Breathing Techniques For Scuba Divers

Believe it or not but better breathing techniques can improve your diving experience greatly.

The following piece stressed the need to breathe deeply and concentrate more on exhaling.  There is a tendency, for new divers especially, to take deep breaths. Taking deep breathes is really more of taking a big breath and not a deep breath.  A deep breath is more like inhaling into your stomach. Where as,  inhaling a big breath is more akin to breathing into your chest.

Big breathe breathing often affect your buoyancy because you are full of air and the less efficient use of air causes excessive exhalations. The article quoted below  suggests that deep breathing leads to a  more efficient breathing pattern with minimized pauses between inhalation and exhalations.

It further goes on to explain how this improves your underwater photography.

Read on for more details about this breathing technique.

An old trick to better breathing is to focus more on the exhalation than on the inhalation, even though we have a tendency to do the opposite. But the truth is that our bodies will handle the inhalation quite naturally — nature always seeks to fill a vacuum. And while getting fresh oxygen is important, what often makes us feel like we’re starving for air is a buildup of carbon dioxide, the gas that’s created when our cells consume oxygen, and which needs to be expelled from the body with the breath. By ensuring that you have a good, thorough exhalation, you’re ridding your body of carbon dioxide, and thus will often find that your “oxygen starvation” goes away, leaving you with an easier, more natural breath.

Breathing for better photography

Good underwater photography has as much to do with breathing as with photography skills. Underwater critters are easily scared away by our bubbles, and poor buoyancy means we can’t place ourselves in the right position in relation to our subject. The trick is to approach your subject slowly and take the picture, all the while (if possibly) slowly inhaling to both avoid breath holding or exhalation bubbles. Slow breaths, with minimal air exchange, can also help you hover in the precise spot to take a specific picture. And pressing the shutter release on an exhalation, if this doesn’t scare away the subject,…

Read the full story here

Your breathing techniques definitely impacts multiple aspects of your dive. Its not just about maximizing bottom tome alone.

Watch the following clip to get an idea of how to improve your breathing and the improvements in your diving experience to be had.

“How To Improve Your Breathing for Scuba Diving” – YouTube video by Safe Diving

 

Images Source:  YouTube Clips

[updated 10/28/2020]