Breath Hold Diving Workshop 2006
Authors: Peter Lindholm, Neal W. Pollock, Claes EG Lundgren
DOI / Source: http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org
Date: 20-21 June 2006
Reading level: Advanced
Why This Matters for Freedivers
This proceedings volume is valuable because it connects the dots between what divers do, what the body does, and what can go wrong—with practical safety implications rather than theory alone. It also shows how many “freediving myths” started getting challenged years ago (blackout mechanisms, CO₂ handling, DCS risk in repetitive deep profiles), which helps divers build habits based on evidence and incident patterns—not bravado.
Synopsis
This document is like a “time capsule” of modern freediving science and safety thinking: it’s the published proceedings from the 2006 Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) / Divers Alert Network (DAN) Breath-Hold Diving Workshop. Instead of being one single study, it’s a curated collection of talks and discussions by leading researchers, physicians, and elite divers, covering what was known (and what was debated) about breath-hold diving at the time. 
What makes it useful is how wide it goes while staying very practical. There are sections on the physiology of breath-hold diving (diving response, blood pressure and heart rhythm changes, CO₂ sensitivity, spleen effects), on performance methods (including glossopharyngeal breathing/packing), and on the uncomfortable but essential topics: samba/LOC, shallow-water blackout patterns, incident reporting, and safety management in recreational and competitive freediving. It also includes early warning signals that later became big conversations in the sport—like possible decompression sickness in breath-hold diving, brain-related markers and imaging discussions, and real-world case material that pushed the community to take safety systems more seriously.