Once a professional swimmer, today working in the beauty industry, Eglė found not the thrill of extreme sensations underwater, but the opposite state – calmness. Water became a place for her to detach from everyday noise, manage stress, and even “wash away” heavy emotions. However, behind this calmness lie training, strict safety rules, and a very clear understanding of what can happen if you exceed your limits. Eglė talks about what a person experiences when diving into darkness, why free divers should never dive alone, and how a sport where you don’t breathe paradoxically first teaches you how to breathe correctly.
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– You used to be a professional swimmer. How did that lead you to free diving?
– Free diving came to me gradually. I remember, while swimming in the pool during training, I saw people diving far in the adjacent lane and wondered how it was possible to dive so far on one breath, without special equipment, or hold your breath for more than a few minutes. Free diving instructor Tadas Jurgaitis was already encouraging me to come and try, saying: “When you get tired of swimming, come dive.” And that’s what I did.
And it just so happened that my childhood friend Evelina, with whom I attended swimming classes, had already started diving, so it was much braver to take the first step, come to free diving courses, and thus begin a wonderful journey underwater – not only into lakes and seas but, most importantly, into oneself.
– What are the types of free diving? How many of them are practiced in Lithuania?
– Free diving is a sport where a person dives into the depths of the sea, lake, or a deep pool designed for this purpose. Depth diving is divided into four main disciplines – diving with fins, with a monofin, “free immersion,” where no fins are used and you pull yourself down and up along a rope with your hands, and frog-style diving without fins.
There is also the “no limits” discipline – one of the deepest and most dangerous disciplines, during which a special weight platform submerges you to a certain depth, and you surface with an air balloon.
In the pool, we dive for distance. The main four disciplines are frog-style diving, diving with fins, monofin diving, and static apnea, floating on the water surface face down while holding your breath.
In Lithuania, most people practice distance diving in the pool, where competitions are also organized. In 2024, the World Free Diving Championships were held in Kaunas.
In winter, we go to train at the “DeepSpot” pool in Poland – one of the deepest pools in Europe, with a depth of 45.5 m, and in summer we dive in the Galvė and Plateliai lakes.
– Describe what free diving looks like from the outside. How do the training sessions go? How much time do they take per week?
– It depends on the situation – where we dive, in the pool or open water, but the essence is that before diving, we do breathing exercises, stretching exercises, and if desired – body scanning, relaxation meditation. We discuss the training: who will dive what distances, approximately how far, how long it will take, so we know everything as accurately as possible and what to expect.
Safety requirements in free diving come first; the main rule is never to dive alone.
Usually, there are two diving training sessions per week. One session is for dynamic distance diving in the pool, and the other is for the static discipline, where we hold our breath and float on the water surface, trying to stay underwater without breathing as long as possible.
On other days, we practice stretching and yoga exercises, work with weights in the gym, and, of course, rest and take care of good sleep.
The most intense preparation is about 2–3 months before competitions, when three diving sessions per week are done. So at that time, you live in a regime – sport, work, sleep. But it is necessary to include pleasant moments in the schedule that bring joy inside: music, art, friends, so it’s not just hard work because it’s very easy to burn out.
From the outside, free diving competitions look very calm. Everyone is in a good mood: some meditate before diving, some do breathing exercises. There is no sense of competition; it is felt only within oneself, but when you let that go, results come. Everything happens much easier through pleasure, not stress.
– How developed is this sport in Lithuania? Are many people involved?
– Free diving in Lithuania began to develop around 2010–2011. The first enthusiasts were Gytis Žilinskas, Tadas Jurgaitis, and Jurijus Nesvatas, who later became instructors and taught others this wonderful sport.
This sport is quite new in Lithuania. About 30–40 athletes train actively, but more than 400 people have been introduced to the sport and completed the first-level training. People are very interested in this sport, and the number of athletes worldwide is growing among both women and men.
– What is the role of physiology compared to psychology in free diving?
– What impressed me especially in this sport is that the majority of your result depends not only on physical attributes, which are also very important, especially lung volume, diaphragm elasticity, endurance, etc., but even more importantly – your psychological state, awareness, sleep, rest. All of this plays a significant role in free diving.
– How do you fight stress and prepare psychologically?
– Practice is the best way to fight stress. The more practice you have, the calmer you feel because you already know you can do it, you have already dived or stayed underwater without breathing for so long, so you try to dive a few more meters or stay a few seconds longer in the static state. This way, you gradually improve, feel your limits, and slowly expand them.
And, of course, breathing exercises. To learn not to breathe, you need to learn to breathe correctly – with diaphragmatic, calm breathing, you can activate the parasympathetic nervous system and increase vagus nerve activity, which helps the body transition to a state of calm and relaxation. Meanwhile, tense, shallow chest breathing is often associated with the “fight or flight” response.
– Where do you feel better – on land or underwater?
– I feel good both on land and underwater, but being in the water is completely different. As soon as your face submerges underwater, the “mammalian dive reflex” activates, during which the heart rate slows down, helping the nervous system to calm down. It’s like entering a meditative state, where attention shifts to body sensations, being here and now, with yourself, into yourself.
