Post by LSDeep on Mar 8, 2006 9:33:16 GMT -5
Brendan O'Brien explores the murky and lung-busting world of free diving with the sport's greatest exponent, Patrick Musimu.
IT WAS an eerily calm summer's day as Patrick Musimu swung his feet over the boat's edge and lowered himself into the Red Sea just off the Egyptian coast.
An oppressive, dead heat hung over the biblical stretch of water which lay as flat as a billiard table.
Musimu took one last deep breath before immersing himself beneath the surface. It was to be his last intake of oxygen for three minutes and 28 seconds which, in itself, was no great hardship for a man capable of holding his breath for seven minutes, thanks to an astonishing lung capacity of nine litres.
What made Musimu's descent truly remarkable was the depth to which he was about to plunge on one single lung full of air, without the aid of an oxygen tank or even a face mask.
By the time he stopped descending he had reached a depth of 209.6 metres or, to put it in some perspective, a depth almost 30m below that which Type XXIII German U-boats could safely submerge to during the Second World War.
By the time he passed the 200m mark, Musimu's lungs contracted to the size of a tennis ball, his limbs numb as his body redirected blood away from his extremities and to the core essential organs - the heart, lungs and brain.
All this in an environment where 60kgs of pressure per square metre put an unimaginable strain on the human body.
"It is a wonderful feeling, another dimension," Musimu reflects.
"I can let myself go, let my mind go out of my body. I reach a different phase where the relationship between my body and my mind is at its highest. I am feeling what I describe as a seventh sense. I am almost watching myself from the outside. Deep down there, you become aware of every cell in your body. Each one is an entity.
"It is spiritual. I was never spiritual. I still am not but I believe now in people power. I have been able to see and feel things people don't even know. You just need a special environment to experience it. Down there the subconscious becomes conscious."
According to modern science, that 'seventh sense' sensation which Musimu experienced at those remarkable depths was actually a case of cerebral hypoxia - a dangerous lack of oxygen supply to the brain.
The diving world would summarise the phenomenon Musimu experienced as nitrogen narcosis, which can produce a state similar being drunk. Jacques Cousteau famously described it as the "rapture of the deep".
Along with decompression sickness the bends, it is the greatest danger to divers, scuba and free, because of the toxic effect caused inside the brain or the resulting illogical behaviour. Narcosis can result in the loss of any meaningful decision-making ability and coordination, and can prove fatal.
Even at a depth of below 200m, Musimu remained remarkably lucid as he descended down the prepared line. On reaching his target he released the weighted segment of the specialised sled that had taken him down and began to sky-rocket back to the surface at an average speed of 3.5/4m per second.
As he was winched back on board, Musimu whooped, hollered and hugged the dive team. He had free-dived further than any other person, had performed a feat that had been deemed physiologically impossible.
In the 1988 cult movie The Big Blue, a character called Jacques displayed a physical state more akin to that of a dolphin than a human when he went diving.
In Musimu, it now seems that life is imitating art.
He is not unique in being able to adapt to life underwater, his true gift is the extent to which he is able to acclimatise. The human body can adjust to extreme diving conditions in several ways, all of which stem from what is called the mammalian diving reflex.
The heart's pulse rate drops sharply. Blood vessels shrink. The blood stream is directed away from limbs for the benefit of the heart, lungs and brain. Red blood cells carrying oxygen are released. Blood fills up blood vessels in the lung, reducing residual volume. Without that last adaptation the human lung would shrink and wrap into its walls causing permanent damage at depths below only 30m.
These were the limits which made the free-diving community believe for years that no human could ever perform a free dive to a depth below 50m. Even when that barrier was broken, only the most tentative steps were taken to see how much further the sport could go.
MUSIMU walked into that atmosphere, and proceeded to trample over the sport's core beliefs.
Born in Kinshasa, Congo, in 1970, Musimu was a physiotherapist and kick boxer in Belgium before discovering the world of free diving in 1998 when he was already 28 years of age. A man with almost mythical beliefs in the ability and adaptability of the human body, Musimu revelled in his new pastime but tired of being told what could not be done.
He soon severed his connections with AIDI, the world governing body for free diving and, using training techniques he picked up from his martial arts, he went about proving that the conventional wisdom as to how far man could dive unaided was as outdated as the medieval beliefs that the earth was flat.
Prior to arriving in Egypt last June for his world record attempt in the No Limits category, Musimu went a full year without diving, preparing instead on solid ground. To his critics, suspicious of a man who learned the trade by diving in disused Belgian quarries, it was evidence of the folly of his ambitions.
As odd as Brazil practising for a World Cup without a football.
Musimu ignored the grumbles. For inspiration he always looked to men like Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee and he didn't see the need to look elsewhere just because he was swapping a ring for the inky blackness of the sea.
His mission statement read: "Nothing is absolute. Redefine concepts, redefine yourself. Barriers are in your mind. Accept No Limits." However, all the free-diving community could see was an apparent amateur attempting the impossible.
