Peak Performance Tips from the Top Female Free Diver in the World - Interview by Matt Bowles of The Maverick Show

Sneak Peek:

Jessea:    00:00:00    You can achieve a lot by just changing your mindset. If you think that's easy, if you think you can do it, you can do it. And that was almost like discovering some kind of superpower that I didn't know I had.  

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.  

Kristin Wilson, Host:    00:00:36    Hey there, Kristin Wilson, from Traveling with Kristin here and welcome to episode 210 of Badass Digital Nomads. I have a very special episode for you today, something we've never done before and I'm passing the mic over to my friend Matt Bowles, who is also a podcast host. He is the host of The Maverick Show podcast that I've been on four times and he was also a guest four times on Badass Digital Nomads. He was on episode 15 way back when on how to build a location-independent business, episode 99 on how to make any business remote. Episode 192 on how to find your travel style and episode 193 on how to earn passive income through investing in turnkey real estate from anywhere in the world. Matt co-founded his location independent company, Maverick Investor Group in 2007 and he has since been featured in major national media outlets.  

Kristin:    00:01:44    He was also named one of the top 50 real estate opinion makers and market leaders. So he's an expert in real estate, but he's also an expert in travel. He's been a digital nomad for more than 10 years. He's been to more than 50 countries and you can find 230 plus episodes of his podcast at themaverickshow.com. And today I am borrowing an episode from him, episode 214 with Jessea Lu who is the number one all around female free diver in the world. And I wanted to share this episode with you because Jessea talks about destinations that I haven't been to. She talks about traveling through Africa. She talks about living in China to go to college and she also talks about her move to Hawaii and this incredible path to becoming a competitive international free diver. So very cool episode. Really excited to share this with you and make sure to head over to Matt's website or to the show notes here and you can get the link to episode 215, which is part two of this interview.  

Kristin:    00:03:03    And that episode is really cool as well where Jessea talks about free diving with killer whales in Norway, which is certainly something that I have not done. And she also talks about being in Tonga, in Sri Lanka, other places I haven't been. So I wanted to share that with you as well. That's episode 215 of the Maverick Show over at themaverickshow.com.

Travel Pro:

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Podcast Interview: 

The Maverick Show podcast Introduction:    00:04:42    This is the Maverick Show where you'll meet today's most interesting location and dependent entrepreneurs and world travelers and learn the strategies and tactics they used to succeed. And now here's your host, Matt Bowles. 

Matt:    00:04:57    Hey everybody, it's Matt Bowles. Welcome to the Maverick Show. My guest today is Jessea Lou. She has been ranked the number one all-around female free diver in the world for three consecutive years. Originally from China. She holds a PhD in clinical pharmacology and is now a digital nomad who has been to over 40 countries and she has particular interest in spending time with wild animals around the world in their natural habitat. Jesse has broken one world record and 37 national records in free diving and has won 15 gold medals in continental and world championships. Jessea is able to hold her breath underwater for over eight minutes and dive down over 90 meters on one breath. She is also a free dive instructor as well as a scuba diving instructor and she is an ambassador for best dive wetsuits. Jessea, Welcome to the show.  

Jessea:    00:06:05    Hi Matt. It's great to be here.  

Matt:    00:06:08    I am so excited to have you here. We need to start off just by setting the scene. You and I are in person. We are in Nairobi, Kenya, and we have just opened a nice bottle of red wine that we're gonna be drinking through throughout the episode. This is a Rioja Reserva, it's a 2016 from the Rioja region of Spain. So we're gonna be drinking through that throughout the episode. And you and I have been on the continent of Africa together for a full three months now. We have been in Cape Town for a month. We've been in Tanzania for a month and we have now been in Kenya for a month. We are on the Remote Year program. This is their first ever all Africa itinerary. It's a four month program. And let's just start off maybe with that, you have been doing tons of incredibly cool stuff here. You and I have been doing some stuff together. We've been doing some stuff separately, but maybe do you wanna just share a little bit about where you just got back from today and what that experience was like?  

Jessea:    00:07:16    Sure. Today I just flew back from Lamu Island of Kenya. That is a very unique place. It's a UNESCO heritage site with an old town that does not have cars. I heard overall on the whole island, there are currently only three cars. I did not see a single one when I was there. The main vehicle of transportation is the donkey or just walking. You can walk everywhere around town, just very narrow alleys. All the buildings are constructed with coral limestones to keep the area cool enough and buildings are back to back with alleys less than a meter wide at the narrowest part so that all the heat cannot penetrate otherwise. Island is scorching hot and the people there are super nice. It's one of those few places in Africa, very safe. You can walk at night pitch black with no light and feel very, very at home.  

