Have you ever thought about how long you can hold your breath or how important one single breath of air is? For free drivers, it is everything.
Diving down to the darkest part of the sea with nothing only a guided rope and one breath changed everything for freediver and author, Claire Walsh.
The early years
Growing up in Co Kildare, swimming played a key role in Claire’s life from an early age.“Namely our Saturday evening swim lesson. It’s funny because I can remember my very first lesson like it’s a photograph in front of my eyes,” says Claire.
She did these lessons in a pool until she was 18, but dipped in and out in her teens. Progressing from widths to lengths, Claire then went on to swim in competitions, and always felt very competent in the water.
“I think it’s something that maybe I have a natural inclination to and it’s funny because my mom’s side, they’re all runners and athletics was their thing,” she says. “Swimming just seems to suit my body.”
After school, Claire went to the Dublin Institute of Technology and studied drama. “I think drama was probably my first love,” she reflects.
She made the move to London and completed a master’s in movement for theatre after college and that’s where her career path went.
Swimming, however, was still a part of her life, and with her grandmother living in Dun Laoghaire, she regularly went for a dip in the sea at Sandycove or the Forty Foot on visits home.
“It was something that people thought I was bonkers doing, heading off in February for a little dip and then going home and having a bowl of soup and a cup of tea. It was always kind of pretty much part of my life,” Claire explains. “I just needed the coast.”
Freediver Claire Walsh photographed in Bray. \ Claire Nash
Soaking up the adventure
At the end of 2014, Claire went travelling and tried lots of new things.
“First on my list was scuba diving, then I did paragliding [which I will never do again] and mountain biking. I was doing all these new activities, I was on an adventure and wanted to soak up every bit of experience that I could,” she explains.
A couple of months into doing scuba diving in Central America, Claire had completed several different courses but remembers thinking it involved a lot of equipment. Someone suggested she should try freediving, but she didn’t know what it was at the time and forgot about it.
Later on in that trip, Claire was snorkelling with a group of Australian lads. They kicked down, went through a cave and came up on the other side. Claire tried to keep up with them, but she couldn’t.
“Afterwards I was trying to suss out how can they do this and I can’t, because I really wanted to and they told me this was freediving,” she explains.
After learning the group had done a course in freediving, Claire immediately booked a plane and a boat and went to the island of Utila (one of the Bay Islands of Honduras, in the Caribbean) to do her first freediving course.
Claire says, “When you freedive, you go deep underwater without breathing apparatus. You’re attached to a rope that guides you to stay on course.
“I have one quite vivid memory of my first dive, and that’s the line descending down. It seems to go on into infinity,” she recalls; though in retrospective, she thinks that it was possibly 20 metres.
“I just felt like, ‘I am going down so deep,’” she continues. “It looked like I was continuing on into the abyss.”
A big element of freediving is equalising your ears. There are many different techniques like starting off by pinching your nose, but Claire had an advantage.
“I can do it without touching my face. I can open my eustachian tubes inside my ear and close them. It’s called a hands-free equaliser,” she explains.
Like most holiday romances, Claire thought she would leave freediving behind on returning to Ireland, but there was something that kept drawing her back to it.
“It really is that thing of, it’s a way to get to know yourself, all of yourself,” she explains.
Unknowingly at the time, it was exactly what Claire needed.
Finding the mental balance
Struggling with depression, freediving played an essential role in Claire’s life. As well as the power of breathwork, it also taught her to find freedom in the present moment.
“I think freediving was really important, not so much in the conversation, on a broader sense, but really pivotal in repairing my relationship with myself,” she says. “It also held up a mirror to what I needed to work on in a really astute way.
“When it came to freediving, it was a bit of a dangling carrot because to freedive you have to be very honest with yourself about where you are mentally, you have to practice mindfulness because that is freediving. The dangling carrot or the goal was to dive deeper, but to do that, I had to do all this work.”
An example of this was in 2016 when Claire went back out to Utila. In the lead-up to the trip she was in the gym and in the pool, practising holding her breath, but at the same time, she was very stressed.
“I had done all the physical work but really abandoned the mental side and that stopped me dead in my tracks. So that was a bit of a humbler and I think my first experience of the sport being far more a mental feat than a physical one,” says Claire.
Freedriver Claire Walsh.
Underwater
At the Freediving World Championship in 2019, Claire was the first woman to represent Ireland.
“That experience was so special for so many reasons and it’s not because of my diving abilities or what I did or didn’t achieve in the competition. I think it was a real wave and adventure,” Claire explains.
A moment of pride for Claire happened before the competition even began.
“I have a photograph of me in the opening parade of the competition. I have the tricolour on my neck, I am holding the placard saying ‘Claire Walsh Ireland’ and I have my nephew in my arms. He came with my sister and brother-in-law to support me. It is probably one of my all-time favourite photos,” she explains.
