Freediving into Leadership: Harnessing Inner Depths for Global Change

Exploring the transformative power of freediving and interoception in navigating the leadership challenges of our time

Freediving into the cenotes | photo by Andrea Di Biagio

When I was four years old, I toppled into a pool and nearly drowned. Rescued by a lifeguard after my brother's wake-up call to our babysitter, the trauma buried itself beneath my skin. Swimming lessons taught me how to cross lengths of a pool, but the panic, the clawing for air, always remained just beneath the surface.

Then came freediving, introduced to me by my friend and guide Moniek van Erven as not just a sport but a confrontation of our darkest fears and unprocessed emotions—diving deep on a single breath. In the sacred blue water of Mexico’s cenotes, I joined Moniek and a cohort of leaders to dive not just into water, but into the hidden depths within us and discovered a gateway to an entirely new kind of leadership that I believe the world so gravely needs right now.

In Nervous System Mastery, host Jonny Miller describes freediving as "high-stakes interoceptive training," a practice to hone what I consider a critical yet neglected leadership skill: the ability to connect with our body's internal wisdom, unfiltered, in the very moment it speaks.

For the leader in you, eager to transcend limits and embody integrity, I propose freediving not just as a sport, but as a transformative rite of passage in the age of climate change, biodiversity collapse and systemic injustice.

Photo by Max Gotts on Unsplash

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What is interoception?

Interoception is the ability of a person to sense their body’s full spectrum of sensations. This includes physical sensations like temperature, pressure, pleasure or pain as well as emotional sensations like the tingling of anticipation in your loins or the crushing pressure of anxiety in your chest.

Why is this important?

We live in a highly volatile world that is constantly changing. Our survival depends upon not only our ability to sense and respond to the stimulus in the world around us but our capacity to tune into the world within and make grounded decisions based upon what we need as individuals and what we need as an entangled organism on an increasingly fragile earth.

The problem of our upbringing

Most people are raised and educated to stifle a wide range of emotions—primarily negative ones—and to present themselves in a way that is deemed socially acceptable. The result is a highly pressurized container of repressed emotion and dampened human experience that often cultivates dissonance between an individual and the world around them, but is often unnoticed and hard to explain.

Many mental health disorders can be characterized by a loss of interoceptive capacity—losing touch not only with the outside world but also the world within. When you’re a leader building organizations that seek to change the world it’s imperative to bring these two worlds into alignment—otherwise you will undoubtedly experience significant hardship and pain until the two worlds reach a state of symbiosis and balance.

In this way building ventures can be a powerful vehicle for transformation, and a highly tuned interoceptive capacity leaders is like the compensation on a compass that keeps the needle aligned to magnetic north.

To change the world outside, you must change the world within

In my nearly two decades of work as a social entrepreneur I’ve been increasingly astonished by the mysterious connection between the state of my internal affairs and the world around me. I believe the relationship between these two systems is one of the highest points of leverage our leaders have access to today.

In my last post, Humanity as a Keystone Species I outlined a narrative that described humanity’s journey to realize it’s rightful place as a keystone species to become cornerstones of thriving ecosystems and co-creators of beauty as a part of nature.

I also introduced the concept of ‘trophic cascades’ which are upward spirals of regeneration that emerge when a specific intervention occurs within an ecosystem (like re-introducing wolves to Yellowstone). I believe that freediving as high-stakes interoceptive training may very well be one of these trophic cascades for rapid identity system change to realign our internal world with the world around us.

In speaking to other leaders around the world who have fallen in love with this sport, it seems like we might be onto something.

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Submerged in the Yucatan's Sacred Waters

Lying face down in the sacred cenote waters, sunlight pierced the azure depths, converging into a halo of turquoise around me. I breathed rhythmically through my snorkel, each exhalation hissing to a count of six, each inhalation to four. This was meditation at its most profound—effortless and enduring.

Preparing for the dive, I released the snorkel and, with deliberate breaths, descended, guided by the blue and white rope into deeper tranquility. Eyes closed, I pinched my nose and equalized the pressure, my instructor's mantra, "Pinch, equalize, pull," echoing in the dark. Deeper I plunged, urged by the desire to explore, until my fingers grasped the signal ball at the rope's end. Opening my eyes, I met my instructor's encouraging smile, a beacon in the deep blue.

Letting go, I floated in the cenote's heart, the depth startling yet exhilarating. Surfacing, I drew deep, recovery breaths, surrounded by cheers for my personal best—a moment of pure elation.

Parasympathetic Performance: A New Frontier

As a startup founder, I was no stranger to high stakes and relentless pressure. My life had been a series of sprints, fueled by a cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol, pushing for success under tight deadlines.

Freediving offered a stark contrast. It was my first foray into performance driven by the parasympathetic nervous system—characterized by deep connection, relaxation, and safety. Here, I found a profound peace, pushing boundaries not through tension, but through tranquility.

This experience shattered my lifelong fear of drowning and redefined my understanding of performance. It prompted a crucial question:

What if leadership, and indeed all venture building, could be rooted not in scarcity and urgency, but in the peaceful balance that we experience in nature?

What if we could lead not just with ambition, but with empathy, aligning our efforts with the tapestry of life itself?

Reflecting on my entrepreneurial journey, I recognized that many of my most costly mistakes stemmed from long-term over-activation of my sympathetic nervous system. This insight, inspired by Jim Dethmer's principles of conscious leadership, opened a new neural pathway: building internal and external systems from a foundation of oxytocin and acetylcholine, fostering safety, trust, and connection.

Leading as a part of nature

Immersed in the cenote's embrace, a profound urge took hold: to delve deeper into the neurophysiology of connected peak performance and to explore group flow rooted in heart-brain-nature coherence. From this foundation, what possibilities could unfold for our organizations and technologies? Imagine a future where leadership is intertwined with deep, embodied practices, transforming not just our businesses but the very lives that we live.

What could we achieve when we redesign everything from our rightful place as not just a part of nature—but a keystone species?

An invitation to explore Keystone Leadership

As I share these words, I am continuing to co-create a curriculum for a flagship Keystone Leadership program that explores these inquiries through an online course and culminates in a transformative in-person rite of passage in nature to help founders, investors and executives kickstart an upward spiral of regeneration in their personal and professional lives.

If you’re interested in exploring indigenous knowledge systems, somatic intelligence, freediving, trauma-informed collaboration and sacred ceremonies I’d love to hear from you!

We’re exploring partnerships with bioregional regeneration hubs to pilot these programs as part of a multi-generational leadership institute and these early cohorts will have a special place in the networks we build for decades to come.

Stay tuned for the next newsletter as I’ll be laying foundation for some of the core models of Keystone Leadership along with initial teaser for our upcoming Alpha cohort this fall!