Becoming a natural mouth breather

[jborg]

This is true. I’m an excellent mouth breather during pollen season. Escaping underwater with my own supply of clean, filtered breathing gas is a double blessing.

 

[mariah]

I'm a newish diver with 40 dives logged. So far in my diving I've been working with my breathing to slow it down and to control my buoyancy. To some extent that's successful -- I can follow a bottom contour adjusting for a few meters up and down with decent precision and hold a safety stop to within .25-.5 m without problems. (Water here being murky sometimes helps as there are lots of particles to act as visual reference in the water column...) My SAC is in a place I'm happy with, when I'm relaxed.

However all of this comes at the price of breathing not being or feeling natural. That is, every or most breaths are calculated and deliberate, and not simply something handled by my unconscious in the same manner as when I sit in my office chair typing this, caring nothing for my breathing.

And as an obvious result of this, a lot of my buoyancy control goes out the window when some minor issue occurs (like a cramp) that takes focus away -- typically I'll breathe in more, becoming more positive, adding to whatever annoyance was the problem initially.

So my question is does this get better? Am I on the right path and at some point this will become second nature and I can do this subconsciously while looking at the pretty fishes (such as they are, around here)? Clearly I've already improved some from my first dives and I can see that it does become easier and more natural with time, but the "zen state" I see some divers describe seems a long way off...

Mouth breathing is an excellent technique to swim under water and for swimming faster. I am a beginner so I do not have the quality to tell you that whether you are in the right path or not. I am still learning the breathing technique. I have a very little breath and I tend to run out of energy while diving. What do you do to increase your breath and stamina?.

 

[TMHeimer]

Addressing the thread title specifically and only half joking.

Develop allergies that stuff you up. Mouth breathing happens without thinking.

That's sort of what I was thinking. When I took OW course and early on I gave no thought to mouth breathing. Maybe because of decades of snorkeling behorehand (ie. shallow freediving if you will). Maybe a good idea to just close off your nose and breathe for a while mouth only until you stop thinking about it (not underwater). Or as Marie said develop alergies (again, topside, as not a good idea to take decongestants before diving).

 

[jborg]

The thread title was an attempt at humour, let’s not be too literal about that part. Lots of good thoughts and tips here though. I’ve planned a technique drill dive for tomorrow, focusing on all the things I should practice every dive but don’t always do - mask changing, regulator switches, dsmb deployment, fiddling with the camera (first real dive with it), finning backwards... things I otherwise often avoid so as to not bore my diving buddies. This time I’ve flagged it up front as a boring dive where I’ll be a bad buddy.

 

[Neilwood]

The thread title was an attempt at humour, let’s not be too literal about that part. Lots of good thoughts and tips here though. I’ve planned a technique drill dive for tomorrow, focusing on all the things I should practice every dive but don’t always do - mask changing, regulator switches, dsmb deployment, fiddling with the camera (first real dive with it), finning backwards... things I otherwise often avoid so as to not bore my diving buddies. This time I’ve flagged it up front as a boring dive where I’ll be a bad buddy.

One thing I would say is make sure you don't get overly focused on the camera. It is very easy to stuff up when using a camera and forget about buoyancy, gas supply, buddy awareness etc. It is very easy to focus on the task of photographing or filming a fish/coral etc and forget that you have a buddy who then swims off not knowing you have stopped or to forget to keep checking your gas pressure with regards to turn points.