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This article originally appeared on The Freedive Café, a podcast dedicated purely to freediving where top freedivers discuss techniques, experiences, notes on conservation, and their love of freediving. Support and subscribe to the podcast to hear each new episode first.
Sara Campbell is a bit of a legend in the freediving community.
She is a Kundalini Yoga teacher, and four times World Record-holding freediver. She is the founder of Discover Your Depths, a unique teaching and personal growth philosophy based on yoga, meditation, freediving and mind-body awareness.
Sara has been practicing Kundalini Yoga since 2003, and attributes her phenomenal success in breathhold diving – from beginner to three-times World Record holder in just nine months (diving to 90m below the surface of the ocean on just one breath!) – to her practice. She is one of only a handful of women to have dived below 100 meters.
She lives in her chosen hometown of Dahab on the Red Sea in Egypt, where she teaches classes, workshops and retreats. She also teaches, retreats and presents internationally.
In this episode on The Freedive Café
- From chronically ill London PR girl to healing and transformation through Kundalini Yoga.
- Discovering Dahab on a holiday and realizing it was home.
- A reluctant start in the freediving world, then falling in love with the sport.
- What it’s like to live in Dahab, Egypt and Sara’s deep love for the place.
- The Dahab bombings of 2006.
- The therapeutic effects of freediving on the mind and body.
- Sara’s philosophy of training for deep diving (just dive deep!).
- The power of the mind to block or release us.
- William Winram named Sara ‘Mighty Mouse’.
- Why freediving teaches the same lessons as yoga.
- Dave King’s accident in Kalamata 2011.
- Breaking 3 world records in 2007.
- Hitting 104m and feeling complete.
- Sara’s decision to quit competition freediving.
- Rosita Dangeman’s (?) freediving research. (Haven’t found anything about this yet!).
- Exchanging records with Natalia Molchanova.
- Accidents and having the courage to stop students making bad decisions in training.
- The death of Stephen Keenan and remembering our limits.
- Safety in freediving and the importance of transparency across the community.
- Discover Your Depths and what it’s all about.
- The Legends of Freediving video series.
- Oceans in trouble and the re-balancing of the environmental system by mother nature.
- Sara’s morning ritual…tongue brushing and kombucha etc and the benefits of morning rituals.
- Sara’s recommended book is Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert