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I've started to learn freediving since 2010 with Natalia and Alexey. All trainings with them were always amazing. I even decided to move my family to live next to the pool (in Moscow) where they do daily training -- to be able to train more often.

Every sea training in Dahab was always a LOT of fun and great experience for my whole life. There was always some magic around Natalia – you understand that you're sitting next to one of the greatest humans in the world, who is able to do smth absolutely incredible and it's hard to reflect how deep are the feelings inside you during those moments. Her lectures and discussions were interesting even if you hear it for 2nd or 3rd or 4th time :) I will always remember that parts of my life and it's really smth that is absolutely remarkable and amazing.

Those freediving trainings changed my life a lot. They changed how I think about anything what surrounds me: you consider any thing like "it's a part of the huge world", you fall in anger much less often, you become more stable, and strong.

I also will always remember when I went to just another training in the pool and right after that realized that Natalia just made yet another world (!) record during Russian competition. Or later, In Kalamata, Greece, in 2011, when she did a couple of depth records, in World Championship.. It was BIG. It was EPIC. Always. Every her move.

When I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was missing freediving and Natalia a lot. It's strange that there is almost no freedivers in SF and Bay area. I see huge potential in this kind of sport for tech guys in California – we are always sitting with our computers and are lacking some way to reboot our mind. Freediving is GREAT way to get rid of everything useless from your brain at the end of every hard day. But maybe the ocean is too cold, or visibility is low.. Don't know, but I hope it'll become popular some day in this part of the world.

I should say special words about Alexey. This young guy (28 y.o.) is in his very difficult times these days. He should be strong to go through these days and months and years. He is active World Champion and World Record holder (WR: 128m in depth, with monofin only). But this is very personal and not so difficult as another thing – Natalia built probably the strongest local freediving school (thousands of people graduated) and strong national freediving organization – and the question is whether or not he will find enough power to continue this work. It's hard time...

We all loved (and love and will love) Natalia. We wish all the good to Alexey and his sister, Oksana.

R.I.P Natalia. Thank you for all you did for us.

More of an obituary really. A really amazing woman with what seemed to me to be an inhuman ability to go without breathing.

I have never had the courage to be this kind of athlete, whether it is free diving or base jumping or any other sport where dying is only slightly less likely than not dying. And have always wondered about what they are thinking when they start out on their next "event", do they make their peace with God each time? Will fully disbelieve their chances of dying? Recheck their will and other documents? I like to believe she died doing something she loved doing, I really hope that is true.

When I used to free solo climb, it was more about being in the zone. Putting your concious brain in the background because it will kill you. Anyone doing those kinds of sports fully knows the chances of dying & decides to take it.

I eventually decided the chances weren't worth it. I still greatly miss it.

"I like to believe she died doing something she loved doing", like it makes any difference for her.
It doesn't make any difference to her now, but I imagine it did when she was still alive.

Consider that we're all in the process of dying - it's just not as imminent for most. I imagine you still want to enjoy life, despite knowing that one day you won't be around for that enjoyment to mean anything to you.

Knowing that everyone is eventually going to die, and that fulfillment is still important, why wouldn't you wish it upon people to enjoy their life til the very end?

I think kukx's point is more that wishing isn't effective, especially when the person you're wishing for is already dead. The obvious follow up is the question of whether or not it is correct to do ineffective things, and why people would choose to do so with such frequency that it is normalized and expected. Thus the "why wouldn't you wish it" is because wishing doesn't work, and that's probably the best possible reason to not do something.

Simply rationalizing it doesn't make it a good thing.

But we ascribe special significance to the time just before dying. It is seen as much more important to be happy the last hour you are alive, as opposed to any other in your life.

Why is that? The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that it isn't really important for the person dying, but only for the rest of us. When we remember that person we will remember their last time especially strongly, and it is nice if that is a good memory.

Or hmm. Another view that would justify it is that life is about optimizing some function. And that before we die we only have estimates of how well we are doing, so it is only just before death we get the final answer, if we succeeded in optimizing the function or not.

If you die you die. What difference does it make if a second ago you enjoyed your life. If anything it makes it even worse. Dying when you enjoy the life the most? I can understand that someone wants to die when he suffers terribly, but not this.

   > If you die you die. What difference does it make 
   > if a second ago you enjoyed your life.
I don't know if you've watched anyone die but it isn't "fun" for most people (either the watching or the dying). Many people are there with their parents when they pass, or with grandparents or loved ones struck down by accident or disease. So in general I think everyone will likely watch as at least one other person they know and care about dies.

When that happens, you may find yourself sharing the dying person's pain, and that is a heavy burden. When I am listening to, or reading about, the death of someone. I wish for them an an easy passing, with as little pain and suffering as possible, for both them and their families and loved ones, because I know from my own experience how painful it is to watch someone die and be unable to help them. So for me, the living, it makes a huge difference if the person died doing something they loved (and thus were likely experiencing joy and satisfaction at the end) then knowing someone died slowly, painfully, and inevitably spending hours, perhaps days or weeks, moving toward their own demise.

