Professional freediver Fabrice Bonello DuPuis reveals that the secret to the perfect freediving experience is complete relaxation so you can “melt away” underwater.
Words by Adriana Bishop
Photos by Kurt Arrigo
It’s not easy getting hold of Fabrice Bonello DuPuis as the diving season on the Maltese Islands extends way beyond the summer months, keeping him busy underwater, or on a boat, well into November and December. Even on a 'dry day', the 34-year-old professional freediver and owner of Deep Med freediving school still looks like he’s ready to jump into the water at any moment.
Appearing shirtless on my Zoom screen on his day off from his home in Xagħra, Gozo, he’s hopping like a pinball around his kitchen eating breakfast, occasionally stopping to look straight down the camera to explain how freediving has changed his life. Freediving may be a relatively recent addition to the local diving scene, but it is by no means a new sport. People have been freediving for food since 6000 BC and some consider it the most natural and serene way to explore the sea.
For Fabrice, freediving is something he “connected with”. He took up the sport in his late 20s when he found himself at a crossroads in his career. Originally a professional navigational officer, he grew up in the sea and found sports was the only subject he excelled in at school.
Fabrice uses the principles of Yoga Nidra, the ultimate relaxation technique for releasing stress and tension held in the body, to teach his students how to prepare for the final breath hold: “You have to go down in complete relaxation. The general preparation for the breath hold is quite simple. You just need to have focus, relaxation and sensitivity.” In Yoga Nidra, you lie down flat on your back with the palms of your hands facing up and aim to move into a deep state of conscious awareness ‘sleep’.
“As we prepare to take our final breath, we have to stay very still in the water. We need to have complete stillness and focus on finding the tension in our body. We scan areas of the body where there is tension and relax all that stress. “A still body, a body with no tension, means that physically you are calm and mentally you are focusing in the present moment. The heart rate calms down, and we go into a mammalian diving reflex,” Fabrice explains.
“The more you get into freediving, the more you start becoming extremely aware of your stress levels,” he continues, adding that this whole process leads to a heightened awareness of how to calm yourself down.
“People perceive a freedive as holding their breath, but the feelings are of complete ease and pleasure. You have to come up from a dive feeling like it was nothing. You are not gasping for air; there is no room for that. ”And once underwater, you abandon yourself to a feeling of “internal peace”. For Fabrice, the best part is the free fall around a metre per second. “Once you accomplish all the skills, it is like flying underwater. "You melt away; you have to let go and you become a part of it. I close my eyes so I can focus internally a lot more for pleasure and for peace.
“The feeling is like going on a bit of a trip. Some people remember it and others don’t. You are in a complete state of flow. I come up from my dive and I find I have to write about it, otherwise I forget what it was like.” Earlier this year, Fabrice and fellow freediver Nikki Muscat set the first CMAS national records in freediving. Fabrice achieved 52m constant weight (CWT), 52m free immersion (FIM), 40m no fins (CNF) and 56m bi-fins (CWTB).
Even with his years of training, competition nerves got the better of him and he found it difficult to calm his heart rate down. On the first of four competition days, Fabrice said he was “so nervous, it was crazy. I couldn’t calm myself down on the line. My heart rate was erratic. In hindsight, maybe I should have aborted the dive, but my ego told me otherwise. Maybe that is something I should work on”. Fabrice got in touch with his coach, who advised him how to approach the rest of his competition dives; how to control his inner dialogue; and to write down on his wrist the step-by-step schedule leading up to the dive. “The change was massive. My heart rate was still different from a normal dive, but everything was more in control,” he said.
While Fabrice may be a national record holder, he is not sure he’d be up for competing again. He would like to dive deeper, but there is no ultimate depth goal. “The goal is to continue the journey and continue improving both in and out of the water.” Freediving has taught Fabrice to change his life habits, get fitter and eat better, leading a more holistic life. This, in turn, has changed the way he dives.
“Diving teaches you about yourself. I started to realise certain things while diving, such as when I feel a particular sensation and keep on going, but I should have hit the brakes. This is the same thing in life. You start to feel more… more sensitivity through more focus and relaxation.”
