My story about my friend Kiera who teaches both scuba diving and yoga on the island of Koh Phi Phi in Thailand – and the connection between the two – has been published by Fah Thai magazine.

Last December I went to visit my friend Kiera on Koh Phi Phi to find out more about the connection between yoga and scuba diving. I’d never tried yoga before but I was curious to give it a go – and, much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. I think the spectacular outdoor setting beneath Phi Phi’s limestone karsts at sunset helped, and Keira was a great teacher too for a complete novice like me. Below is the complete article that was recently published in Fah Thai magazine. You can find out more about learning yoga or diving (or both!) with Kiera at Keiritasyoga.com.

Scuba diving and yoga don’t normally get mentioned in the same breath, but Chris Mitchell discovers on Koh Phi Phi that together they provide a new form of enlightenment

“Scuba diving is the new yoga.” It sounds like a complete contradiction in terms: scuba is usually seen as a high risk adrenaline sport that involves close encounters with sharks, while yoga is considered a serene, mystical experience practiced by impossibly flexible devotees. Yet there is a growing recognition that scuba and yoga actually complement and reflect one another, and that practicing both together can be extremely beneficial for your physical and mental health.

Thailand’s world famous island of Koh Phi Phi is home to one such progressive practitioner of scuba diving and yoga, Keira White. Originally from Ireland, Keira abandoned a burgeoning career in New York in 2001 after discovering scuba diving on Koh Phi Phi, and has returned to the island continually ever since. Already a yoga convert before being certified a scuba diving instructor, Keira traveled to India in 2006 to study at The Yoga Institute in Mumbai and became a yoga teacher. Wanting to teach both yoga and scuba diving, Koh Phi Phi was an obvious choice for Keira to make her home.

Despite its breathtaking natural beauty, arriving on Phi Phi can be quite a shock for those expecting a quiet place to find themselves. The island’s inhabited area is a maze of tiny streets which are thronging with Thais and tourists alike day and night. “It’s like a tropical Manhattan.” Keira laughs. “The lack of space available for development and the high cost of living seem to contribute to the high intensity atmosphere of the island. That actually makes going diving and practicing yoga all the more important.”

Keira regularly conducts yoga classes at sunset in the open air on the roof of one of Phi Phi’s beachside bars, with a spectacular view out over Ton Sai bay and the towering limestone karsts that surround it. The bustle of the street below is forgotten as she takes beginners alike through a class that is at once calming and invigorating, outlining the basics of yoga positions and the concepts of meditation and breathing that help bring peace to the mind. Keira is keen to demythologize yoga to make it more accessible, but also stresses that “it’s a philosophy or a way of life, not just a means to physical training and fitness.” Keira teaches the Ashtanga Yoga system, which emphasizes moral principles and personal discipline as the foundation on which the postures and meditational practices of yoga must be built.

So how can scuba diving, with all its heavy tanks and bulky gear, have any similarity to yoga? “The link between yoga and diving is quite significant on a meditative level more than a physical level,” Keira points out. “Meditation has many different levels and most people have a form of personal meditation be it walking, running, reading, singing, playing a musical instrument or, as is the case here on Phi Phi, diving.

Meditation, in simple terms, is being so immersed in an action or contemplative state that all else is blocked out and one has an overwhelming sense of peace and connectedness to the life energy of the earth and universe.

Personally I feel closest to this inter-connected energy when I am diving. One hour underwater can feel like five minutes because I am totally absorbed by what I am seeing – the amazing movement of the hundreds of different fish and the sheer beauty of living corals never gets old.

Like yoga, scuba is all about breathing. The focus on long slow deep breaths, the weightlessness of the body and the silence that’s imposed by being submerged underwater all provide an ideal environment for being at peace with yourself.”

In this way, a regime of scuba and yoga while on holiday can work wonders for quietening the mind and allowing people to focus on both themselves and what is really important within their lives, away from the endless distractions of work.

Despite the benefits of practicing scuba and yoga together, for some the thought of submerging underwater is enough to induce a panic attack – especially if they’ve watched Jaws one too many times. But diving is actually misnamed as an adrenaline sport – most dives are usually peaceful affairs and with little physical effort besides the odd kick of your fins. The sensation of hovering in midwater is immensely liberating, the nearest most people will get to experiencing near-zero gravity like an astronaut.