We're all going to die eventually. Does it make it worse or better to have lived a 'good' life first? I suppose it doesn't matter either way once you're dead, but all we can do is live life to the fullest, most rewarding, way before we die, right?
I think the "die doing what you love" cliché is less about the how the person died and more about the how the person lived. She was taking a risk every time she pushed her limits diving. But, apart from the last one, each of those times added to the enjoyment of her life that she wouldn't have experienced if she hadn't been willing to risk death. It's entirely plausible to think that the 53 years of life she had were more enjoyable than 80-something would have been without the enjoyment of diving. It's why people who take on these risky sports choose to do so.
People don't say that for her, they say that to convince themselves that death isn't as bad as it is.
I'm sorry to hear that you believe this. It shows a lack of appreciation for people who get out in the world and really live their lives... People who do things that have risk, but would rather follow their passions than live without it.

For people like that, dying doing what they loved really does make it better. They lived their lives, following their own choices. And those lives do end early sometimes. But all lives end. Sitting behind a desk for 40 years then cheering at how long you lived... that sounds like the tragedy to me.

What are you implying? That I'm not "really living my life" because I don't try to convince myself death is better if I was having fun just before it happened?

You really think a chainsaw juggler is going to have more fun getting mutilated by a chainsaw than dying in their sleep? Or that drowning is somehow not unbearably frightening just because you like water? Have you never heard of post traumatic stress? When you almost die doing something, it can make you not like it anymore. So why would you assume dying doing something you love isn't actually a good way to die losing the thing you love most?

Because you don't want to believe it.

Death has no valuation. It is not good or bad. It is just the progress of time and the existence of entropy. Everything must die.

Dying is scary. Death is not.

Nah, people like ending on a high note. It's a general thing. Nothing to do with being in denial about death.
Most death isn't that bad, its a quiet snuffing out, rather then a violent in the throws. Death is bad for the survivors, not for the decedent.
It's not courage, it's stupidity.
To each her own.
"No one knows what happened to her. There were powerful currents in the deep water beneath her and she may have been somehow carried away. She may have lost consciousness."

I've been freediving for 20 years now and I've never heard of anyone (nor myself) having trouble reaching the surface because of currents. Strong currents affecting a freediver are lateral, not vertical.

Not trying to say currents are not dangerous for freedivers. I've friends who did end up lost for hours in the surface because of currents. Also, if you want to reach a certain spot in the sea floor and there is current you will consume more O2 and you increase your chances of blackout before reaching surface.

But dying because of being carried away? hmm no..

So, the only true thing is that she did black out and did not come to the surface. The current is the reason why they are not finding her. No one will ever know why she blacked out.

edit: typos

What about the fact that she was wearing weights? Could that have caused a lateral current to affect her vertically?
Weights are small pieces of lead used to compensate the wetsuit buoyancy. They don't have a big surface so they don't have hydrodynamic impact.

In some freediving disciplines weights may be used to go deeper in less time, but then you leave the weight at the bottom, otherwise you would not be able to come back to the surface.

I think the article I saw said that they believed she'd lost consciousness (somehow due to the current) and been unable to remove the weights. Could that explain it?
The concentration technique (attention deconcentration) mentioned in the article sounds very interesting. Anyone know more or have tried it? Edit: Could be a useful technique when free-diving into a code base. Apropos diving, another concept that comes from the diving world which I have found useful in Software Development is "incident pit" which can be useful as a perspective to post mortem failed projects and conversely for a PM to know about the danger signs.
Every time you drive a car you do sort of it. You cannot concentrate all your attention on one small thing -- you rather should do deconcentration and observe many objects at the same time.

Another example is searching mushrooms. If you do concentrate, you're not effective.

There are much more examples in the life.

I do this, but it forces me to drive slower, which isn't such a bad thing in the end. Feels like playing music a bit. You have to 'observe' the surroundings through a mental abstraction of many moving things and try to maintain an overall consistency between them all. We are ACID databases.
There are simple exercises to improve deconcentrations skills:

1) [Vision] Look at some point (try to avoid thinking about the point itself), then think about what you observe at top left corner, then (moving slowly, after 15-30 seconds) at top edge, top right corner, etc. When 360˚ are finished, start again but think about several parts of viewport at the same time. Then just try to relax and think about the WHOLE picture. It takes some time to achieve good results, but if you do this training several days you will see changes in your attention level – it's like you see nothing and everything at the same time and once something special (like mushroom or what you're looking for) arrives in your viewport – in this state of mind, you find it VERY fast, even if it's semi-hidden and is located on very periphery.

2) [Sounds] The same: relax and try to distinguish only one noise that is happening around you (like bird singing or smth). Then, after some time spent, proceed to the next noice (cars or wind or anything else). Then next and next. After several minutes you will wonder how many different sounds is around. Then try to relax more and combine all of them.

3) ["Internals", your body]. Try to concentrate only on one part of your body -- say, fingers on your left leg. Then on the right one. The upper, part of leg. Step by step, spending a dozen of seconds or so on one small part of your body, proceed upper. Dont forget to concentrate on inner body part, organs. Once all parts are done, relax more and observe entire body.

