leve-leve freediving & yoga中文
Instructor Eliz freediving off Taiwan's northeast coast

Instructor

Before the 1960s, physiologists worked it out on paper: from the ratio of total lung capacity to residual volume, a human chest should be crushed somewhere around fifty metres. In August 1961 Enzo Maiorca dived to fifty metres and the arithmetic was simply wrong. What the calculation had missed was blood shift — thoracic blood moving in to fill the space the lungs give up. Today the No Limits world record stands at 214 metres, set by Herbert Nitsch in 2007.

Where people can actually go has never matched what the paper said. That is one of the reasons I love this sport.

How I ended up in the water

I have always loved water. In it I am in my element — honestly, I have thought I ought to just move in.

I love how quiet it is down there. I love that all you have to do is feel, and watch everything drifting past you.

I grew up in Argentina and have lived in Canada and Taiwan since, so I speak some Spanish too. Courses are taught in Mandarin or English.

The first time I heard the words "free diving" was in Haiti. A colleague grabbed a pair of fins, headed for the sea, and told me that was freediving. I remember thinking: it is just diving, why give it such a fancy name?

Two years later I spent my annual leave in Coron, in the Philippines, and took AOW and the Apnea Total Freediver course at Barracuda Lake. Two days were not enough, so I added three more for advanced freediver. By the end I could reach 24 metres, see the bottom of the lake, and feel the thermocline on the way down.

I still remember what it felt like to reach that bottom for the first time, and I remember those five days in detail — how every extra metre puts you between what you can and cannot do, and how at the deepest point you look around you with equal parts fear and curiosity.

Freediving gave me a quiet mind, and I would like to pass that on. Balance, somewhere between complete defocus and complete focus.

Instructor Eliz in mask and hood at the shore
Instructor Eliz at the waterline
Instructor Eliz rising with arms open above the reef

How I teach

Taking something apart quickly and rebuilding it from first principles is what I am good at. I will explain the same thing several different ways until we find the one that works for you. In the water I watch your technique with my small eyes open very wide, break it down, and tell you exactly what I saw.

I am not an instructor who posts a lot of stories. I am an honest one, and I am very good at spotting and correcting what your body is doing underwater.

So — see you in the water.

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