Thailand’s warm waters provide the perfect place to beat the fear and try scuba diving – the sensation of breathing underwater feels very strange at first but soon dissipates. As Keira points out, “Diving can be relatively stressful when you’re learning the basics, but once you’re through the learning curve there’s not only a great sense of achievement but a whole new underwater world to explore”. The payoff for making the effort to learn scuba diving is huge, both in terms of enjoyment and the escape from the everyday world

As such, what seem at first like complete opposites turn out to be the perfect complement to each other – and Thailand is the ideal place to practice both scuba and yoga, combining as it does spectacular scenery above and below water that allows people to explore the inner space of the oceans and their own minds.

Thailand is one of the few places in the world where scuba divers might come face to face with the world’s biggest fish – the whale shark. My article for Fah Thai magazine describes this enigimatic but harmless aquatic giant

You can see a bigger version of this story, complete with Jez Tryner’s amazing whale shark photos, on p94 of the March issue of Fah Thai which you can browse online. If you’re interested in practical info on where to scuba dive with whale sharks in Thailand, see my previous post on Divehappy. Here’s the full text of the whale shark story:

A Whale Of A Time

Top of every scuba diver’s list when they visit Thailand is an encounter with the elusive whale shark, the world’s biggest fish. Chris Mitchell goes in search of the ultimate underwater encounter.

Imagine being in the water with a shark six times your size and weighing nearly 15 tons, with a mouth that at full gape can open to over a metre in width. It’s not the stuff of nightmares but an experience many scuba divers who come to Thailand have at the top of their Must See lists – an encounter with the enormous, enigmatic and perfectly harmless whale shark, which can grow up to a staggering 12 metres in length and is officially classified as the world’s biggest fish. In keeping with their huge bulk, whale sharks cruise serenely through the water, moving their entire massive bodies rather than just their tails to power themselves – and while they look as if they move slowly, it takes a champion swimmer to keep up with a whale shark’s implacable progress for more than a few minutes.

To be in the water with one of these behemoths is a truly humbling and exhilarating experience, especially as, despite their size, whale sharks remain one of the ocean’s most rarely encountered creatures. Little is known about their migratory patterns, their mating habits, or even about their numbers – while the whale shark is a protected species in Thailand, they are considered endangered by both CITES and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and they are hunted across Asia for their fins along with other shark species. Therefore everytime a whale shark is spotted it’s a cause for celebration.

Thailand is fortunate to be one of the few countries in the world to have whale shark hotspots – areas where these elusive creatures have been known to continually return on an annual basis, usually around March and April. The ocean pinnacles of Richelieu Rock and Hin Muang in the Andaman Sea and Chumphon Pinnacle in the Gulf Of Thailand are magnets for whale sharks, but it’s still not quite clear why they reappear here each year.

The whale shark has remained an enigma ever since its first sighting in 1828 off the coast of South Africa. It wasn’t until the 1990s that scientists realized whale sharks were congregating at Ningaloo, a huge yet remote reef in Western Australia, to feed on the annual coral spawning for a few months each year. Whale sharks only feed on plankton, filtering the ocean water for nutrients through their huge mouths. Similar mass whale shark sightings occur at Donsol in the Philippines too and in both locations whale shark spotting has become big business with strict rules enforced about interaction with the gentle giants. Donsol in particular has become a conservation success story with local fisherman now guiding tourists to go snorkeling with whale sharks rather than hunting them for their meat.

While snorkeling with whale sharks is an undoubted thrill, there is nothing to rival the sheer luck of scuba diving at one of Thailand’s hot spots when a whale shark makes a serendipitous arrival. To be beside a whale shark as it comes to the surface to bask in the sunlight and investigate the curious bubblemaking creatures around it is an unforgettable experience. It’s also the sort of encounter that makes tourists become ardent amateur conservationists, and the EcoOcean Whale Shark Identification program has become one of the most popular initiatives to channel that interest.

