Pause breathing to control buoyancy

I am a newbie diver and still figuring out good techniques for controlling buoyancy. One thing that works for me is to pause breathing (either with full or empty lungs) for 1 - 2 seconds to move up or down a little bit. But I read / heard many times that is it not good to hold or skip breath. Is what I am doing potentially dangerous or is taking a short pause different from holding breath? Thanks!

Rule number one of scuba diving - Breath continuously and never hold your breath. To control your buoyancy with your breathing. keep your lungs more or less full, but don't ever hold your breath. It's more of a timing thing. If you want more air in your lungs, you breath quicker when your lungs are empty, and slower when they are more full.

About that rule; some divers could not equalize their ears, if they .....

Many of us "pause" our breathing to rise or fall. What is critically important is that expanding gas have a free path to exhaust from the lungs. If you hold your breath like most people on land do, you close your glottis, and expanding gas cannot exit. That closure is strong enough that the expanding gas will rip the lungs because it cannot get out.

To feel the difference, as you are sitting at your computer, take a deep breath. Now breathe very shallowly in and out, with the lungs that full. That's an open glottis.

Now relax and "close your throat", so you can relax completely without letting your breath out. That's a closed glottis. It's the same feeling you get as you are preparing to cough.

Advanced divers learn to control this glottic opening and closing. New divers are taught to breathe constantly, because they don't have enough spare bandwidth to make SURE the glottis is open when it needs to be. At any rate, you can get the same effect as holding a big breath, by filling your lungs and then breathing very, very shallowly with them at that "full" setting. Because this keeps your glottis open, it is safe.

TSandM, thanks for the explanation. This helps a lot.

TS&M gave a good explanation of the technique and kudos to you for catching on to the concept. Early on when I started to do the same thing I would inhale or exhale very very slowly. The sound of slight airflow is enough to reassure you that air is free to escape.

I'm with Lynn on this one, while we teach not holding your breath, the truth is we do it to keep new divers from doing something dumb. Holding your breath is a problem IF 2 other conditions are met at the same time, your lungs are completely full and you are ascending. Think about the physics involved. First off, for the air in your lungs to expand (and rupture your lungs), you MUST be ascending, if you are holding position the air in your lungs is a constant volume or if descending it's contracting- neither of which is a problem. Only when you ascend does it expand and cause a problem if it has no escape. In addition, the rate of accent also comes into play because the air expansion rate is relative to your accent rate. If you are ascending so fast that a second or 2 pause in breathing is going to be dangerous, then you are already in big trouble to start with because you are already ascending way way to fast and holding a full breath is the last thing you should be doing......in fact your lungs need to be fully deflated to help reduce your positive buoyancy and slow your accent.

That said, a couple of breathing techniques will do the job much better and there is no need to hold your breath. Both of these methods require you to be truly neutral, proper weighting helps make them more effective and easier to accomplish.

1: Breathing off the top/bottom of your lungs. To ascend/ go positive, you slowly inhale fully followed by a somewhat quicker exhale but instead of exhaling fully, you exhale about half of your lung volume, repeat as needed. To descend/go negative you do the opposite, fully exhale slowly and following it with a half breath inhaled at a faster rate.

2:Varied rate normal breathing - With this method you change the cadence of parts of your breathing cycle to accomplish an overall positive or negative buoyancy. To ascend/go positive you ssslowly inhale deeply then exhale at a faster rate, maybe 2 or 3 times faster followed by another long sssslow inhale, to descend you just switch which part of the cycle is long and slow with the shorter, faster one.

A couple of key factors in buoyancy control that many fail to realize are buoyancy adjustments are NOT instantaneous, they take time to take effect and that they are additive- the positive portions of several deep breaths add together to give you a larger effective change. I see these 2 effects getting new divers in trouble all the time. They add air to their BC, nothing happens so they do it again, nothing happens so they do it yet again, usually more this time, all of which takes 2 or 3 seconds. It's about then that the lag and additive nature of buoyancy kick in and they are quickly headed up. Buoyancy control is the art of diving and it requires slow gentle actions and the patience to wait for them to take effect.

A lot of instructors can teach you some simple Thai Chi breathing exercises that will help you learn to control your diaphram so that you will be able to use the techniques that others have talked about here. Once you have mastered your breathing, you will be able to use less air, and at times when you would like to hold your breath for buoyancy, you will be able to breath extremely slow, effectively accomplishing the same thing.

If some of the more advanced instructors/divers are reading this, perhaps they can offer a good explanation of how to practise these exercises. My air consumption dropped dramatically after I started doing this. One thing to mention is do not make any AAH or any other sound when you are practising the Tai Chi exercises. The whole point is to develop fine muscle control for your diaphram, and not rely on your upper resperatory system at all for breathing control.

You can also practice and vary the shape of your lung so more of the air goes towards the front, rear, left or right. This allows you to rotate left, right, up or down without using other body movements.

theLeakyMask:

I am a newbie diver and still figuring out good techniques for controlling buoyancy. One thing that works for me is to pause breathing (either with full or empty lungs) for 1 - 2 seconds to move up or down a little bit. But I read / heard many times that is it not good to hold or skip breath. Is what I am doing potentially dangerous or is taking a short pause different from holding breath? Thanks!

Click to expand...

There are times I pause while breathing for buoyancy control. Certainly when I want to begin rising a little, I breathe in more deeply and pause--and then I release my breath very slowly, keeping my airway open; when I want to begin to sink a little I breathe out more deeply and pause--and then I resume breathing normally. Also when I want to remain stationary for shooting a picture, I keep a moderate amount of air in my lungs and breathe very shallowly, sometimes pausing, so that I neither rise nor sink.

The rule about never holding your breath is mainly to prevent a lung over-expansion injury while ascending. It's simply easier for us as instructors to have one major "rule" to drum into new divers' minds than it is to qualify it with a bunch of exceptions as I have above.