Healthy Divers = Happy Divers!
The Health Benefits of Yoga & Scuba
Diving
As you may or may
not know, Winnie and I are both keen practitioners of Bikram Yoga (for
more info on what Bikram is, click here
to see Winnie’s description) and we are clearly nuts about scuba diving.
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| Standing Separate Leg Bow Posture |
Whilst both of these activities promote a
healthier lifestyle, I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at
the health benefits of practicing Yoga if you are a scuba diver. But remember, I’m not a Yoga Professional, just
a regular Joe and I’m applying it to my profession – SCUBA DIVING!
Research suggests
that one of the most noticeable benefits is the emotional and mental therapy
that scuba diving provides us. When a
diver is experiencing neutral buoyancy, gliding through the water in an
effortless way, weightless they begin to feel relaxed and soothed by this
activity. They can often feel their
nerves calming as they dive beneath the surface. Excitement and curiosity can often lead to
positive mental therapy. The feeling a
diver gets when they see the various colours, textures, that the sub aquatic
world offers can help to take the diver away from the rigours of living on the
surface, of seeing the same cars, buildings and people. The underwater world offers a new experience,
a chance to explore. This can really
help divers who suffer from stress.
These are all positive psychological affects of scuba diving.
The physical
benefits are quite interesting too.
Swimming is one of the best ways to combine aerobic and anaerobic
exercise. The physical act of swimming
will provide a cardiovascular and muscular workout as divers move against the
natural pressure of water against their bodies.
This physical activity will also have minimal impact against our joints,
which can only be a good thing. Divers
need to be both physically and mentally fit to be able to carry their own gear
or to support their dive buddies, should the need arise. Whilst diving we are always trying to train
our bodies to work more efficiently; by taking long slow, deep breaths we are
trying to optimize the oxygen we are breathing so that our body tissues can
remain oxygenated. Optimised breathing
will therefore reduce our consumption rate, which will lead us to longer more
relaxed dives – back to the psychological effects. Diving can actually motivate less active
people to become more active and to lead healthier lifestyles so that they can
enjoy more relaxed dives, which is an awesome reason to stay fit!
Now, the benefits
of practicing Yoga are profound when related to scuba diving (in my humble
opinion). Yoga teaches us to more
effectively control our breathing – more on this in a minute. It also conditions our bodies and replenishes
them by removing toxins as we perform the many postures. The list of benefits is huge and I plan to go
over a few of the points related to
health benefits for scuba divers (although they all kind of benefit divers in
some way or other). So there are three
main benefits that yoga practice develops and they include physiological,
psychological and biochemical benefits.
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| Standing Stick |
You can find a huge list of benefits at:
From my research, I
have noticed that of the huge list, the areas that seem most relevant to scuba
divers are:
Physiological Benefits
µ
Respiratory
rate decreases
Psychological Benefits
µ
Decrease in anxiety
µ
Improved concentration
µ
Improved learning function
Bio-Chemical Benefits
µ
Hemoglobin Increase
Improved
Blood & Nutrient Transport
Our tissues need
fresh oxygenated blood to work properly, and the more efficient we are at
transporting this fresh oxygenated blood to our organs and tissues the more
efficient those organs work. Sounds
simple, right?
Well, it comes down
to breathing. Breathing is the source of
all living things. For humans we need to
breathe oxygen to revitalize our organs and to naturally expel toxins and waste
from our bodies. Humans need to breathe
to inhale fresh oxygen, which can be transported in our blood to our
organs. Since oxygen bonds with
hemoglobin, the benefit of increasing our hemoglobin count through yoga
practice is great. Think of it like
this, hemoglobin cells are chauffeurs that carry the oxygen to our organs,
through our bloodstream. If there’s more
taxis waiting at the AIRport (do ya get it – air-port!!), then more oxy-passengers can be carried away
sooner. The oxygen gets delivered to the
organ-destinations sooner, without any delays.
So to speed up
oxygenated blood flow we need to focus on breathing. The diaphragm is responsible for 75% of the work of breathing, and at the
same time it is responsible for supporting the function of the heart and for
stimulating the lower organs. If
breathing efficiently, the diaphragm will flatten and descend – this will
massage these organs (how thoughtful).
The movement of the diaphragm works to move and massage the heart, and
as de-oxygenated blood from the lower body returns to the heart, this diaphragm
movement acts to exert a pressure that causes an acceleration of blood flow
when the pressure is at its lowest. I
guess the best reference is a tourniquet effect that rapidly accelerates blood
to the organs.
The health benefits
of increased oxygenated blood flow can be awesome, especially when you consider
the benefits this will make toward improving your body’s efficiency when diving
or exercising!
The various
breathing techniques that we learn in yoga, such as “pranayama” can affect our
breathing habits underwater, which can actually give us something to draw upon
when we are faced with a less than perfect/comfortable situation (both a mental
and physical benefit here) – especially when you consider a silt out scenario
whilst penetrating a deep shipwreck!
As a passionate
scuba diver and PADI Master Instructor I work with many divers of varying
ability, but one thing I have noticed is that a heck of a lot of us divers
over-breathe. This extends across the
board from novice divers to professionals.
This is when divers breathe too quickly, also referred to as
Hyperventilation. Hyperventilation
contributes in over 200 medical issues and diseases, such as asthma, arthritis,
heart disease, high blood pressure and stress – which can lead to a bad health
situation in the long term.
Over-breathing
leads to guzzling through a tank of gas in next to no time – we get called “Air
Pigs” and “Gas Guzzlers” to name but a few.