Freediver Claire Walsh.
Writing inspiration
The Blue Hole in Dahab, Eygpt holds a special bookmark in her journey. Not only is it the place she met her husband, Boudy Saleh, it also gave her so much inspiration for her book. “I had spent a lot of time there so when it came to writing my book, it felt like the natural place to go but it didn’t really go to plan.
Laughing she says,“I didn’t write my own name. I swam, I dived, I caught up with my friends, I cycled in the desert and walked. I did all that and didn’t write one word. but it gave me time to think and reflect, sort my thoughts for the content of the book.”
When it comes to reading, ‘Under Water’, Claire hopes people take whatever they need to out of her book.
“If there’s a resounding message, it would be that on paper, I could curate a biography or a picture of myself that appears really cool and brave, and does all these impressive things. But my reality is, I’m a pretty normal person. I have struggles or self-doubt, like most people, I am human,” she explains.
According to Claire, the word extreme gets tacked onto freediving, but she would challenge that. She says that the recent Netflix documentary, The Deepest Breath, shows the extremist level of freediving.
“It sounds impressive and piques curiosity, but the reality is for those of us that do it, and even those who are learning, it is the opposite,” she explains.
Claire compares it to running. There’s couch to 5k, a 10k, a half marathon or you can do a full marathon or extreme running.
“Technically they’re all still running, it’s under that umbrella. Freediving isn’t different: you have a gentle couch- to -5k freediving and then you have that extreme ultra running barefoot side of cliff freediving as well,” explains Claire.
There is a spectrum of difficulty levels. One of the things taught by any good instructor is the importance of safety not only having respect for your own safety, but more importantly the safety of those you are diving with.
Women and Agriculture
The thing Claire is most looking forward to about speaking at this year’s Women and Agriculture Conference is meeting the attendees.
“I think there’s always something really special about standing up in front of people because it’s an energy conversation. You might have prepared words beforehand, obviously, you have done the prep, but when you stand in front of those people, there is something that you get back from it,” says Claire.
Freediving is a form of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
Freedivers often train to increase their breath- holding capabilities and can reach impressive water depth with a single breath.
Read more
Women & Agriculture: ‘farmers might have some of the solutions'
Celebrating a strong community of women
Have you ever thought about how long you can hold your breath or how important one single breath of air is? For free drivers, it is everything.
Diving down to the darkest part of the sea with nothing only a guided rope and one breath changed everything for freediver and author, Claire Walsh.
The early years
Growing up in Co Kildare, swimming played a key role in Claire’s life from an early age.“Namely our Saturday evening swim lesson. It’s funny because I can remember my very first lesson like it’s a photograph in front of my eyes,” says Claire.
She did these lessons in a pool until she was 18, but dipped in and out in her teens. Progressing from widths to lengths, Claire then went on to swim in competitions, and always felt very competent in the water.
“I think it’s something that maybe I have a natural inclination to and it’s funny because my mom’s side, they’re all runners and athletics was their thing,” she says. “Swimming just seems to suit my body.”
After school, Claire went to the Dublin Institute of Technology and studied drama. “I think drama was probably my first love,” she reflects.
She made the move to London and completed a master’s in movement for theatre after college and that’s where her career path went.
Swimming, however, was still a part of her life, and with her grandmother living in Dun Laoghaire, she regularly went for a dip in the sea at Sandycove or the Forty Foot on visits home.
“It was something that people thought I was bonkers doing, heading off in February for a little dip and then going home and having a bowl of soup and a cup of tea. It was always kind of pretty much part of my life,” Claire explains. “I just needed the coast.”
Freediver Claire Walsh photographed in Bray. \ Claire Nash
Soaking up the adventure
At the end of 2014, Claire went travelling and tried lots of new things.
“First on my list was scuba diving, then I did paragliding [which I will never do again] and mountain biking. I was doing all these new activities, I was on an adventure and wanted to soak up every bit of experience that I could,” she explains.
A couple of months into doing scuba diving in Central America, Claire had completed several different courses but remembers thinking it involved a lot of equipment. Someone suggested she should try freediving, but she didn’t know what it was at the time and forgot about it.
Later on in that trip, Claire was snorkelling with a group of Australian lads. They kicked down, went through a cave and came up on the other side. Claire tried to keep up with them, but she couldn’t.
“Afterwards I was trying to suss out how can they do this and I can’t, because I really wanted to and they told me this was freediving,” she explains.
After learning the group had done a course in freediving, Claire immediately booked a plane and a boat and went to the island of Utila (one of the Bay Islands of Honduras, in the Caribbean) to do her first freediving course.
