How to Breathe Out Fear with freediver Li Karlsen | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

She describes loving the ocean but being afraid of it, and choosing freediving to explore that fear directly. She says getting past the mind’s limitations can produce a feeling of “complete freedom” and solitude rather than loneliness.

She explains that at depth the lungs compress and the brain perceives more available oxygen, so the urge to breathe is reduced; the urge returns as the lungs expand near the surface. She calls the last 10 meters the most dangerous part of a dive.

She says she was blocked by a childhood fear of being trapped under ice, to the point that she would imagine ice even in warm water or a pool, which created stress and limited her performance. She went to Greenland to face it and describes completing the dive as bringing “complete peace.”

She frames freediving as “self-medication” that helped her work with anxiety and what her therapist identified as layers of PTSD. She says progress required stepping far back and doing internal emotional work, which improved both her diving and her life.

She describes “stressful breathing” as shallow mouth breathing into the chest, and “parasympathetic” breathing as nose breathing using the diaphragm with longer exhales than inhales. She emphasizes a passive exhale and says the longer exhale is the key shift toward relaxation.