Spending a week on a health quest can be jarring, revealing and most of all thought provoking. Try it someday. Rather than spending valuable vacation time getting exhausted having what society calls fun, spend it doing nothing that you usually do and just really looking at yourself in the mirror deep inside your soul to find out who you are and what you have become. It is revealing and shocking.

Lock up your computers, your cell phones anything electronic you use daily and even enjoy. Check your vital numbers with your doctor. Know your blood sugar, your blood pressure, your cholesterol levels. Do something to make them better. We all have just one life, the life we are living now. What can you do to be healthier, feel better in the morning feel better even at night after a long day.

It all brings me back to even how human life evolves. I spent my time running, walking, swimming getting my lungs full of air , my heart pumping. Breathing, constantly getting a full breath of air. How different that is for fetuses in the womb of a mother. The ammonic fluid in the womb where fetuses live for nine months is very similar to sea water. Also, that if a newborn is immediately submerged into a pool, it will swim the breast stroke and be able to hold it’s breath for 40 seconds. The baby will retain this ability until it learns to walk, then it is all over.

There is a new sport called Free Diving that believes that we as humans are physic logically designed to hold our breath underwater; not designed to breath under water. Because of this extreme sport, scientists now know that humans are closer to dolphins than they have ever thought in the past. Just like dolphins, when we go into cold water a reflex kicks in which slows down our pulse, shifts blood from our extremities to our heart and to our brain. Our spleen contracts releasing oxygen rich blood into our arteries.

Do humans belong in the water? The dolphins breath air and can swim to great depths effortlessly. Why can’t we? The people who are Free Divers practice holding their breath for long periods of time and diving as deep as they can possibly can go into the dark depths of the ocean. The sport involves going down hundreds of feet into the water on one single breath. It is considered an extreme sport because it is very dangerous.

A favorite place for Free Divers to go to too practice the sport is in a remote part of the world. It is in the Bahamas called Long Island. Christopher Columbus put Long Island on the map in 1492. You will have trouble finding it on any tourist map today. The rich jet flying people don’t go there because there isn’t a good runway to land the plane on, there are no fancy hotels, no golf courses and no margaritas or bars.

Right off the beach there is a large limestone cavern called Dean’s Blue Hole. It is 663 feet deep and it is dangerous. People tend to not be able to come back up after swimming down that deep hole in the ocean. It is the deepest blue hole in the ocean. Free Divers love it and have competitions there trying to achieve the longest time record of holding one’s breath diving the deepest into the darkest depths of the ocean. The world record is going down 410 feet on one breath held by William Trubridge.

Connect with your inner self. Swim like a dolphin. Go back to doing the things you were born to do as soon after grasping your first breath of air. Life is good and should be simpler devoid of spite malice and revenge. Take a deep breath and move on with your life in a healthier simpler way. It is my new goal.