There was as much concern for his safety as scorn, the fear being the sport would be battered by negative press coverage if Musimu died in carrying out his plans.
"You can do these things when you open your mind to the possibilities," Musimu says, when asked to reflect on the negativity that surrounded his efforts.
"Other people were not ready in the mind to accept something like that could be achieved, not next week, not in six months, not in 10 years and certainly not now.
"Sure, people might think there was a chance I might die, which would cast a shadow on this sport but, ask me the questions and you will see. Lots of people preferred to criticise rather than ask me how I would do it."
So, how did he do it? The cornerstone of Musimu's self-belief was the Air Cavity Flooding system. Instead of equalising his ears by the regular accepted manoeuvres, he flooded his air spaces with seawater before reaching the depth where ordinary equalisation would become difficult.
Using this new technique, Musimu dived nine times in three weeks before setting the record of 209.6m last June in Egypt.
Some of the dives he bettered depths that had, at one time or another, stood as world free-diving bests for 10 to 15 years.
When Musimu explains the reasons why he can seemingly thumb his nose at conventional medicine, he doesn't talk about Air Cavity Flooding or equalising or any other technique though. Instead he talks about his mental preparation which, he claims, is the key to doing what he does.
"I am getting into the zone all the time. Every day I am diving in my head. When I hit the water - in Egypt for example - I had to get out of my mind all the problems - all the logistics, the people, the characters of the people, the sponsors' pressure.
"All these things can interfere with your dive. When I get off the boat and into the water I don't think about anything else anymore. I am the element. I am just chatting with the sea and asking her to let me in. That is the moment."
When word spread of his sub-220m plunge, scientists were in shock. A medical team at a Berlin university is to test him later this year to discover how any human being could perform such a feat without causing mental or physical damage.
Unsurprisingly for a man who crossed the considerable divide between kick boxing and free diving with such ease, Musimu plans to transfer some of his ideas to other high-class sports.
There are still barriers to be broken in free diving too. Maybe some day he will dive deeper towards the sea beds. He fervently believes somebody will.
"I believe we can still go further, to maybe 250m. There are a lot of things you can do. I can improve some techniques, I could prepare my body differently and go deeper with that. There are many ways to improve - 209m is definitely not the limit.
"When you look at the sport from the outside, you just see crazy people challenging themselves where it is dark and dangerous. When you are there, when you are diving deeper and deeper, you understand your body.
"I am diving deep inside myself, I am not diving deep into the water at all. The further I go the further I discover about myself. That is why I have no fear. If I am 20m or 200m my mind is in the same place."
www.irishexaminer.com/pport/web/supplements/Arena/Full_Story/did-sgZAdHO2k5FNw.asp
IT WAS an eerily calm summer's day as Patrick Musimu swung his feet over the boat's edge and lowered himself into the Red Sea just off the Egyptian coast.
An oppressive, dead heat hung over the biblical stretch of water which lay as flat as a billiard table.
Musimu took one last deep breath before immersing himself beneath the surface. It was to be his last intake of oxygen for three minutes and 28 seconds which, in itself, was no great hardship for a man capable of holding his breath for seven minutes, thanks to an astonishing lung capacity of nine litres.
What made Musimu's descent truly remarkable was the depth to which he was about to plunge on one single lung full of air, without the aid of an oxygen tank or even a face mask.
By the time he stopped descending he had reached a depth of 209.6 metres or, to put it in some perspective, a depth almost 30m below that which Type XXIII German U-boats could safely submerge to during the Second World War.
By the time he passed the 200m mark, Musimu's lungs contracted to the size of a tennis ball, his limbs numb as his body redirected blood away from his extremities and to the core essential organs - the heart, lungs and brain.
All this in an environment where 60kgs of pressure per square metre put an unimaginable strain on the human body.
"It is a wonderful feeling, another dimension," Musimu reflects.
"I can let myself go, let my mind go out of my body. I reach a different phase where the relationship between my body and my mind is at its highest. I am feeling what I describe as a seventh sense. I am almost watching myself from the outside. Deep down there, you become aware of every cell in your body. Each one is an entity.
"It is spiritual. I was never spiritual. I still am not but I believe now in people power. I have been able to see and feel things people don't even know. You just need a special environment to experience it. Down there the subconscious becomes conscious."
According to modern science, that 'seventh sense' sensation which Musimu experienced at those remarkable depths was actually a case of cerebral hypoxia - a dangerous lack of oxygen supply to the brain.
The diving world would summarise the phenomenon Musimu experienced as nitrogen narcosis, which can produce a state similar being drunk. Jacques Cousteau famously described it as the "rapture of the deep".
Along with decompression sickness the bends, it is the greatest danger to divers, scuba and free, because of the toxic effect caused inside the brain or the resulting illogical behaviour. Narcosis can result in the loss of any meaningful decision-making ability and coordination, and can prove fatal.
Even at a depth of below 200m, Musimu remained remarkably lucid as he descended down the prepared line. On reaching his target he released the weighted segment of the specialised sled that had taken him down and began to sky-rocket back to the surface at an average speed of 3.5/4m per second.
