets. If you are new to yoga and meditation you’ll be surprised at how much the pre and post dive sessions influence your mind and body towards full relaxation.

This combined practice helps us to equip our bodies to face the various challenges of freediving. It brings us into a physical condition which allows us to more easily handle the increased pressure found at depth by keeping the muscles that support the ribcage strong and flexible. In this way regular participation in such a regime reduces to a minimum the lung injury risks associated with freediving beyond a depth of 30m.

Its not only because we want to keep you safe, we value this combination so much because yoga and meditation have a profound ability to create the level of mind body stillness and poise that equals peak performance in freediving. 

 

 

 

 

SUP Yoga is the newest summer sport trend and depending on the conditions and the location no experience of either SUP or Yoga is necessary to try it, only a willingness to try and the ability to swim.

A SUP Yoga class typically starts with a short warm up paddle, often to the spot that you will be practicing yoga at and some instruction on how to use the equipment. This warm up then moves into a more yoga focussed class with seated breathing techniques, basic sun salutations and a bit of fun in practicing some harder variations of postures on the water.

Classes usually run from 1 hour to 1.5 hours and incorporate some of your normal ‘fitness’ moves such as lunges, high planks, abdominal exercises as well as downward facing dogs, warrior postures and more. There is no set structure to the yoga portion of the class as it really depends on who is there on the day and the weather conditions and may include a bit of extra paddling between postures to stay in position.

Just like a yoga class on land your teacher will modify all of the postures so that you get to experience the feeling of practicing yoga on water – so there is no need to be flexible to begin with.

To add to the range of benefits you get from SUP’ing, SUP Yoga also increases your cardiovascular health, helps to increase circulation within the body (via the stretching and lengthening movements and breathing) and will increase the balance and strengthening benefits of a normal SUP session 10-fold. In addition to this you get to have a little fun, perhaps get a little bit wet and learn to have a laugh at yourself when you get the wobbles.