Every breath you take ...

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Santa

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Divemaster
Messages
658
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9
Location
Denmark
# of dives
200 - 499
I thought I would be interesting to hear about how people breathe.

- So, people, how do you breathe? (Oh you fill your lungs with air? Thanks a wahoo!)


Personally, I've got big lungs and a fair amount of muscle to feed and I find that what works best for me is to just enjoy the dive and get into that zone of weightless comfort and pre-sleep type breathing. (Have you noticed how the fish responds to your breathing pattern and degree of overall muscle relaxation?).
 
I try occasionaly in the dive to make sure I exhale fully and may take a few deeper breathes. My thought on the concious exhale to to avoid CO2 buildup.
 
Santa:
I thought I would be interesting to hear about how people breathe.

- So, people, how do you breathe? (Oh you fill your lungs with air? Thanks a wahoo!)
...QUOTE]
It is an automatic function of the human body and requires no conscious thought from me when diving. The only time I think about breathing is when I want to drop down a few more feet, I exhale slowly and gently settle down a few feet deeper. Or if I want to go over a rock and rise up a few feet I will inhale a little deeper.

Taking a large breath will cause you to rise in the water and affect your buoyancy.

Other than that, don't think about it. Keep you hands still, be properly weighted, and relax while diving and exercise regularly and be in good physical shape. Don't yo-yo on the buoyancy control (go up and down adding and venting air from the BC). Dive every chance you get. That seems to work for me, on Saturday, while boat diving I enjoyed a Surface Air Consumption Rate (SAC) of 0.35 SCFM or 23 PSI per minute, a very mellow day diving.

In short, we employ the same technique, just getting into a mellow place, relaxing and enjoying the dive.
 
Thanks Mel. I do believe my yoyoing days are a while gone ;0) but yeah, mellow place, that's what it is. Like that.

Regards
 
normal inhale, usually deep exhaling. I tend to think too much about my breathing on scuba so I want to slow down my breathing rate as much as possible.
 
RumBum:
normal inhale, usually deep exhaling. I tend to think too much about my breathing on scuba so I want to slow down my breathing rate as much as possible.


uhm ... If you inhale less than you exhale don't it kinda put you in debt after a few breaths?
 
Same as I breath when I'm asleep, I only think about breathing in shallower water. I tend to breath very slowly and my bouyancy is thrown off in water less than 10 feet if I breath normally. I have to exhale sooner at that depth or I'll start to raise.

I've been told I start to exhale about every 15 seconds. I'm not sure because if I start thinking about it, my breathing changes.

I find that being very relaxed makes breathing automatic for me.
 
I think the reason I'm thinking about it is that back when I started diving the books said breathe continuously, no skip breathing but at the same time my instructors and other experienced divers with a sometimes amazingly low air-con would have little breathing strategies of their own.

I then forgot about it for a while. I was never very good with deliberate habits anyway and found that - free-diving or scubadiving - lt was just way better to concentrate on the fish, giant octopi, pirates bullion or whatever and bask in that mellow place Mel was talking about.

... that said lately I find I've been toying with the idea of doing some yoga stuff to see how that experience might mix with diving (and increasingly mellow places)
 
pasley:
It is an automatic function of the human body and requires no conscious thought from me when diving.

You could argue diving is a type of meditation (like running is). Some may really focus in on their breathing during such an activity.

That said, I usually breathe normally -- which for me is extremely slowly. I don't have time to focus on my breathing cause I'm too busy checking things out.

- ChillyWaters
 
Breathing through mouth and mouth open, especially the inhale part was one of the weird things for me in first scuba lessons. I still notice that during inhale I have sucked mask onto my face, so I am unconsciously inhaling a bit through my nose nearly all the time.

I am a slow breather but still waiting for the unnatural mouth-open-breathing feeling to subside. As a result, inhale is quite a lot more robust than it would be on surface, and then I whistle air out slow and thoroughly – at least when I am calm and collected - and as I get drained I take a 5ltr bucketful in like a weightlifter.
 

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