One Breath

When we first moved to Beijing, I was in a real funk. Burned out, feeling guilty for uprooting the family from a pretty sweet life of surfing, camping and snowboarding in Japan, it was all a bit of a shock to the system. Beijing is so far from the sea, I felt a piece of me was missing. Then during covid, I started to really love the city: the pace of change, rapid electrification of cars, new parks, clean rivers, finding more and more to do. But it was still very dry. We made friends beyond work and have a good life here now. And over the last year, I’ve found a piece of the ocean in the middle of the city at HiDive.

HiDive is something I think very few places can do well. A huge freediving centre in a creative district, staffed by lovely people and with a real sense of fun and wellbeing. I’d done a PADI course in Hainan during covid, with a little more in Lombok, but it was little and far between. Last week, to round out the summer break, I went all-in on AIDA 3 training and wow, was it a challenge. And I loved it.

The step up to AIDA 3 was a real shift from before, as we go to a depth that can have consequences. My previous experience, to about 12m, was fun, pretty chill. Strength and confidence in the water could compensate for poor technique. At this level, no way. We went deep (haha) on physiology, breathing, conditioning and rescues. We were tested and encouraged throughout: static breath hold of 2min45 (I got 3min), dynamic 55m breath-hold swim, rescues at the surface and 12m, CO2 conditioning (think the beep test underwater), and being told “your technique is ugly!”. And I loved it.

On the third day, we worked up (down?) to the pass depth of calm consistency at 24m. That’s a long way there and back. We learned to conserve energy, be aware of our bodies’ positions and reactions and hit “free fall”, where you pass neutral buoyancy and just… sink. Then we went for personal bests (max 28m); I got 27.3m. We were joined by new classmates from previous cohorts who hadn’t previously met the target depth; they weren’t stressed, they came along when they were ready and went for it. We still have a lot to learn from this in school assessment. I was knackered all day the next day. And I loved it.

The theory component was super robust, too. Although the session was all in Chinese, with a little translation, I had AIDA’s excellent textbook and a lot of context cues. It was all very IB Biology, unearthing and contextualising content from my teaching days and Marine Bio past. And I loved it.

There was one moment on the second day where we had to warm up at 15m. This was the first time going through the ‘black hole’ at the centre, the bottom of which is 33m. This was comfortably below neutral buoyancy for me, and the sensation induced a mild moment of panic. But what are you going to do, other than get it under control? By the second attempt, the fear was gone, my position was better, I was calmer and we worked down to 24m. The next day, the warmup was at 20m; my body was tired and the feeling came back. But we made it to a 90s, then 2min, dive and the rest was smooth. It reminded me of all the times in life and work where something has felt too much, too worrying or too high-stakes… but we still made it through and it was easier every time afterwards. Experience is a great calmer and teacher. And I loved it.

I loved the coaches and classmates. I was (by some margin) the oldest there. This is starting to become a trend in the things I try out. How is that possible? I still feel like a young’un. As much as language barriers allowed, we got chatting. Many had overseas experience, most had good English, I had passable Chinese for the context. One coach was a recent graduate who couldn’t find work in Australia so came back to China to pursue her passion and get paid doing it. One classmate was a young lawyer who’d had enough and decided to find her own way. There were high-school and university students, office workers and artists. One, when they found out I was at an international school, said “I knew it would be WAB”. It was a really nice group who cheered each other on, supported each other and celebrated everyone’s successes, not just our own. As we chatted about careers and pathways, they were all on the same journey: finding purpose and a path to flourishing. And I loved it.

This was embodied learning at its best. Challenging, social, motivating and purely driven by wellbeing and interest. At the risk of making this sound like LinkedIN drivel, it’s hard not to draw some parallels between this experience and what we need to do in schools to really move forwards in the age of AI. It was content in context, personal inquiry, meaningful goal-setting and mastery-progression. It was a personal, physical and mental challenge; as soon as I’m underwater, everything else evaporates.

And I loved it.