Matt:    00:08:16    Amazing. Well we met back in Cape Town in the very first week in South Africa and one of the things that I noticed immediately is that you started just independently seeking out super interesting things to do and one of the things that you began the very first week is you started foraging for mushrooms and then using those mushrooms to come back and cook amazing things. Can you share a little bit about that? I mean I just wanna give folks a sense of how you travel and what some of your priorities and interests are when you travel and I thought that would be a really cool place to start.  

Jessea:    00:08:50    I love being in nature. I mean mountains, ocean, river. I really like to go places where I get the most natural encounter with animals hopefully. And I'm also really interested in different kinds of plants, identification or harvesting. The edible ones, I always find the joy and fulfillment of harvesting your own food. You know exactly where it came from, what it looked like before it was cooked or chopped up and even washed. Sometimes things change color when you process them. Like the marine animals, you know they look completely different from the plates usually serve in the restaurant versus how they actually appear in the ocean. Like squids, octopus, they have all kinds of colors when they are alive still, right? So I think it's just fascinating the animal world, plants the diversity just mesmerizing and I like to go hiking and just see what's up there.  

Jessea:    00:09:54    Different altitude, there's different species. Um, diving with my goggles on that I can see what's underwater. Occasionally I go to learn something new like mushroom hunting is one of those things that I didn't even know before. That's something you can learn. But now there are cities where there's a very professional local mushroom guides that they do this, they've been doing this for decades and then now they offer it as experience and you can go hunting with them. They'll tell you all things about mushrooms, which one is toxic? They can kill like four cows with a tiny little pick. Which one is very edible, delicious, very expensive, hard to find. You only get it in that season or some of the ones cannot be farmed. You have to hunt it in the wild and then you cook them after you spend like a couple hours of harvesting and you have literally from the forest to the plate in the forest on that same trip. That's just amazing experience.  

Matt:    00:10:57    That's so awesome. Well you are an incredible cook. I know this because you just cooked a wonderful Chinese dish for me the other day that you and I had together. Let me ask you this though, I know this is your first time on the continent of Africa and you've been here now for three months. You've been through three very different countries. What has been sort of your impression and maybe some of your highlights from your first experience on the continent?  

Jessea:    00:11:26    My first location in Africa was Cape Town. My personal experience as well as what I've heard from other African people is that Cape Town is actually quite different from the rest of Africa. So it can be called like a bubble, especially in the waterfront area at a tip where it's very developed and very much like modern European city mixed with more cultures from all over the world. I liked it for the convenience of living and the great weather and the animals there. Ocean as well as penguins, <laugh>, the birds. I love penguins and I'm not sure if it represents my overall experience of Africa but it was a very nice soft landing for me.  

Matt:    00:12:11    Yeah and it's so interesting too because in terms of the animals, South Africa is the only country in the world that has both lions and penguins in the same country. And so you can have this incredibly diverse type of experience in terms of what you're actually able to see in South Africa. But the penguins are amazing. I remember the first time that I saw them, which was in 2015, my first time in Cape Town, I literally didn't even know that there were African penguins because I associate penguins so much with the cold weather cuz that's all of the stuff that you see on TV and you watch as kids and that's what the thing and the penguins are associated with cold weather. And then you go to Cape Town and there's just all of these African penguins out on the beach and swimming around and they're just warm weather penguins. And so that for me was a really, really cool experience as well. My first time in Cape Town,  

Jessea:    00:13:00    Yes I had a really, really great time just observing the penguins and there was a penguin rescue center called SANCCOB  and then they're basically a government funded or at least subsidized penguin hospital so that the season there's not enough food in the ocean for the penguin whole colony. Then the moms that will abandon their eggs or their newborn chicks and then move the colony to another location and then they would get 200 penguins in one month and the hospital takes care of them, raise them and rears all the checks until they are healthy for grown with good fat conditions before they can be released into the wild. Right now the African penguins are declining in population, which is kind of sad, I don't remember the exact number but it seems to be less than 10% of what it used to be in the wild than the noise that's happening in the harbor construction or these new bigger, louder vehicles for transportation coming into the port seems to not be helping the penguin population over there. And that SANCCOB center is actually doing really good research on how those things are affecting these animals cuz they're I guess inhabitable area and then they depend on the food over the sardines that come right is really, really limited in the temperature and everything. So I'm actually planning on going back there to do a little bit of volunteering program next year and just to learn more about those birds.  

