Heart of the Nation: Melbourne 3000

IT was pure serendipity that led Jody Fisher to discover her talent for freediving.

Diving

IT was pure serendipity that led Jody Fisher to discover her talent for freediving.

Two years ago, a bloke came to her for music lessons - she's a classical guitarist - and it turned out that he was a scuba-diving instructor. Wow, she said, I've always wanted to try that. So they struck a deal: in lieu of payment for the guitar lessons, he would teach her to dive. Only problem was, it was July in Melbourne and the sea wasn't too inviting. So he suggested they forgo the air tanks and go freediving in the pool instead. "I thought, 'That sounds stupid why would anyone want to do that?' " But she went along with it.

Within a week she was doing static breath-holds of five and a half minutes - yes, you read that right - and swimming 125m underwater on a single breath. "I could just do it on the spot," she says. But how?

"Genetics, I suppose. And also very, very large lungs." She went on to set 15 national records during her first year and won a world title in one of freediving's many pool-based disciplines. But it was her taste of oceanic depth-diving in Greece - where she swam without fins down to 53m and back up again - that really fired her imagination. "The only sound is your heartbeat as you descend into the deep blue," says the 25-year-old, who intends to have a crack at some depth world records next year, if she can raise the necessary sponsorship.

Fisher is pictured in Melbourne Aquarium, doing a publicity shot. She looks totally in her element, doesn't she? That's how she feels, too. When she's underwater her heartbeat slows down - that's the so-called "mammalian diving reflex" - and all stress drains away. But it's more than that. "On land, your sense of time passing is connected to the rhythm of your breathing," she explains. "So when you hold your breath underwater, it's like time stops. You really have that sense of being in the moment. It's like meditation."