4) ["Externals", space]. Concentrate on what you have in front of you. Then behind you. On the left, on the right. Upper and lower. Imaging the building (or park or field or smth) where are you now. There is no need to see it, just imagine. Just reflect in your mind how it looks, feels. Then a block where your house is located (forest or county or smth), then your town/distrinct/city, then state/country and then - the Earth. Step by step imagine object with bigger volume. And don't stop -- Solar system and then Galaxy. Then relax and try to combine feeling ALL the objects surrounding you.

5) [Super-deconcentration] So, when you did all 4 exercises many times, spent many days practicing it – combine them. You have 4 dimensions: vision, sounds, your body and space around it (somebody would add smelling as well) – so you can do deconcentration in ALL of them achieving very special state of mind and body. It's interesting.

And this very thing helps you achieve better results in freediving. Or searching objects in wide areas.

That's what I've learned from Natalia Molchanova during her training courses.

The interesting part of it: once you achieve good results doing such techniques (first of all, #1 & #2 combined), you will be able to drive not slower as usually, but with better ability to notice any dangerous object.

As a drummer wannabee I spend most of my time trying to keep focused on my deconcentration. It's the simplest definition of flow or zen I can think of.
wiki shows only this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconcentration_of_attention

I am adding this on to spark a simpler explnation from someone who is experienced with this.

An excerpt from her website talks about this, link found from wikipedia, http://molchanova.ru/en/article/attention-deconcentration-fr... - "States close to AD can be achieved if person distributes attention on the field of vision periphery, i.e. focuses attention simultaneously on the regions above, below, on the left and on the right. Distribution of attention on the periphery requires voluntary efforts, since human visual apparatus is designed to detect objects in the central part of the vision field. There is useful deconcentration method when one imagines all objects are pictured on a transparent screen in front of him and concentrates attention only on the surface of the screen. This suspends spontaneous eye movements and focuses attention not on objects, but on fragments of vision field. If person performs the exercise correctly, his eyes do not “cling” to objects when he turns his head, but remain motionless relative to the head. This deconcentration type is called “planar deconcentration”. Further explanations can be found in Bakhtiyarov’s works."

> when one imagines all objects are pictured on a > transparent screen in front of him and concentrates > attention only on the surface of the screen

As they say it on the C2 wiki, IHaveThisAntiPattern.

I'm more distractible by peripheral visual stimulus than by noise. This is why I'm okay with working on small bullpens as long they give me three chest-height walls, but can't do any work on open plan offices where everything is on my line of sight when sitting down.

I'm surprised that she did not have a diving buddy. All of the training I've had with water diving, scuba or freediving, always recommends to have a buddy. The freediving buddy typically waits on top, looking down, to see if the diver has issues. If any issues are encountered, this buddy can potentially save the divers life.
Expanding on what you said, the top 10 metres are by far the most dangerous due to rapidly dropping air pressure in the lungs causing shallow water blackout. For serious freediving, your partner meets you at -10m as you ascend. This can clearly be seen in the fantastic william trubridge arch video. [1]

It's quite common for an instructor to dive alone with students. Even a first level freediver knows how to save someone from a shallow blackout; it's unclear if her diving partners were suitable or if she took excessive risks. This is a good reminder that no one is invincible.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXQbucZUDA

We don't know what happened to her exactly, but if she had an issue while being still deep (more than 20m) that would have been very hard to spot for a buddy, and even harder to do a rescue. She was not alone by the way.

The only way this could have been totally safe would be to dive along a line, using a lanyard to not drift away. This is the setup used in all competition or deep training and this has prevented many casualties.

Still speculative, the original article mentions a lack of spotters and an io9 article mentions a depth of 30-40m.

For her this was child's play: freediving gets exponentially harder the deeper you go. She could've decided to go exploring a bit on the bottom - at that shallow depth she'd have 2+ minutes of bottom time.

With ~5 days of training, a person can get to 30-40m. Then it becomes harder (e.g. the air in your lungs gets squeezed to a smaller volume than a complete and total exhale)

http://io9.com/well-probably-never-know-what-happened-to-fre...

Reminds me of a great movie about two competing free divers: The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/

It also has a sad ending...

thanks for the spoiler!
I would argue it actually has a happy ending. It's not a spoiler really.
Two competing opinions ... a sad ending and a happy ending. I'm going to play it safe and say that it has an ending.
Its not a spoiler. Go see the movie.
Reminded me of Audrey Mestre's tragic accident/homicide?

ESPN's movie on it is incredible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqLPwJHMM4

i had no idea about free diving until i read the OP. Natalia, the subject, who was one of the handful of world elites, and had been for many years, had a couple of years before (2013) descended to a depth of 418 feet, and ascended back to the surface under her own power--no supplemental oxygen, used at anytime. Absolutely amazing. I had no idea humans could do that--with or without training.
I feel like this would not hand cracks or bumps well...