Matt:    00:14:38    And I know you are also planning an incredible trip for next summer in East Africa. You're gonna come back. Can you share a little bit about that trip because I had never heard of this. You did this incredible amount of research because I know you really focus on having incredible experiences with animals and that's a really high priority for you when you travel. And so you did this incredible amount of research and can you share a little bit about, just for other folks like me that have never heard of this opportunity, what you are planning to do in East Africa next summer  

Jessea:    00:15:11    I signed up for a horse riding safari across Maasai Mara in Kenya during the migration season where millions of wild beast and zebras are on their way migrating from Serengeti, north northward crossing rivers to get into Maasai Mara where they can grass fresher, more abundant grass. Then they need to cross Mara River where there are hundreds of hungry Nile Crocs waiting at riverbank for the herd to cross. And that's a buildup that takes weeks to happen and then the crowd of migrating animals just become so big that they have to cross. And that's an action that I saw on some documentary films long time ago. It just completely took my breath away even though the trips that I signed up for anyone signs up for, usually well say these kind of encounters is not a guarantee, it's just a matter of how many days you are spending in the park and how often you go there. People might have to go back couple times to really witness it but still just being in the vicinity of millions of those wild animals and knowing that they are moving on the go, it's going to be a very exciting experience and I'm really looking forward to that.  

Matt:    00:16:37    And you are gonna be on horseback as opposed to in a jeep, which is the normal thing that I have done when I've gone on a safari ride, I'm in a Jeep and you're driving around and they kind of take you up and you take pictures of the animals, you're actually gonna be on horseback riding through with the animals basically, right?  

Jessea:    00:16:56    Yes. I really, really wanted to do it on horseback. Before I came to Africa I knew there are a lot of Jeep tours or the safari vent tours from my experience in the ocean how I encountered marine animals. I was a scuba diver before and then I was a free diver. I could tell there's a huge difference between these two ways of entering the animals' environment. Anything that brings noise seems foreign, it's going to make animals a bit more alert or for fish for that matter, they may just not like the noise of the bubbles and they will keep distance. They are not gonna accept you in their home area. And I just intuitively think that's the same way between these different ways of doing safaris. But humans can be preyed for larger animals in those areas. If people go in there walking perhaps well for one thing is you move too slow. 

Jessea:    00:17:57    Second is really how much stuff can you carry with you? I know people who have down polar tracking with manpower only and dragging the whole supply of their trip on a sled and still managed to get to the North pole, south pole and for many, many days. But <laugh>, if you add these predator animals hungry things in Africa, I don't think that would work very well for them. And horse riding is a way where you are kind of being with the animals and generally animals do respect other animals to a certain extent, you know, unless if they are like extremely hungry and then normally they would only go for the weaker ones or the young ones in counting. So I was riding horse before with cows and sheep and I think that being on the horse gives you a certain level of safety as well. But of course we'll have professional guides with rifles and things just in case if things go wrong, <laugh>  

Matt:    00:18:55    Always good to have a backup plan. Jessea, I want to talk a little bit now about your backstory and give folks a little sense of your journey and basically how you got to the place that you were today. And I would love to start all the way back. Can you share a little bit about your experience growing up in China where you grew up in some of the cultural context and what that experience was like?  

Jessea:    00:19:22    I grew up in a mid-size city in China. I say mid-size but being China still has 3 million people  

Matt:    00:19:31    <laugh>. Exactly, exactly.  

Jessea:    00:19:34    Yeah. It was kind of like on the border of this city where my particular home is, it's about 30 minutes bike ride if I need to go to the farmlands and it's about 20 minutes bus ride into the city center. And I just remember a few of my favorite experiences when I was a kid was my mom took me to the farmland and we brought a few strings, just simple clothing, sewing strings, nothing else. And then we went to the farmland, we had a plastic bag and then we just took off like a tree branch and caught like a little frog or a snail from the river and you just tie the string on that with the branch, then go to the watering duct where you can then start fishing for crawfish that lives in the hose in the mud between the farm, the actual of the crops lands and in the irrigation channels we were just there and just fishing for these little red crawfish, they come out with a little clamp and then they will hold onto the string, hold onto the food and then you can just lift them out of water and then catch them by hand, put them into the bag.  

