The Profile Dossier: Johanna Nordblad, the Ice Diver Who Finds Peace in Freezing Water
“You have only yourself to trust. You have to be relaxed and in control at the same time.”
Johanna Nordblad finds peace under the ice.
The Finnish athlete has set a record for holding her breath underwater for 6 minutes and 35 seconds. She currently holds the Guinness World record for a 103-meter (338 feet) horizontal swim under 60-centimeter thick ice. It took her 2 minutes and 42 seconds to get from one ice hole to another. She did it in a single breath.
In March 2021, at age 46, Nordblad shattered the women’s and men’s records for under-ice freediving.
Nordblad discovered ice diving by accident. She was recovering from a broken leg when she began doing cold therapy to help with the pain. “Cold therapy helped my leg exponentially – it reduces inflammation, swelling and pain,” she says. “But something else happens to the body in cold water. It’s hard to put into words – it’s almost like it intensely feels everything it could possibly feel.”
The cold brought her a sense of peace that she had never experienced before, and it was an addicting feeling.
The injury opened her up to the world of ice diving. It was a niche sport that tied together many of her existing passions — yoga, freediving, and art and design. She applied the focus and concentration she learned in yoga, the peace she experienced in freediving, and the creative elements of designing an underwater watch that can withstand the harshest ice dives.
“Spending just a couple of minutes in cold water gives me total relaxation of body and mind,” she says.
In Nordbland’s world, there is zero room for error. With one misstep, she could lose consciousness, suffer cardiac arrest, or die. “You have only yourself to trust. You have to be relaxed and in control at the same time,” she says. “Freediving requires physical effort, but mental discipline is even more important. You have to do the dive without panicking or losing your head.”
Watch this short video to see Nordblad in her element:
Here’s what we can learn from the athlete who shows us how we can let go of fear, discover our passion, and find peace in the process.
READ.
On developing a winning mindset: For Nordblad, freediving has evolved into something more than a desire to beat her opponents. “If you compete with that mentality, you’re not enjoying the moment. I don’t deny I thought that way when I was younger, but now I don’t like it anymore,” she says. Here’s how Nordblad thinks about chasing her goals.
On letting go of fear: The not-so-secret secret of freediving in ice is that there’s no place for fear. “For me, that’s the main reason why freediving is relaxing – it has to be,” Nordblad says. “I really have had to learn how to put all my fears away for those few minutes, and only when I can do that, I can freedive.” In this first-person essay, Nordblad shares how she has discovered her mental and physical limits.
WATCH.
On her resilience: In this documentary, a camera crew follows Nordblad as she attempts to break the world record for distance traveled under ice with one breath. She overcomes challenge after challenge to reach her goal. It’s 40 minutes of pure inspiration.
POLINA’S TAKEAWAYS.
Use cold exposure to calm your nervous system: Extreme athlete Wim Hof popularized the benefits of cold-shock therapy, and now there’s research to support it. There’s more and more evidence to show that immune responsiveness is heightened, rather than suppressed, by our ‘fight-or-flight’ response, which is mimicked by the sudden shock of cold immersion. New research suggests that submerging your body in cold temperatures releases a hormone and neurotransmitter that has a role in vigilance, focus, attention and mood. In other words, regular cold exposure could have significant benefits to mental health and physical performance. “At first the cold was excruciating, like a thousand needles penetrating a deep ache – but I got used to it,” Nordblad says. “It soon became my only tangible sanctuary from the pain, and it became quite meditative in itself.”
Get lost in your passion: The hardest thing about a passion is not to allow it to become a chore. At one point during her training, Nordblad hit a wall and began to lose motivation because everyone around her was so focused on the goal of breaking records. “It’s easy to let my mind wander, ‘Could I break all these new records too,’” she says. To get her mindset in the right place, she reminded herself of one of the most beautiful periods in her life — it was immediately after her rehabilitation. “I spent two years out in the open: I would take my kayak and go out and explore the islands around Helsinki,” she says. “There are hundreds of them, and all you need is to paddle for five minutes before you’re completely lost in nature.” When you’re feeling burdened and burnt out, find ways to reconnect with your original passion — your raison d’être — and stop putting pressure around the quantitative measures of success.
Remember that you can do hard things: During her attempt to break the world record, Nordblad confronted challenge after challenge. Whether it was health issues or the COVID pandemic that closed all training pools, it took her two years to attempt her record-breaking swim. But through it all, she knew that she could get through hard things — one breath at a time. Before she dove in for her swim, she laid on top of a yoga mat next to the ice hole and did a deep breathing exercise to get her mind and body right. And then slowly, calmly, and one stroke at a time, she shatters the men and women’s official (and unofficial) records. “Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean we should not try to achieve it,” she says. “This is the only way we can learn something new about ourselves.”
