Enhance Your Static Apnea Performance Using Mind Mapping: A Step By Step Guide

A mind map is simply a series of memories or visual data points that link together and guide you on a journey through thoughts or ideas. It has been proven that adding structure and creating associations for our thoughts makes it easier for us to integrate information.

Tony Buzan got everyone 'buzzing' about the mind mapping technique back in the 1980s. Through his book Mind Map Mastery, Buzan has helped hundreds of thousands of people to improve their memory, organise and process ideas, and activate greater cognitive thinking.

Way before Buzan, the ancient Greeks were one of the first civilisations to tap into the technique of mind mapping. Developing the concept of a Memory Journey or Memory Palace, which consists of associating certain pieces of information with a very familiar location, like a building or a street you’ve known since childhood.

The idea behind this mental strategy is that it’ll be easier for you to retrieve the information you need if linked with another powerful memory.

Mind mapping is very versatile and can be used for many other purposes, including helping us to enhance our static apnea training and performance.

Picturing our static as a journey, we can 'map' various phases and employ mental strategies to stay focused and present in the experience, especially when discomfort arises.

STEP ONE

Before creating your mind map, try different mindfulness techniques without breath-holding to find out what works for you. You could try...

- Visualisation

- Reciting a song or mantra

- Counting your heartbeats

- Yoga Nidra

- Body scan

- Counting contractions (in sets of 3-5)

- Being motivated by your buddy, with countdowns, or some encouraging words…

- Changing position (I sit up or sometimes even stand up the last 30sec of my dry static, which is super weird, but it works for me)

Our brain is like a muscle. You can get better at visualising, so don’t worry if everything’s a bit blurry in the beginning, or if you keep getting distracted… just keep practising, and it will get better.

Once you’ve done your fair share of experimenting, make a plan (your mind map) for your next static training session.

STEP TWO

Pick the mindful tools you would like to adopt during the different phases of your static training and performance. For example, it might be visualisation (phase 1), body scanning (phase 2), and counting contractions (phase 3).

Each phase corresponds to a different part of your static journey when you will likely be experiencing different sensations. You can have as many phases as you like, but typically it'll be between 3-5.

STEP THREE

Now that you have your plan and know what you’re going to do for each phase, you can start mapping the phases to a very familiar place/street/building. Anything that you can picture very easily and feel like using as your map.

For me, it’s an Asian beach that I love and know like the palm of my hand.

Before I start my breathe-up, I take a couple of minutes to picture my static as the beach in its whole (my static, and all its phases, IS the beach).

As I enter my static (phase 1), I’m next to the coconut trees, where my beach starts. Here I associate the first part of my breath-hold where I'm most relaxed. Although I love this first part of my static, I know it will end… so…

Then I see myself in third-person, walking along the beach towards a row of wooden bungalows (phase 2). Here is where I “store” my creative visualisation of the day. I press play, and the familiar images of my favourite / comforting story start appearing.

When static becomes more of a challenge (phase 3), I leave the bungalows and keep walking along the beach. I end up at the beginning of a reef, and that’s where I begin counting contractions.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a beach. Yours could be a building, with a different phase of your breath-hold on every storey. Whatever works best for you!