This experience of calmness in the water is recorded in the nervous system, so I can mentally return to this state anytime, especially when I experience stress or feel like I’m constantly running with work, etc. Then I consciously stop, sit down, close my eyes, and go back to that moment. I imagine I am in the pool, breathing calmly with my belly, take a few deep breaths, and dive underwater. Everything around quiets down, water surrounds me, I push off the wall and dive far. The kicks are confident, not frequent, the body is calm, relaxed, I glide far, experiencing a moment of flying in space, flooded with a sense of calm and safety.
Just 2–3 minutes of such visualization practice is enough for the nervous system to regulate and calm down.
– What thoughts go through your mind while diving? What is the hardest part of the dive for you?
– The hardest part of diving is not giving in to negative thoughts: “I’m already tired,” “Maybe we should surface,” panic, etc., which can come to mind when diving long distances or staying underwater for a long time holding your breath.
But from experience, you know everything is fine – it’s just how the body works. The body sends signals to the brain when CO₂ levels in the blood rise, but there may still be enough oxygen. There is a strong urge to exhale and then breathe, and knowing this theory calms you down. You also start scanning your body, observing all body sensations, relaxing, releasing tension in the shoulders, neck, thinking only positive things – and it works.
– What is “blackout,” and have you ever experienced it?
– “Blackout” in free diving is a loss of consciousness due to insufficient oxygen in the brain.
When diving while holding your breath, the body gradually uses up the oxygen in the blood. As carbon dioxide levels rise, the urge to breathe becomes stronger, but CO₂ is not the main cause of blackout – the critical moment is when the brain no longer gets enough oxygen.
The most interesting thing is that blackout often happens without dramatic sensations. A person may appear conscious, perform movements, and then suddenly “switch off.” This can especially happen in the last part of the dive or when ascending to the surface, when due to pressure changes during depth diving, the partial oxygen pressure in the lungs and blood decreases.
– Have you ever experienced critical or risky situations?
– No, I personally have not experienced critical or risky situations, but if it happened to teammates, I know how to act. We are trained for this – we know how to provide assistance and how to behave in stressful situations.
– Which lakes in Lithuania are suitable for free diving? Is clarity necessary?
– The main lakes in Lithuania suitable for diving are Plateliai Lake because of its depth, which reaches up to 47 m, and Galvė Lake in Trakai. It is quite clear and suitable for beginners, and near the shore, the depth is already about 25 m.
– How does the water and environment change when diving deep? Are layers felt?
– When diving in a lake, the water changes very quickly – not only the temperature, which can be 23 °C at the surface and only 4 °C at the bottom, but also visibility. It suddenly darkens about five meters down, and there can be pitch darkness.
However, you feel calm and safe because we dive along a rope, follow all mandatory safety requirements, and, of course, have a team watching, so it is possible to relax and enjoy the process.
– Do people around you easily catch your hobby?
– Many people are interested, ask questions, and I gladly tell them. There are also a few friends who have tried and completed the first-level free diving courses, where people are introduced to the basics over three intensive days, including breath-holding underwater in a static state, distance diving with fins in the pool, relaxation and breathing exercises, etc. These are led by free diving instructor Tadas Jurgaitis.
– Your daily work is in the beauty industry, and your leisure time is underwater. These seem like two completely different worlds. What connects them?
– At first glance, it might seem like two different worlds, but looking deeper, you can find connections between them. Both in water and in the beauty industry, constant movement prevails.
You will never see the same water surface; it constantly changes depending on environmental factors – air, temperature, currents, etc., and my workdays are never the same. I can work in a salon, photoshoots, large fashion events, where I meet many different people and create various looks, so I have to navigate “like in the sea among waves.”
And I really like that because what I learn during free diving training – how to manage stress, feel the signals sent by the body, relax, concentrate on the goal, etc. – all this helps me in working with clients. They feel it and highly appreciate my calmness, dedication, and efforts.
– What is water to you – a work environment or an element where you rest?
– Water is my element where I rest and recharge. It is a place where I can leave negative emotions, as if “wash them away,” and return to life with much brighter thoughts and mind.
There have been darker periods in life when only water and swimming helped me “float away,” so I am very glad to have such an environment that calms me and gives me energy. It is about being here and now, refining body sensations, and relaxing.
– What is your dream – what would you like to achieve in free diving?
– I remember when I just started attending free diving courses, my dream was to pass the course so I could go with the group by boat to the sea and dive with whales! That motivated me a lot and helped me overcome the fear of dark water when I had to dive deep in Plateliai Lake and perform various exercises.
I haven’t met whales in the open sea yet, but my list is rapidly growing – I have dived with stingrays, dolphins, turtles.
But behind all that lies a bigger and more significant dream – to introduce as many people as possible to free diving, recreational diving, to tell them about the underwater world hidden there, how important it is to protect nature, oceans, the animals and corals in them, because we live on a planet whose major life system is the ocean.
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– Thank you for the conversation.
