The Times Magazine 23says. It helps, of course, that something about
Artnik and the life she has led means she is
primed to seek this out: the need to surrender
and the “beautiful” sensation of sinking down,
down, down. It is only later that it occurs to
me that perhaps Artnik’s brother had, with
heroin, been trying to achieve something not
so different.
She also works incredibly hard strengthening
her lungs with a variety of breath-holding
exercises. But with the right kind of training,
she insists, most people are capable of holding
their breath for far longer than they realise.
“Most people don’t even know how to breathe.
And just by doing a few minutes of correct
breathing, it doesn’t just calm your mind,
but you can start to take advantage of your
lung capacity.”
In fact, much of Artnik’s waking life seems
to involve strengthening her lungs. She will
pound lengths while holding her breath.
She will do squats while holding her breath.
Yesterday, she hiked up a Swiss mountainside
breathing only through her nostrils. She is, she
insists, a great person to have around before
kids’ birthday parties, such is her balloon-
blowing prowess. “Which is very good training
for the respiratory muscles,” she says, holding
up a finger. “Blow, blow, blow.”
She jokes that perhaps she has inherited
the same constitution that allowed her father
and brother to survive their addictions as long
as they did. But, ultimately, what really allows
Artnik to swim to the depths she does is her
outlook. “You cannot really go deep until the
mind is ready. It’s not just the physical aspect.
The mind has to be ready to go deep.”
But how much deeper can she go? The
men’s CWT freedive record stands at 130m.
Physiologically, men possess the advantage of
having relatively larger lungs and spleens. But
psychologically? Artnik is Artnik. If she can
do nine more metres, then nobody will have
ever dived further on one breath. She thinks
she can still go deeper, but then she also
thinks that humans, as a species, can still
go deeper. Just how far? She doesn’t know.
“I don’t want to put limits on it,” she says. But
even if she doesn’t go deeper, that’s not a big
deal. “I’ve always said that one day I might
wake up and feel that I’ve done everything
I was meant to do in freediving. And I’m totally
OK with that. It will be a new page in life.”
For the time being, though, she is still drawn
to the depths. She says that often she will have
these incredibly intense dreams in which she
is descending and then dolphins approach
her and they are able to communicate.
I ask, only half-joking, if she ever feels
an urge to simply let herself keep sinking
for ever? To surrender completely to the
sea? She smiles. As much as she loves it, she
says, she knows that she must always return.
“I know that I belong here,” she says. “On
the surface.” nArtnik sets another
record, reaching a depth
of 122m in the Bahamas
on July 21, 2021