Freediving is one of the most extreme sports. Diving with holding your breath is a powerful shake for the human body. However, Natalya Avseyenko, whose biography is rather non-standard for an athlete, perceives freediving not as a sport or entertainment, but as one of the ways to realize herself and her place in nature. Being one of the strongest freedivers, she became famous not even with her own records, but with extreme beauty and unusualness, extreme research projects and photo shoots in the aquatic environment.
How to come to freediving
Natalya Avseyenko did not go quite the usual way as for a professional athlete. After graduating, she seriously engaged in science. In 2000, she even defended a dissertation in cultural studies and became a candidate of science. Until 2007, she taught at Moscow State University at the Department of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication at the Faculty of Foreign Languages.
Associate Professor Natalya Avseenko, whose family was struck by her subsequent transformation, was engaged in scuba diving for her soul and health. However, a chain of independent events and accidents brought an intelligent and beautiful girl to the cause of her life.
At first, her bag with diving equipment disappeared after she returned after one of her trips to Moscow. Then Natalia became a spectator of a series of programs about the famous Russian freediver Julia Petrik. She became interested in this extreme sport and began to engage in a group with an authoritative specialist - Natalia Molchanova.
However, Natalya Avseyenko did not immediately feel the pleasure of free floating under water. After the first competition, she felt all the "charms" of hypoxia, expressed in the loss of control over motor skills. Gradually, the girl came to the taste of training, and a radical fracture occurred after one dive, when Avseenko’s body was able to switch to an operating mode in an extreme situation, and she felt a real merger with the aquatic environment.
Sports records
Freediving is a serious sport that includes several disciplines. Major competitions are constantly held, records are recorded. Natalya Avseenko soon managed to break into the elite of extreme divers. First, under the leadership of Natalia Molchanova, and then on her own, she practices hard, wins awards and receives titles.
Its results peaked in 2006 and 2008. It was then that she won the gold medals of the world championship in team competitions. She achieved these successes together with partners Molchanova and Surikova.
In 2008, Natalia Avseenko set a world record for the depth of free diving. Against the backdrop of the wonderful nature of the Bahamas, she made an impressive 57-meter dive, writing her name in the book of sports achievements of world freediving. By the end of her active career in sports, Natalya Avseyenko was in the top five in the following disciplines of this sport: static, constant weight without fins, dynamics.
Having finished participating in competitions, she did not leave her favorite pastime. Natalya Avseenko opened her own freediving school, is one of the best instructors in the world, and has repeatedly organized major competitions.
Horde Cave Spirit
Freediving for Natalya Avseenko is not just a sport or a job, but one of the ways to explore the world and reveal your own unlimited possibilities. She is an active participant in the Phototeam.pro team, which carries out numerous art projects, combining them with research.
As part of such studies, Natalia Avseenko made an impressive dive in the famous Orda cave. It is located in the Ural Mountains and consists of pure gypsum.
The famous photographer Viktor Lyagushkin got the idea to create an image of a guardian spirit, which, according to legend, lives in the walls of a grotto filled with water.
In fluttering clothes over a wetsuit, Natalya Avseyenko courageously posed for Lyagushkina while in water, the temperature of which did not exceed 5 degrees. In the cave itself, the thermometer did not rise above 23 degrees below zero. In these extreme conditions, the girl diver dived to a depth of 17 meters, where she spent more than three minutes holding her breath.
The result of the joint work of the athlete and the artist was simply stunning. Natalya Avseyenko, whose photo was decorated not only with freediving publications, has become a notable cultural phenomenon.
Girl and whales
Perhaps the most impressive work of Natalia was immersion in the White Sea as part of a research study of the means of communication and echolocation of belugas. In addition, we studied the possibilities of a person to stay in extreme conditions of ice water. Salt water freezes at lower values, so Natalia Avseyenko spent more than ten minutes in an environment with a temperature of -2 degrees Celsius, thereby setting a record for a person's stay in such conditions. An ordinary unprepared swimmer will freeze in a couple of minutes in ice water, but Natalya completed a ten-day adaptation course.
To capture this historical record in history, the documentary "Ceiling" was shot, directed by Natalya Uglitskikh. For a more vivid demonstration of her capabilities, Avseenko not only refused a wetsuit, but also dived with belugas without clothes at all - naked. The amazingly beautiful shots of a naked woman under water have become real hits.