I’m in the ladies shower rooms on a remote island in the Philippines.

I’ve rinsed off the saltwater from my dive but it’s 40 degrees so I’ve all I’ve done is replaced the saltwater with sweat. The German freediver next to me asks if I achieved my dive goals that morning. I tell her I am inching closer each day but that I will be excited if I can reach 40m and she asks “Why only 40m?”

I explain that the internal component of my cochlear implant is only graded to 40m - I’ll be happy if I can reach that.

She nods. “I don’t think you are going to be happy with that though.”

I stare at her. I want to tell her about the AIMD EN45502-2-3:2010 pressure testing completed on the implant, the tiny semiconductor circuit failures testers observed after multiple cycles at 60m. But In that way freedivers have, she’s challenging a limitation I have imposed on myself.

Poland’s deepest female diver walks out of the showers, where she’s been listening. “Tell them they need to build a better implant,” she states, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Being around freedivers is nothing if not confronting, but moments like this bring me a kind of expansive joy - we set so many limits for ourselves and spend far less mental time on allowing for the possibility of success.

And inevitably back to culture…

The freediving school, Camotes Freediving is run by Thibault Guignes, a French freediving national record holder and one of the 5 deepest free immersion divers in the world.

Alessia Zecchini is also training at the school, the deepest woman in the world, and another star, Australian Helen Allison, who holds multiple world records in the Masters category for freedivers over 70 years old.

I mention this to emphasise that I am surrounded by straight up legends, but here, they feel like peers.

The question of what kind of cultural witchcraft is at play here to create that feeling is one that occupies a lot of my mind.

Like a workplace in a concentrated way, the school is a constant stream of people coming and going. You have students here for just a day, people who are in the middle of a three month stay, and people like me who are here for a couple of weeks. Everyone is at different points in their journey and it’s absolutely fascinating to me how together we are still creating culture.

The three things I think it comes down to are;

• Leadership - Thibault sets the tone from the top down and the instructors who are around for months and sometimes years pass it on to others. His philosophy around diving is singular and encompasses the physically extreme nature of chasing depth while still focusing heavily on personal understanding, growth, and enjoyment.
• Shared space and experience - it’s not a striated culture. We all eat lunch together and conversations are welcoming. We are also all coached individually every Monday in a group setting where I’m getting the same insightful coaching as the 100m+ diver next to me. The result is I feel seen, held, worthy, and a part of something bigger than myself.
• Freediving - Ultimately this is a group of people within a shared interest and shared goal. For this freediving school, the goal is not actually depth. It’s depth plus presence. Sure, we will spend hours talking about the mechanics of equalization but the point of that is ultimately quite simple - it’s to enjoy the dive.

Maybe it’s all the salt water but I’m finding deeper lessons and leadership and culture on this journey than I expected, and I’m excited to share this with you more soon.

As for my journey to become a 40m diver…

Leadership lessons and beautiful sunsets aside, this trip has been intensely challenging mentally. It has been hard to constantly stay open to the good things around me. To strike up conversations with strangers, to do things I’ve never done before, to get on a scooter, to cultivate a belief that the outcomes could be positive, despite some recent evidence to the contrary. But belief is like a muscle, and I welcome more shower room conversations that challenge limitations that I don’t even realise I have set for myself.

And that 40m - one week in to the trip and I think it might be beyond my grasp. The more I learn about diving and myself, the more I understand that to reach 40m is not just a physical achievement, but a mental one.

But I’m having so much fun trying…

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