Claire says, “When you freedive, you go deep underwater without breathing apparatus. You’re attached to a rope that guides you to stay on course.
“I have one quite vivid memory of my first dive, and that’s the line descending down. It seems to go on into infinity,” she recalls; though in retrospective, she thinks that it was possibly 20 metres.
“I just felt like, ‘I am going down so deep,’” she continues. “It looked like I was continuing on into the abyss.”
A big element of freediving is equalising your ears. There are many different techniques like starting off by pinching your nose, but Claire had an advantage.
“I can do it without touching my face. I can open my eustachian tubes inside my ear and close them. It’s called a hands-free equaliser,” she explains.
Like most holiday romances, Claire thought she would leave freediving behind on returning to Ireland, but there was something that kept drawing her back to it.
“It really is that thing of, it’s a way to get to know yourself, all of yourself,” she explains.
Unknowingly at the time, it was exactly what Claire needed.
Finding the mental balance
Struggling with depression, freediving played an essential role in Claire’s life. As well as the power of breathwork, it also taught her to find freedom in the present moment.
“I think freediving was really important, not so much in the conversation, on a broader sense, but really pivotal in repairing my relationship with myself,” she says. “It also held up a mirror to what I needed to work on in a really astute way.
“When it came to freediving, it was a bit of a dangling carrot because to freedive you have to be very honest with yourself about where you are mentally, you have to practice mindfulness because that is freediving. The dangling carrot or the goal was to dive deeper, but to do that, I had to do all this work.”
An example of this was in 2016 when Claire went back out to Utila. In the lead-up to the trip she was in the gym and in the pool, practising holding her breath, but at the same time, she was very stressed.
“I had done all the physical work but really abandoned the mental side and that stopped me dead in my tracks. So that was a bit of a humbler and I think my first experience of the sport being far more a mental feat than a physical one,” says Claire.
Freedriver Claire Walsh.
Underwater
At the Freediving World Championship in 2019, Claire was the first woman to represent Ireland.
“That experience was so special for so many reasons and it’s not because of my diving abilities or what I did or didn’t achieve in the competition. I think it was a real wave and adventure,” Claire explains.
A moment of pride for Claire happened before the competition even began.
“I have a photograph of me in the opening parade of the competition. I have the tricolour on my neck, I am holding the placard saying ‘Claire Walsh Ireland’ and I have my nephew in my arms. He came with my sister and brother-in-law to support me. It is probably one of my all-time favourite photos,” she explains.
Freediver Claire Walsh.
Writing inspiration
The Blue Hole in Dahab, Eygpt holds a special bookmark in her journey. Not only is it the place she met her husband, Boudy Saleh, it also gave her so much inspiration for her book. “I had spent a lot of time there so when it came to writing my book, it felt like the natural place to go but it didn’t really go to plan.
Laughing she says,“I didn’t write my own name. I swam, I dived, I caught up with my friends, I cycled in the desert and walked. I did all that and didn’t write one word. but it gave me time to think and reflect, sort my thoughts for the content of the book.”
When it comes to reading, ‘Under Water’, Claire hopes people take whatever they need to out of her book.
“If there’s a resounding message, it would be that on paper, I could curate a biography or a picture of myself that appears really cool and brave, and does all these impressive things. But my reality is, I’m a pretty normal person. I have struggles or self-doubt, like most people, I am human,” she explains.
According to Claire, the word extreme gets tacked onto freediving, but she would challenge that. She says that the recent Netflix documentary, The Deepest Breath, shows the extremist level of freediving.
“It sounds impressive and piques curiosity, but the reality is for those of us that do it, and even those who are learning, it is the opposite,” she explains.
Claire compares it to running. There’s couch to 5k, a 10k, a half marathon or you can do a full marathon or extreme running.
“Technically they’re all still running, it’s under that umbrella. Freediving isn’t different: you have a gentle couch- to -5k freediving and then you have that extreme ultra running barefoot side of cliff freediving as well,” explains Claire.
There is a spectrum of difficulty levels. One of the things taught by any good instructor is the importance of safety not only having respect for your own safety, but more importantly the safety of those you are diving with.
Women and Agriculture
The thing Claire is most looking forward to about speaking at this year’s Women and Agriculture Conference is meeting the attendees.
“I think there’s always something really special about standing up in front of people because it’s an energy conversation. You might have prepared words beforehand, obviously, you have done the prep, but when you stand in front of those people, there is something that you get back from it,” says Claire.
Freediving is a form of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
Freedivers often train to increase their breath- holding capabilities and can reach impressive water depth with a single breath.
Read more
Women & Agriculture: ‘farmers might have some of the solutions'
Celebrating a strong community of women
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: