When I Breathed Underwater

I posted this on another forum mostly because it just had a category that it seemed to fit better. After some of the responses though, I thought I would bring it here to see if it has happened to anyone here as well. First the story:

"It is funny how kids have a natural instinct to not tell anyone of their unusual experience. Out of fear of being called a liar, or a weirdo of some sort.

Well, I'm that kid and since it has been so long, I cant see any harm in sharing this moment in my life here with you folks. Guess it is easier to do with people of like mind.

I was pretty young, 6 or 7 maybe, and already quite the tomboy. Growing up in South Florida made it easy to be quite the swimmer.

Another normal day at the pool with friends, playing a favorite kids game, "Tea party" underwater. The one you go underwater and sit on the bottom as long as you can pretending to have a tea party. Of course you play it a few times, cant just go down once, it wouldn't be any fun as far as a kid's concerned.

Anyhow, I guess around the fourth or fifth time going down is when it got a little weird for me. All the sudden I had this sensation that I could have stayed down there as long as I wanted because I knew how to breath the water. I wasn't panicked, I was more intrigued with it I suppose. Not to mention I was actually doing it.

You have to remember this all sort of happened like a domino effect.

One part of me was like a kid with a new discovery and wanting to test it out, the other part of me was common sense to that fact that I shouldn't be able to be doing this, yet I am. Quite the dilemma for a young mind.

How long I stayed under experimenting I really don't recall. The common sense side won and I guess it triggered the you need air thing. Ill venture a guess of a couple minutes probably. I know back then I could hold my breath quite awhile, so really hard to say, except this time I wasn't holding it, I was breathing the water.

Now I've been told later on in years that my family actually found me floating in the family pool when I was toddler age on Thanksgiving day. My grandmother said I was so calm and just as happy as I could be floating there.

Apparently I had wondered off as toddlers do when the grownups are engrossed in the holiday festivities. Sounded like I put a much larger scare into them finding me like that, than I was of being scared.

Whether these two incidents have anything to do with each other or not, I have no idea. I do know that every time I have been swimming since then I have tried to recapture that sensation too no avail. That damn common sense keeps getting in the way.

