IS THERE SUCH A THING AS TALENT?
When people tell me that I have a natural talent in freediving, I tend to nod in silence, but really, deep down I don’t agree, and I feel my past experiences and hard work are somewhat diminished by the word “talent”.
Whilst my ego agrees it’s nice to feel you have somehow been infused with godliness at birth, on the contrary I feel very human and my ‘talent’ is only a consequence of my hard work (hard skills) and past experiences (soft skills).
My understanding of “talent” is a grandma recipe made of a lot of quantifiable hard work over a long time and an unquantifiable pinch of this and a little bit of that.
Simona Auteri - The Hard Skills in Freediving
I made a whole blog post about the Hard Skills in freediving which you can read here.
To sum up my previous article, the Hard Skills are defined as the technical competencies required to complete a given job, and in freediving they range from aquaticity, Mobility , flexibility, relaxation, apnea, equalization, technique, strenght and resistance, nutrition and rest.
SO WHAT ABOUT THE SOFT SKILLS IN FREEDIVING?
Whilst hard skills are esily quantifiable, the soft skills cannot be reached with certifications, qualifications or direct hard work.
Soft skills are personal and they represent the sum of our own experiences.
In my own personal experience, my own soft skills in freediving - disguised as “talent”- have been the following:
AQUATICITY AND COMFORT IN THE WATER
They come from the fact that I was born by the sea, lots of time swimming, sailing and generally being in the water. My mom taught me how to swim pretty much after I was born and since then I have always been a water child, from open water swimming to sailing competitions in the Mediterranean waters throughtout my teenage years.
I always say that freediving is an advanced discipline. You cannot expect to become a deep diver overnight if you’ve never stepped in the water. Start small and become acquainted with water, with getting your head underneath the water, with staring at the blue.
HANDS FREE
I’m hands free (BTV) therefore I had very little problems with Equalization - while this is a genetic predisposition (my brother is also hands free, even if he doens’t freedive and he doesn’t know his luck), I believe it also comes from hypermobility (also genetic trait).
Everything in my body is hypermobile, hence my eustachian tubes behave the same in their microcosmos.
Having said this, my hands free equalization is something that I trained specifically for freediving.
At the beginning of my diving journey I could not dive 50m hands free as I do now. I could barely keep my eustachian open for a 10m dive.
There are specific sets of exercises which will improve your chances of completing a dive Hands Free.
BEING SPORTY
I have always done lots of sport in my youth, both in and out of the water, and hence my body has grown to support physical activity and reactivity.
So even if I stopped doing sports for 10 year during my university and first working years, I could get back to a decent level of fitness quite quickly once I resumed regular exercise.
BREATHWORK, BUDDHIST CHANTING AND MEDITATION PRACTICE
Long before I started freediving, I was in a search for everything which could produce an altered state of consciousness without actually involving any drugs.
I tried many things, from changing my diet, to essential oils and copal burning, movement medicine and estatic dances, cacao ceremonies, ice baths and sweat lodges, sound therapy and guided meditations, but I quickly realized that breathwork was the ultimate shortcut to all sort of enlightening experiences.
From hyperventilation practices such as Wim Hof Breathing to Kundalini Yoga and its powerful Breath of Fire to buddhist chanting and meditation practices, breathwork was at the root of drugless altered state of consciousness.
The curiosity for everything that revolved around breathing and meditations practices, over the years, brought mental flexibility, mindfulness and ability to maintain focus during the freefall phase and in my preparation ahead of a dive.
ENTREPRENEUR
Although some of you think that I am a heiress and all I do is spend my time underwater, I actually have a job, and a company which I founded with much sweat and uncertainty 10 years ago in London.
I am an entrepreneur, and I started my company with a dream and £1000.
I built an identity around being an entrepreneur and the idea that as long as your dream and your passion are stronger than your fears, everything is possible and all you need to do is just to trust that your life fits a larger plan.
So being an entrepreneur taught me to trust my dreams and the universe, and brought me calmness and cold blood in making decisions and planning.
Which turn out to be very useful things before diving to -91m.
ACCESSING FLOW STATE
Being an entrepreneur meant that I had to work hard to build my own dream.
Everything had to be built the way I saw it, nobody taught me how to do things, especially because I chose a profession which was to an extent different from what I studied at Architecture school.
Long working hours accessing my own dreams to make them a reality meant that I had to tap into a flow state, which is ultimately the state that all sportpeople strive to access in order to have their best performances.
So what are your own softs skills? What are your ‘talents’?
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