By “crowd sourcing” underwater snaps of whale sharks taken by divers and snorkelers (whatever their level of ability with a camera), EcoOcean has cross referenced thousands of photos using technology originally developed by NASA to identify and track specific whale sharks thanks to their unique white dot markings. So far over 1300 whale sharks have been identified from all over the world by EcoOcean from over 14000 photos. The Phuket Marine Biological Centre and local dive operators have co-ordinated with EcoOcean to continue to send information to the central whale shark database. Every time a whale shark is positively identified, the original photographers are kept up to date, thus letting them keep in touch with the progress of their “own” whale shark.

Revelations about whale sharks are becoming more frequent thanks to this increased interest, the most recent discovery being that while whale sharks move slowly when at the surface and witnessed by humans, they subsequently dive to 1000 meters deep in a steep descent in search of food, ricocheting between the sunless depths and the shallows.

As more is learnt about the whale sharks, there is also more cause for concern – the relatively large amount of sightings and measurements from the last couple of decades indicate that the average size of the whale shark is shrinking, due to hunting and lack of time to reproduce. It’s through initiatives like Thailand’s protection of whale sharks within its own coastal waters and the EcoOcean identification database that greater awareness of the whale sharks’ movements, numbers and safety can be promoted – and it’s through this awareness that generations to come will be able to have their own encounters with the biggest fish in the world.

Snapping Sharks – How You Can Help Save The Whale Sharks

It’s easy to get an inexpensive underwater housing for a point and shoot digital camera these days, and the results can be remarkably good, especially when near the surface in the sunlight where the whale sharks like to bask.

EcoOcean requires photos of whale sharks that capture a specific part of the whale shark’s body – the part above the pectoral fin. Photographers must be careful to remain at least 3 metres away from the whale shark. See www.WhaleShark.org for more information of taking identification pictures of whale sharks

I wrote a short piece for Fah Thai magazine about my friend Monica Ganame, the Argentinian freediving record holder who lives on Koh Tao and co-owns the freediving school Apnea Total

Fah Thai is the inflight magazine for Bangkok Airways. My dive buddy and upcoming underwater photo pro Ayesha Cantrell took the striking photo of Monica and her business partner Eusibio. I was lurking in the background, supposedly directing the shoot but more often getting in the way of the wide angle! We fought some pretty tough conditions that day – the viz was down to about 5 metres, so I was really pleased with how well the story turned out.

You can see a bigger version of the story – and read the whole of Fah Thai magazine online – by visiting their nifty virtual magazine browser – the story is on p26.

You can also see some awesome freediving videos featuring Monica shot in Komodo on Divehappy, as well as the Evil Mermaid.

Here’s the original text of the story, which got edited down for the final version in the magazine:

Go scuba diving around Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand and you may encounter a mermaid. Propelled by her monofin to depths of 50 metres on a single breath of air, Monica Ganame is the nearest you’ll get to meeting one of these mythical creatures underwater. The Argentinian-born professional free diver wears no air tank or other bulky scuba gear – instead, Monica can hold her breath for up to six minutes and explore the underwater world in its truly natural state. The absence of dive equipment not only allows Monica to interact much more closely with marine life, but also to feel a part of the ocean herself.

Such physical endurance feats has earned free diving the reputation of only being for the few, requiring extreme fitness and nerves of steel. But Monica dismisses this myth of elitism: “Anyone can free dive”, she says emphatically. “It is not really about what you see underwater when you free dive – it is about the physicality of doing it, how you feel inside.” Together with her business partner Eusibio De Santa, Monica has spent the last five years promoting freediving for everyone through their Koh Tao school Apnea Total, one of the top training centres in Asia.

A Spanish former male model, Eusibio looks every inch the stereotypical super-fit free diver, but shares Monica’s enthusiasm for helping people break their own barriers. “For me, the most satisfying thing is when I teach someone who would never ordinarily consider freediving – say an overweight, 50 year old mum – and then see their confidence and enjoyment when they realise they can do it.”

Indeed, the duo have managed to make Thailand such a popular place for freediving they are now planning a freediving festival for April 2009, where they hope to bring some of the sport’s most renown figures to Koh Tao. Looks like there will be plenty more sightings of mermaids and mermen in the Gulf of Thailand.

You can contact Monica and Eusibio through their site Apnea-Total.com