Jessea:    00:20:48    So two hours we'll get a full bag of food. It's almost the basic version of seafood <laugh>. It's more tasty than the shrimp but it's not as great and fascinating as lobsters but it has a similar taste. We go home, wash them and then cook them. I just probably started these harvesting and nature <laugh> related habits from that time. Oh I already started having these joyful moments in life, put a seed in me and we also did insect stuff. There's like small like crickets you can catch and then you can make the males fight in a jug <laugh> and see who wins and just, you have to go out at night with a little flashlight and then go here, the cricket scene and then you know where which rock underneath there is a cricket, right? You have to distinguish the male singing versus the female scene once you've identified and located the male under which brick and it's a teamwork so one person flips over the rock and the other person with a flashlight and with a little perforated cup to capture them and then you have these specific containers to then guide them and trick them to crawl through and keep them in the container and then you the hunt goes at night.  

Jessea:    00:22:03    So those are my favorite childhood kind of nature related activities. The city itself is kind of standard. Some of these African less developed cities actually reminds me of my hometown in last century <laugh>. Some of these are very similar kind of experiences that I'm going through in the last two months. My elementary school teacher who teaches us about the subject of the nature is very inspirational for me and every class she would not talk about stuff on the textbook, she would just come into the school and start talking about trip. She went on to the rural area, the things she talked about with the farmers there, the unique food they ate at this farm, you could not find it anywhere else. And she would mention another time she went out to the mountain and the different plants she saw. Those were things completely foreign to us as kids living in this neighborhood where day by day, year over year, maybe for the first 10 years we never really left this area just as far as the bike can go for a day trip. And hearing about what existed outside of our familiar neighborhood was the reason I think I chose to study biology after my basic education and I just did uh biological science for my college.  

Matt:    00:23:28    Can you talk about where you went to college because I know you did move to the big city and you really got the large urban experience eventually. And I'm also curious cuz one of the things that you and I bonded over very early is that we both were very impacted and influenced by hip hop culture and I'm wondering if you can share with folks how you discovered hip hop in China and what that was like for you and what hip hop meant to you at that time in your life.  

Jessea:    00:24:02    In China it's quite well known that the college entrance exam is extremely, extremely competitive. It's about one in 40 applicants in my province who can get into a decent college and there's more secondary options but there are considered maybe more technical or you would become a teacher after not as wide of a selection of options or majors as the best colleges. And we studied all day during, during the three years of high school pretty much we had endless homeworks <laugh> to put it a simple way, I remember I was just doing homeworks in between my class breaks during lunch break and just hoping that I would not take my homework home cuz when I'm home I wanted to do something else. I remember we had a lot of students staying over time keep doing more for nighttimes and weekends too. So that was very robotic and repetitive.  

Jessea:    00:25:06    Three years and last year of college my cousin actually went on a summer vacation trip with me. He turned out to be a hip-hop dancer and then later on he learned to teach and he opened a hip-hop studio in my hometown and it was the last year of high school when I suddenly saw something that's different from what we were doing every day in school with textbooks and exams. And I was like wow, this is amazing. And he looked so cool <laugh> and I just became his fanboy and just like kind of like followed him around at night whenever I got a chance, just look at where he is performing what he is practicing on for just a few days. And then I left on my hometown to Beijing University in Beijing for college. Then there is hip-hop clubs, the student associations. So I hung out with them for my four years in college and I go to the most kind of like international style nightclubs that plays hip-hop music in China cuz there's all kinds of music and all kinds of nightclubs in China, right?  

Jessea:    00:26:19    Some of them seems to be mostly mid-age Chinese people who would go like after work and then I felt very disconnected from them. And there is this club not far from my college campus, it's about 10 minutes by taxi. It was all international students in that area from different colleges. There's international school departments I guess. And all the international students who loved hip hop music would come into this bar and people just dance all night. <laugh>. I would go there almost every Thursday for like a year and a half. That was the best time <laugh> that I had during my college years even though like that did not help with my study <laugh>.  

Matt:    00:27:07    That's so amazing. So what eventually made you decide to leave China to travel outside of China? What was sort of the inspiration of the impetus to do that?  

Jessea:    00:27:20    I was not quite sure if I wanted to leave China. I think my family had a really strong emphasis on me about education, how important it is that you should go to the best college. So I did that then there was no guidance for my family. It's almost like that was the holy grail from my grandparents. If you did that, life is over, you're fine. Nothing else you need to worry about. So I'm sure I was goofing around in college. But with that said, my school was very, very competitive still and if we failed two major courses in our curriculum we will be sent back home. So that was gonna be very humiliating. So I was still pulling lots of all nights just to make sure my grades are still good enough. I didn't know what I wanna do until the third year, second semester and I did some internship in the graduate school situation in China. I went there, checked it out what it is, like I did not like it and then I was like oops, I don't know what I'm gonna work on. I have no options. How about applying for scholarship and go to America <laugh>  

Matt:    00:28:33    And she did. And you got there and you did your PhD in the United States?  