So there you go, I've shared my little moment in time with you."

~~~
Seems I wasn't the only one that has experienced this. Seems to have happened when we were all very young. The good news is knowing I'm not the only one. That leads me to wonder just what kind of scale this actually happens on or do we just not know about it because kids wont mention it.

Does anyone recall any of their friends ever mentioning it happened to them?
Has it happened to you?
Ever heard of any studies on it?

What do you think may have happened? A time slip? A moment of recall when man left the sea to walk on earth? I really don't know, just throwing thoughts out here. Very curious to your thoughts or experience.

I was in highschool at the time and floating peacefully on a water noodle with my head dunked under in the pool at my house. I was very relaxed and the water was warm. I had brought my head up a few times than back down. The last time seemed like an eternity and it wasn't the lack of breathe that brought my head up, it was freak feeling I had when I realized it was as if I didn't have to come up.

For context, I was on the swim team my entire life so I am/was very intimate with water. I knew how long I could hold my breath as I've done countless times before. This time I wasn't holding my breath.

a reply to: Rosinitiate

Yes that "freak feeling," I know exactly what you mean. Only happened the once? Remember how old you were?

a reply to: onehuman
That's very interesting. Was that the last time you experienced such a thing? Have you or did you considered trying it again at any point?

Well I somehow believe you

One there was an expensive experiment done on mice. They were injected with some drug and they were able to breath underwater (if they survived the initiatial shock)

Two

In utero, your baby's lungs are filled with amniotic fluid (which is essentially composed of shed skin cells, fetal urine, etc.) and are "inflated". The baby doesn't receive oxygen this way; your baby gets his/her oxygen through your umbilical cord.

Three I don't know how but ultimately I came to believe that people who had this particular experience (even in a dream state) I believe it means spiritual rebirth .. also given you were once capable of doing so - "breathing" in fluid (at that age I find it extremely impressive)

a reply to: donktheclown

Yes much to my dismay it was the only time. Trust me, I have tried and tried. I cant Not try when I swim.


Maybe "trying" is the problem. I wasn't " trying" when it happened. It was already happening.

Back when I was in shape, doing some dive training, we found that a few of us were so relaxed underwater, even with a wad of gear, we weren't breathing all that much.

The instructor had this irritating habit of turning off your primary so that you didn't know it was off until you tried to take a breath. Only Don and I would be on the bottom 90 feet down and swimming for three minutes before we found out there wasn't any air. I wasn't trying to hold my breath, just didn't have any need to breathe at all for that long. And when I found out the reg was off, I didn't have any panic getting it back on or doing an ascent.

Hell, I've gotten down to the bottom and started swimming and found out I still had the snorkel in my mouth, which used to tickle/piss off the instructor no end.

a reply to: onehuman

I've literally had this same exact feeling/sensation/occurrence happen once to me in my life. Around the same age too, as a child. ETA: I actually wanna say around 9-10ish years old.

Being from AZ I've always grown up with above ground pools (nothing smells better than a brand new pool liner *ahhh*). We were the first in our large rural neighborhood so my younger brothers and I always seemed to have a lot of friends growing up, for homeschoolers *eyeroll*

I clearly remember and think of the moment often; even to this day. I could just breathe the water, very briefly. And never again could I do it.

I use to be able to hold my breath longer than anyone else I knew, even adults. I would deep breath to stretch my lungs before hand. The more I'd hold my breath the longer I could go (If I continued to remain calm). My friends enjoyed timing me. It was kind of a game we played. I'd laugh in my head when I could hear them gasping for air at the surface and I'd still be under there twice as long as them.

Anyway, so on this particular occasion I was doing my thing alone in the pool, just floating on the surface. It happened. So bizarre and wonderful feeling that it freaked me out and I had to pop up.

Still the older I get, the more I start to think I just held my breath a little tooooooo long and was blacking out and imagining things. I get a dream feeling when I think about it. Logically I know there's no way it would have been possible so this is what I tell myself. But man, did it feel real

a reply to: onehuman

When I was around eight years old, just before I learned to swim, I was playing tag with some friends at the local swimming pool. In the excitement of the game I leapt into the deep end and had to be fished out. At some point, after going under a few times I couldn't hold my breath any longer and breathed in the water. It was a nice sensation, my chest seemed to fill up cold and there was no longer the desire to breathe. Then in my mind I was back at home with my parents and family. It was a dreamlike sensation.

I once had a dream I was 'breathing' water. So surreal, so beautiful and so perfect. I would love to breath underwater. In the mean time, I'm waiting for this:

originally posted by: onehuman
a reply to: Rosinitiate

Yes that "freak feeling," I know exactly what you mean. Only happened the once? Remember how old you were?

I was probably 14. There were other times but I was physically breathing under water. Strange as that may sound, what I mean is, if you are traveling forward and splashing your arms (swimming) you are forcing air into the water in front of you. I would suck in small amounts of air and water into my mouth for extra air, usually when I was showing off swimming from one end to the other, flip and back in one breath. when completely underwater I put my head down so the back of my head is a flat wall moving against the water, my chin to my chest. Suck in some water through a crack opening I make out the very corner of my mouth. kind of like using my teeth as a filter of sorts, I can't really explain it well it seems. Sorry.

a reply to: onehuman

I've always believed that if you TRULY, FULLY believed you could perform what are generally considered impossible physical feats (breathing under water, levitating, etc.), that you'd be able to do them (Matrixey, but I believed so long before the movie, or learning of any of the ancient beliefs behind 'The Matrix'.) The catch being, it's REALLY hard to do so - I haven't been able to levitate, no matter how much I've tried to convince myself - though I might have, just a bit, on one occasion:

With a lot of mental preparation, determination that I could make it work, visualization and meditation, I was able to perform a stunt on my inline skates which I had never previously come close to. My friends who were looking on couldn't believe what they saw and said it looked like I had anti-gravity skates on. I was never able to come anywhere close to completing the maneuver again. Perhaps children are more able to manipulate reality, because they haven't yet been trained that they can't.

Now having kids, I try my best to balance keeping their minds open, with also keeping them from, for example, attempting to fly off the top of a roof.

a reply to: onehuman

I was suicidal as a child and I can definitely tell you that I can't breath water. Drowning was at the top of my list of ways I would want to die. That initial panic followed by your lungs breathing the water in and out, relaxing until everything goes black. So peaceful.

Maybe you were drowning?

a reply to: onehuman

Thanks for sharing your experience. Whether your holding your breath or breathing water, its illegal now in certain areas of course!

New York City and Santa Barbara, California are among the first U.S. cities to outlaw long breath holding in public pools.

www.reuters.com...
www.huffingtonpost.com...

a reply to: Abysha

Id have to say far from drowning. I was already doing it before I even realized, or doing it was what made me realize, but far from any kind of panic. I think I found it more curious if anything.


Seems like the others that have had this experience would probably say about the same thing. It was really a incredible feeling.

I have to say I'm finding it amazing that this many people that have responded know what I'm talking about. I wonder why it isn't something you hear about more often. With this many responses in such a short time, I cant help but think that at least the navy has explored, tested this in some form. Doesn't appear to be that unknown of a phenomena. Maybe one of their many hush hush experiments.

I also want to say real quickly I loved that air pellets invention. That was cool

Never had this experience...but speaking from a medical(and slightly meme-ish) standpoint...one does not simply breathe water...

Number one...our lungs aren't designed to pull oxygen from water...
Number two...even if they were capable of pulling oxygen from water...they don't have enough surface area to pull enough oxygen from the less oxygen rich water to actually sustain our needs...

A2D