3 Ways Diving Can Improve Your Daily Self-Awareness

Recently you may have read my piece about mindfulness and diving. It is a very relevant word today, mindfulness. It is often paired with awareness, and specifically in diving you are starting to see more and more agencies and instructors finally starting to include a respectable portion of their entry-level education to situational awareness.
Situational awareness is the big picture, the macro. Mindfulness is the micro. Not the opposite but rather the other side of the same coin. Being in the moment of the dive. If you’re not mindful, you’ll never be able to be aware of the situations at hand and more importantly, what might be about to happen.
Today however, I want to talk about Self-Awareness.
We live in a stressful world, especially in 2020. It is so easy to lose sight of yourself and get absorbed into politics or TV or Facebook or any myriad of distractions besides the most important complication requiring your attention. You, yourself.
The most marvelous part of Scuba is that, if internalized properly, it can immediately put you in control of your mind and body.
Here are 3 ways that your scuba diving practice can help you improve your self-awareness, today.
Find Your Entry Before You Seek Your Depth
Too often we get focused on the dive before us. Literally, before we focus on us, we lose ourselves in the dive we are about to do. The depth, the wall, the shark, the darkness….
We get so worked up, either for the good or the bad, we enter the water with the wrong mindset. Not necessarily so debilitating that we are destructive, however we are not in the right state of mind for getting the most out of the dive. Some of the best things to be learned will pass right by us. Some of the things right in front of our eyes may get ignored.
This starts with your breathing. Before the dive, as you get suited. As you enter. As you descend and it never gets lost throughout the dive, this is how you stay in the moment. Conscious of your breathing. Setting your foundation.
Breathing is a fundamental building block of scuba diving. Specifically, buoyancy control, mental alertness and decision making. If you struggle with buoyancy, if situations often arise that you did not foresee, or you question your actions you can be certain that your breathing is off.
This is Self-Awareness in its purest form.
The Heart of Breathing
The stress-filled world we live in today is a macrocosm of every dive we make. A constant attack of questions that need to be answered with calculated certainty. On land, we can procrastinate. Underwater we need clarity.
At the heart of your breathing is the circle of life. The continuation of existence. Without its harmonious balance we breakdown, building caustic CO2 and depriving ourselves of oxygen.
When this happens to a terrestrial, they get tired, they get cranky and they get anxious. When it happens to a diver, it can be much worse. Deadly.
Your breathing is what keeps you grounded to yourself. Full control of your breathing will keep you in control of your mind. This is what keeps you in the now. The Right Now. What is happening, why it is happening and how to solve your problems.
Respect The In-Between
The transition from exhale to inhale is the place you need to be, tirelessly.
If you hunger to breathe you’ve lost it. If you rush to exhale, you’re wandering. It’s a lonely path that is covered with self-doubt.
The in-between is the place of focus. It is the gas exchange, it is the balance, it is the control.
Don’t focus on having good buoyancy control, instead shift your awareness to yourself and it will happen on its own. Conscious breathing is your goal and good buoyancy control will be the result of good self-awareness.
This works underwater but watch how the self-aware diver also learns to navigate life.