Jessea:    00:28:41    Yes I did. Yeah, honestly I, I was definitely not well prepared for that trip or for that whole education to be honest. I had probably just two months to get ready for my application, get my TOEFL test. By the time I didn't even speak English I could manage some return exams, just get a some decent score. But I couldn't talk and I didn't know where I was applying to. I just checked the historical record which school accepted most Chinese students from my college and didn't have extremely high entry bar level <laugh>. And I just applied and I got four scholarship offer. I was like okay, taking it, I'm going and then happily I go and with two suitcases, $200 landed in Indianapolis,  

Matt:    00:29:25    <laugh> Uhhuh and  

Jessea:    00:29:29    Then I trying to orientate myself. I just remember from my dorm, if I walked 15 minutes in every direction make a circle with that radius I could only reach one subway, one McDonald and that's it  

Matt:    00:29:44    <laugh>.  

Jessea:    00:29:45    And I don't know how to drive a car. I don't have money for a car to be honest. And it was the coming into a winter season, right? So that took a whole lot of adjusting too <laugh> from being in the capital city in China.  

Matt:    00:30:01    Wow. And then you were there for a number of years obviously because you did your PhD and that was your base but you also started to travel from Indianapolis. Can you talk a little bit about those travel experiences and how you initially discovered scuba diving.  

Jessea:    00:30:20    In graduate school you already could tell from my tone that I did not like Indianapolis that much <laugh>.  

Jessea:    00:30:27    So I made a deal with my advisor. I mean first I worked hard first year I thought I need to correct some mistakes I've already made, now I have to take some responsibility of my life. So I applied for a grant for graduate school. So I did got funding from Department of Defense for breast cancer research now that on the second year going forward from my graduate school I was self-funded. So that way I know my position at the university as a graduate student is secure. So I then made a deal with my advisor. I wanted to save as much time as I could so that I can travel away. I said I'm not gonna take my weekends off so I'll, I'll keep coming to the lab Saturday and Sunday and in the morning when I get to the campus I cannot find a place to park my car.  

Jessea:    00:31:14    There's so many people in the parking lot. I spend a lot of times finding a spot or during the experiment if I needed to use the instrument, there's a long waiting list of people and I need to find a time to schedule my turn. I thought I could come at night, that will save time and I could do a lot of work a lot more with the same amount of time. And then please let me travel every month away for the last week I will just go somewhere, either be a conference or just learning or I would just go have vacation or see friends - didn't have a lot of money at the time but just somewhere I can explore. And that worked out really well for me. And I mean I didn't see much of my colleagues in graduate school. I was coming in when everybody's leaving and I was driving home at midnight, usually like 3:00 AM or 5:00 AM whatever time it takes for the experiment to finish. 

Jessea:    00:32:12    And I was able to go at least a different city every month throughout the year for the next three years. And then that's how I got a chance to do my scuba certification in Hawaii. And before that I didn't even know what is scuba, I just thought I like marine animals, I try to see if there's any kind of work opportunities that will allow me to hang out with marine animals. But every place says you must have at least a scuba certification. That's how I started looking into it. What is this? Scuba and Indianapolis has some swimming pool and classroom I can do in the dive shop but obviously the open water session in a cold query or water lake is not gonna be ideal. So I just took the chance to Hawaii during a conference trip. I made my certification there in Kona, big island of Hawaii, which I absolutely just fell in love with that island. I also fell in love with scuba diving at the same time and just then the diving just kept it going on. I never stopped.  

Matt:    00:33:15    I know you relocated to Hawaii eventually and you had that as a base and you were doing a lot of trips out of Hawaii. Can you talk about when you first started going on liverboard trips and for people that don't even know what that term means, what was that like and what were some of your highlights from those early scuba experiences?  

Jessea:    00:33:36    So being in the Midwest, I could only really travel to get some good diving. So and then I start looking for alternative locations where I can dive and see different ocean landscapes, so different species. So I went to Florida to do more sort of a training. I did advanced course in West Palm Beach. So I saw different animals and I knew there's more diving around Miami area. So right after I graduated I took an internship at University of Miami. I did some diving locally, I joined their local dive club and one day I heard about this long distance trip. I already started having like a taste of the more isolated location you dive, the better things you're gonna see. And I heard about this trip that's gonna sail from Miami port out to the sea for seven days before it comes back and it's gonna go around like Bimini islands and different islands in Bahamas.  

