Faith, Freediving, and the Silence Between Heartbeats

I had lost faith—quietly, without even realizing it.

It slipped away slowly, hidden beneath the noise and demands of everyday life, dissolving somewhere along the way in the vapors of too much excess and too many unrealized dreams. The whispers I used to trust had been muted, muffled by the heavy hands of depression covering my ears.

I didn’t understand how much faith meant to me, until one day, it found me again...in the most unexpected place on Earth: in the depth of the ocean.

There’s a moment in every dive when the world disappears, it becomes a distant, dreamlike memory. Sound, motion, thought, all of it fading. Just the echo of my heart beating slowly as the ocean swallows me, and then, for one time-suspended instant… not even that. Like a pause between heartbeats.

It’s not just physical. It is this intimate realm where fear and faith brush against each other. A canvas where the absence of breath writes a quiet prayer. Where depth doesn’t feel like distance, light-years away from the common concept of challenge or numbers on a dive computer.

Into the Quiet: Faith, Freediving, and the Silence

Freediving brought me to silence in a way nothing else ever has. Not metaphorical silence, literal silence. The kind that hums in your bones and stretches your awareness so wide you can’t quite tell where your body ends and the ocean begins.

And it was there, not in a church, that I first began to understand what faith really feels like for me.

It was trust in nothingness, surrendering to the unknown, without guarantees, without needing proof, without trying to control the outcome. Trust that when your mind wavers, there’s something inside you that knows how to return.

Faith that the surface is still there, even when you can’t see it, even when you’ve forgotten it exists, even when you no longer care.

Faith that my feelings are deeply mine but hold no weight unless I choose to give them some, feelings that seem so tightly wired to the chemistry of my brain, yet often feel completely disconnected from who I really am: fear, anxiety, joy, whatever, all of them dissolve in an instant when the will to live, like a tsunami, washes away every electrical signal in my head.

Faith that everything is meant to be, and that the most complicated questions and decisions often have the most straightforward answers.

Freediving Is a Form of Prayer

I’ve spent hours,years, actually, studying breathing. I’ve trained my body to endure CO₂, to move efficiently in the water, to slow my pulse, to embrace the contractions that signal panic and rewire them into presence. I’ve blacked out and pushed too far. Woke up with a bruised ego more than once, and some splendid mental blocks to match.

But no amount of training explains what happens in those final meters before the turn. That moment when you’re completely alone, falling at one meter per second, suspended in silence, with nothing left to control.

That’s when faith takes over.

Not the loud, dogmatic kind.The quiet kind, the one that whispers: “You’re okay. Keep going. You’re exactly where you need to be.”

Then comes the turn, and the reminder: the ocean doesn’t care. It’s not my best friend. It doesn’t flatter. It doesn’t lie. It will test me, always, demanding my full attention. It won’t soften reality or wrap it in comfort. It won’t pretend I’m more than I am. And it will slap me the moment I do pretend, just as it always has.

The ocean waits, with the patience of eternity stretched out before it, for me to prove to myself that I’ve heard the lesson it keeps trying to teach.

It keeps inviting me, again and again, into the unknown.

And somehow, every time I say yes, I return with a little more of myself.

How Freediving Strengthened My Faith

Freediving taught me that silence is not empty. It’s full of guidance, if I’m willing to listen.

It taught me that fear is not an enemy. It’s a messenger, a teacher, not to be pushed aside but understood. And it taught me that surrender is not weakness. It’s strength in its most honest form.

I will hold my breath and dive for as long as I can. But now, as I grow older and enter the second half of life, I feel the purpose shifting. My recovery takes longer. My PBs don’t come in meters anymore, they come in perspective. I still stretch before diving. Mostly to convince my knees and my shoulders that we're doing this again.

The numbers matter less. What matters now is something quieter. A voice that stays with me long after the dive is over, whispering in my ear: 

You are not just lungs and muscles...

You are spirit...

You are the pause between heartbeats, and you are the life that flows through it.

...And that is enough.

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To be continued…

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If what you’ve just read sparked your curiosity, know this—it’s just a ripple on the surface. The Depth Collector series plunges deep into this pillar, uncovering layers of insights, lessons, and practical tools to refine your freediving journey.

And it doesn’t stop here. The series explores all eight foundational pillars, packed with everything from mental hacks to sport nutrition, breathing techniques, training plans, and more.

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