Ok, i cant believe that i cant go underwater without plugging my nose. I dont understand it… basically everyone i know except my brother can do it. I guess we never learned since we didnt spend a huge amount of time around pools/beach even though we live in california. I can swim perfectly fine, but i couldnt hold my breath underwater without plugging my nose if my life depended on it. Well im going on vacation in 2 weeks and i NEED to learn. Now to the obvious questions:
How can I learn to go underwater without plugging my nose (sites… tutorials, appreciated)?
Am i correct in assuming that the reason i cant do it is because i havent been in water enough (its not that i dont ever go swimming or anything… during the summer im at a pool/beach at least once a week)?
If I do try, i just swallow a lot of water and it really bother me in the ocean because the salt sort of makes my throat “sting.”
It’s all in your head. There is no physical training you could undergo in order to make your phobia relent. I used to live in Cali (the first 14 years of my life), and I understand the dislike of salt water in your mouth. Start out in pools.
Try jumping into a pool without plugging your nose, just let things equalize, you won’t die unless you inhale. You can safely exhale through you nose, and water will not displace the gasses contained within, unless you start doing flips or inverting yourself.
It’s really a matter of conditioning, mind over matter. This is why you see small children doing easily what you feel is impossible, they were conditioned at an early age that this sort of behaviour is normal and are not afraid of it.
Try holding your breath (mouth closed) for a few seconds at a time, and working your way up untill you’re comfortable. It’s just a matter of getting used to it. You’ll thank yourself if you do.
I need more info. on this. It doesn’t seem to me like this guy is afraid of water. One question culov; Can you hold your breath above water and then dunk your head, and come back up w/o swallowing water? Not diving, not swimming around, mean just GASP– ((DUNK))–((UN-DUNK))–Ex-GASP. If not, if you can’t even sink under the water w/o your throat being filled it may be some weirdness going on w/ your epliglottis. Get back to us, k?
I taught myself to do this by breathing out forcefully just as I went underwater. This kept any water from entering my nose.
I wasn’t able to stay underwater for very long, because I would run out of air quickly. But with time, I was able to exhale more gently as I went underwater, and get the same result.
Eventually I learned to exhale slightly just as I hit the water, then stop exhaling. This is the technique that works best for me.
The trick is to exhale out the nose as you go under. At a certain point, the air pressure in your nose is enough to keep the water out.
You can practice by putting just the lower half of your face in the water. Begin to exhale first and blow bubbles. Then experiment to see how and when you can stop and still keep the water out.
Fill up your sink. Put your face in and blow out. Pull your head back out and breathe in. Put your face back under and breathe out. You can work up to taking larger breaths and exhaling harder/longer.
If you have long hair be sure to put it back. When I swim my bangs get in my way and I have to go under, exhale, come up and “poof” my hair out of the way before i breathe in lest I get a mouthful of wet hair instead of ait (I’ve now started wearing a bandana when I swim to keep me from choking)
The way I learned was to just hum as you go under the water. Keep your mouth shut, pick a note, and go under. Practice in shallow water if you need to. If you practice a lot, you should be able to do just about anything underwater without getting stuff up your nose or down your throat.
I’ve played waterpolo for many years, and you can imagine how often one has to come up for air with a gasp, only to be splashed in the face or have a ball thrown at you. I think I’m more comfortable in the water than I am on land now though
Since you’re going on vacation to somewhere with an ocean worth swimming in, I’m assuming (we all know what happens then, but bear with me) that there may be stuff under water to look at. In this case (or even if there’s nothing to look at, it’s still a possibility) get a scuba mask. They have a nose piece which will prevent water from coming in, and will let you see underwater.
Personally, I had a similar problem in my youth, so I often wore a mask when swimming. I no longer have the problem, but I don’t know what happened or I did to overcome it. Now, I’ll just flip over, dive under and swim about. If I am jumping off of something (feet first) I’ll exhale as I hit the water, and If I’m holding on to a rock to drop down fast I’ll exhale very slowly to counter the ramjet effect of my plummet. Other than those two situations, water up the nose is no longer a problem for me.
(I’ve now started wearing a bandana when I swim to keep me from choking)