So how do we overcome this issue?
In my own personal experience (I am a former “Air Hog”), I have found
that Yoga delivers a solution to this issue.
Here is my description of how…
Over breathing
depletes the amount of carbon dioxide in our blood and this reduction in CO2
has various negative effects on our bodies.
Primarily, the lower than normal levels of carbon dioxide can actually
suppress the urge to breathe. Next it
causes the arteries (including the carotid artery that goes to the brain) to
constrict. Constriction of the arteries
will reduce blood flow throughout our body.
This makes the task of carrying the oxygenated blood to our cells much
more difficult, and time consuming. Due
to reduced blood flow, slower transportation of oxygenated red blood cells and
no desire to breathe, the body will very quickly experience a shortage of
oxygen – this is very bad. At this
point, no matter how much we breathe, our lungs will not be able to do anything
with the oxygen. The lack of oxygen causes
a little emergency panic alarm to occur in our brains – this is a reflex that
many technical experts have called the “fight or flight” reflex. It is the activation of our sympathetic
nervous system, and it makes us anxious, irritable, and generally stressed
out. It also reduces our ability to
think clearly and this can lead to us being vulnerable to panic – a major
contributing factor with divers bolting to the surface.
More bad news is
that chronic hyperventilation can be caused by poor posture, excessive muscular
tension and a poor diet. Another thing
we need to be aware of is that to breathe effectively we must breathe naturally
and with our whole body. This is more
clearly seen in babies and animals. For
us grown ups, the best way to practice good breathing techniques is to maintain
a flexible, unrestricted ribcage and a supple belly. Our belly needs to have the ability to expand
fully on inhalation and retract on exhalation.
Step Up Yoga
Regular yoga
practice develops control over your breathing, there is a definite technique to
the “yogic breath” and it is essentially a fairly simple concept that any one
can try. Although introduced to this
breathing style in Bikram Yoga, it was also very interesting to see the
technique demonstrated during one of the technical diving courses I assisted on
in Dahab , Egypt
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| Back Bending |
Essentially, the
Steps to belly-breathing are:
- Place one hand on your chest, and the other on
your belly
- Practice breathing into your belly first. The hand on your stomach should rise and
fall as you breathe into it. You’ll
notice this may feel unnatural at first, then deeply relaxing – this is
because when we are in a deep sleep we actually use abdominal breathing! J
- On the next inhalation, continue to fill your
lungs some more by extending the belly breath into your chest. You want to fill your belly and then
your chest. You will feel your
belly hand rise first, then your chest hand rise second.
- Finally you want to try and squeeze a little more
air into the top of your chest (around your collar bone), by raising your
arms and allowing your lungs to fill to their capacity.
- Hold that breath for just a moment and slowly
exhale. The exhalation needs to be
controlled. You will feel the air
release from the top of the chest, then the chest itself and then the
belly. To really squeeze out all of
the air you can curl over a touch.
This breathing
exercise will help to remove all of the stale air from your lungs and replace
it with fresh clean air.
Other physical
benefits of yoga include the increase in strength, flexibility and endurance of
our muscles. Also the increased range of
movements in our joints and skeletal systems is a major added bonus for divers
carrying heavy scuba gear – especially since yoga has been proven to improve
dexterity skill too!
Healthy
Mind
An advantage of
scuba divers participating in yoga is that it has been proved to reduce
anxiety. It is also a useful tool to
help improve concentration and learning function. Let’s talk about Anxiety; if we can reduce
this psychological barrier then we are less likely to make uncharacteristic
errors in judgement and therefore we are less likely to panic. Having this up our wetsuit sleeve can help us
to feel more confident before, during and after diving. It will contribute to that relaxed feeling we
get when diving in perfect and comfortable conditions and we will feel happier,
and less stressed.
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| Relaxing before a deep dive |
My
Observations
My own practice of
Bikram yoga has definitely contributed to my diving. It has reduced my Surface Air Consumption
(SAC) rate dramatically. I was breathing
at around 22 litres per minute 2 years ago, before practicing Bikram. After a year of regular yoga it dropped to 18
litres per minute and then again to 16 litres per minute. You gotta be happy about that! I also noticed that after having a year away
from practicing yoga (whilst we’ve been travelling) my SAC returned to around
18 litres per minute. I was
gutted! Before I talk about present day,
I would also like to point out that Bikram Yoga also contributed to my skin
improving – less dried and cracked feet, my mental attitude changed dramatically,
I was more positive and open to new ideas.
Yoga has also reduced my stress levels, and subsequently my blood
pressure dropped too! On top of all
this, whenever I regularly practice yoga my eating habits improve, my body
weight begins to stabilize and I gain muscle tone and definition…which is
awesome!
After such a long
break, Winnie and I researched Bikram yoga studios across the globe, and found
a location that served our diving needs and has a studio. Since returning to Bikram yoga for just one
month, whilst in Mexico
One thing I do want to point out, and you should be
aware of is that it is not recommended to practice yoga after diving,
especially deep, or technical deco dives.
The increased blood flow that you’d experience may contribute to
possible symptoms of decompression illness.
It is however
prudent to train yoga on non diving days, and before diving if you are doing it
on dive days too. I personally avoid
yoga on dive days.
Some dive centres
and resorts around the world offer yoga-diving packages that incorporate yoga
sessions to your diving package.
Perfect!
Personally, I’ll be
practicing Bikram yoga for years to come, and that will only benefit my diving
career too.
GAFFA
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