As he was winched back on board, Musimu whooped, hollered and hugged the dive team. He had free-dived further than any other person, had performed a feat that had been deemed physiologically impossible.
In the 1988 cult movie The Big Blue, a character called Jacques displayed a physical state more akin to that of a dolphin than a human when he went diving.
In Musimu, it now seems that life is imitating art.
He is not unique in being able to adapt to life underwater, his true gift is the extent to which he is able to acclimatise. The human body can adjust to extreme diving conditions in several ways, all of which stem from what is called the mammalian diving reflex.
The heart's pulse rate drops sharply. Blood vessels shrink. The blood stream is directed away from limbs for the benefit of the heart, lungs and brain. Red blood cells carrying oxygen are released. Blood fills up blood vessels in the lung, reducing residual volume. Without that last adaptation the human lung would shrink and wrap into its walls causing permanent damage at depths below only 30m.
These were the limits which made the free-diving community believe for years that no human could ever perform a free dive to a depth below 50m. Even when that barrier was broken, only the most tentative steps were taken to see how much further the sport could go.
MUSIMU walked into that atmosphere, and proceeded to trample over the sport's core beliefs.
Born in Kinshasa, Congo, in 1970, Musimu was a physiotherapist and kick boxer in Belgium before discovering the world of free diving in 1998 when he was already 28 years of age. A man with almost mythical beliefs in the ability and adaptability of the human body, Musimu revelled in his new pastime but tired of being told what could not be done.
He soon severed his connections with AIDI, the world governing body for free diving and, using training techniques he picked up from his martial arts, he went about proving that the conventional wisdom as to how far man could dive unaided was as outdated as the medieval beliefs that the earth was flat.
Prior to arriving in Egypt last June for his world record attempt in the No Limits category, Musimu went a full year without diving, preparing instead on solid ground. To his critics, suspicious of a man who learned the trade by diving in disused Belgian quarries, it was evidence of the folly of his ambitions.
As odd as Brazil practising for a World Cup without a football.
Musimu ignored the grumbles. For inspiration he always looked to men like Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee and he didn't see the need to look elsewhere just because he was swapping a ring for the inky blackness of the sea.
His mission statement read: "Nothing is absolute. Redefine concepts, redefine yourself. Barriers are in your mind. Accept No Limits." However, all the free-diving community could see was an apparent amateur attempting the impossible.
There was as much concern for his safety as scorn, the fear being the sport would be battered by negative press coverage if Musimu died in carrying out his plans.
"You can do these things when you open your mind to the possibilities," Musimu says, when asked to reflect on the negativity that surrounded his efforts.
"Other people were not ready in the mind to accept something like that could be achieved, not next week, not in six months, not in 10 years and certainly not now.
"Sure, people might think there was a chance I might die, which would cast a shadow on this sport but, ask me the questions and you will see. Lots of people preferred to criticise rather than ask me how I would do it."
So, how did he do it? The cornerstone of Musimu's self-belief was the Air Cavity Flooding system. Instead of equalising his ears by the regular accepted manoeuvres, he flooded his air spaces with seawater before reaching the depth where ordinary equalisation would become difficult.
Using this new technique, Musimu dived nine times in three weeks before setting the record of 209.6m last June in Egypt.
Some of the dives he bettered depths that had, at one time or another, stood as world free-diving bests for 10 to 15 years.
When Musimu explains the reasons why he can seemingly thumb his nose at conventional medicine, he doesn't talk about Air Cavity Flooding or equalising or any other technique though. Instead he talks about his mental preparation which, he claims, is the key to doing what he does.
"I am getting into the zone all the time. Every day I am diving in my head. When I hit the water - in Egypt for example - I had to get out of my mind all the problems - all the logistics, the people, the characters of the people, the sponsors' pressure.
"All these things can interfere with your dive. When I get off the boat and into the water I don't think about anything else anymore. I am the element. I am just chatting with the sea and asking her to let me in. That is the moment."
When word spread of his sub-220m plunge, scientists were in shock. A medical team at a Berlin university is to test him later this year to discover how any human being could perform such a feat without causing mental or physical damage.
Unsurprisingly for a man who crossed the considerable divide between kick boxing and free diving with such ease, Musimu plans to transfer some of his ideas to other high-class sports.
There are still barriers to be broken in free diving too. Maybe some day he will dive deeper towards the sea beds. He fervently believes somebody will.
"I believe we can still go further, to maybe 250m. There are a lot of things you can do. I can improve some techniques, I could prepare my body differently and go deeper with that. There are many ways to improve - 209m is definitely not the limit.
"When you look at the sport from the outside, you just see crazy people challenging themselves where it is dark and dangerous. When you are there, when you are diving deeper and deeper, you understand your body.
"I am diving deep inside myself, I am not diving deep into the water at all. The further I go the further I discover about myself. That is why I have no fear. If I am 20m or 200m my mind is in the same place."
www.irishexaminer.com/pport/web/supplements/Arena/Full_Story/did-sgZAdHO2k5FNw.asp