Connection Between Scuba Diving and Stress Management
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
As you all know, I treat water as one of my teachers. In this post, I want to share more learnings from my scuba and swimming experiences, which resurfaced during a recent coaching session.
A client mentioned feeling like a loser because, although they had cultivated a regular meditation practice, they would often skip it during difficult times. After all, isn’t mindfulness supposed to be the cure for everything? 🫠
While it is undoubtedly helpful, it can also be incredibly challenging to stay present during stressful moments. I invited them to start with a state of acceptance — that it’s hard to meditate when under stress, and that’s okay.
When pursuing an Open Water Scuba certification (which qualifies you to dive without a professional guide and handle potential emergency situations), one of the techniques taught is how to react if you run out of oxygen. The strategy involves using strong, controlled kicks to reach the surface. Once there, you continue with deliberate kicks, only one at a time, to lift your face out of the water, take in enough air, and use it to fill your buoyancy jacket as your body goes down under water without kicking. The key is to repeat this until the jacket has enough air to keep you afloat.
Two lessons come from this, both from a physical and mindset perspective:
Less is more: Instead of small, frantic kicks, which might be an automatic response, we were trained to use slow, powerful kicks. This helped conserve energy and use the momentum from each kick more efficiently. In life, we often feel the urge to do something — anything — in times of panic. But being strategic about where we focus our energy allows us to make more progress than if we react impulsively, doing too many things frantically.
Prepare for war in peace: After each kick, you inevitably sink back down as you fill your jacket with air, but you keep going until you can float. You’re preparing with the big inhale for the time when your weight will pull you down, but you’re doing it calmly, with purpose.
I find meditation and other practices to be similar. You gather enough “air” when things are calm — building your mindfulness and inner calm — so that during hard times, even when you can’t actively meditate, the “air in your lungs” (your practice) still supports you. If you observe closely, you might even notice subtle changes in the intensity of your stress or overwhelm.
Even during sea swimming lessons, part of the warm-up included land exercises. It might seem unnecessary, but we were building muscle memory. That’s why I’m a big fan of rituals — not only in personal life but also at the organizational level.
In organizations, rituals take the form of processes and structure. It’s when things are going well that we need to focus on fundamentals — establishing the right processes and building organizational muscle memory. That way, during “war-time,” we rely on those processes instead of flailing to keep our heads above water.
What are some rituals that help you accumulate enough oxygen?
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