Jessea:    00:34:39    I definitely was intrigued and very excited so I just save it up money and just planned for one vacation week. I did that probably around May. That's the first experience in my life where I was away from any internet cell phone signals. We were on a sailboat that's very quiet when it's not having the engine on. And with about a group of 10 divers, couple of boat crew members, we hung out like a little small family and everything we talk about is diving. So we eat, sleep and dive, watch sunset, watch stars away from the land. It's pitch black at night. You don't need to face the west to see the sunset view on the ocean when you're away from land. The same golden light red color, the shades behind clouds is 360 degrees all around you, every direction you look. It's so pretty. And I just thought okay, I have to do at least one trip like this away from the noise and the civilization, all these messaging at least once a year so that I actually did more liverboard trips after that.  

Matt:    00:35:57    That's amazing. And I know you eventually became a scuba dive instructor and it became a huge part of your life. And then when you relocated to Hawaii and that was your base, can you talk about how free free diving came into the picture? Cuz you were already a scuba diver. How did you eventually get into free diving?  

Jessea:    00:36:18    I was in Hawaii, which the reason I decided to move there is because I wanted to do more diving on a weekly basis. And in Hawaii the locals there use spear fishing as a means of harvesting fish and feed their families. There's much longer history before it became something that can be taught and before the sport even kind of existed on the international stage. Then as a scuba diver I get to stay on the water for a longer time, watch everything, but I cannot really move in any direction I want it to. You cannot ascend too fast, you have to do the slow ascend, you have to decompress, you cannot really move fast cuz the scuba gear has a lot of drag. And when I saw the spear fishermen, they were flying through underwater just cruising the reef like sharks while I feel I'm quite a turtle and just really slow and clumsy.  

Jessea:    00:37:20    And I thought that's so cool. I figured that's a human, I'm a human, if they can do that, I can probably do it. And that's when I thought about I'm gonna give it a try. But I didn't actually sign up for a proper paid professional course until one day I was the dive master on one of these dive operation trips. And then there was some tourists ask about, oh if you snorkel can you duck dive down and just hold your breath and go touch the sand. It was maybe only five meters, it's not deep as a scuba diver I can equalize. I thought it would be not hard. And then the other instructor says, yeah, why don't you just, you know, watch Jessea let her demonstrate how to do it. And I was struggling <laugh> not going anywhere. I was just fluttering my face and just using my arms like all kinds of ways.  

Jessea:    00:38:15    I'm just not going down, not leaving the surface. I felt that was quite embarrassing as a professional. So I at least I needed to learn how to do it properly with the proper technique. So as a child, when I first learned how to swim just by accident I was already doing a form of free diving. I, I didn't even know what I was doing was just exhale, right? Just completely empty your lungs and then you would sink and then you would go to the bottom of the pool for a little while and you come up. So that is already a form of free diving. So in the ocean I could do that too, but that's not safe. So you are going down without the air that carries oxygen to last to support your energy and then there's no buoyancy and you are heavy, you'll naturally sink. You have to fight against gravity to come back to the surface. And then I just knew whatever I was doing was incorrect. So I just started searching for a course and signed up for a free diving class through the University of Hawaii in their scientific diving program. Yeah, that's how I started to do the free diving sport.  

Matt:    00:39:32    And then what was your process from that class where you learned the basics and you learned the basic techniques and you were able to do the basic stuff along with the other people that were in your class. From there, what was your trajectory to competing in international competitions and taking the sport really seriously? 

Jessea:    00:39:57    I did six minutes breath hold in my first class and that surprised me. I did not think that was possible and I did not think that would be not as hard as I thought. And that just rang a bell in my mind, what else am I thinking that I couldn't do? But that thought is actually the limit, not the physical body. And when that triggered I just thought I needed to at least give it a try. I needed to see what my body is capable of. And then I later on found out freediving is really 80% of a mental sport at the beginning for everything that you can achieve. You don't really need athletic bodies or like a very strong cardio or any kind of complicated technical training. You can achieve a lot by just changing your mindset. If you think that's easy, if you think you can do it, you can do it.  

Jessea:    00:41:02    And that was almost like discovering some kind of superpower that I didn't know I had. And then I just got very excited about more training, more practice and see where either will lead me to, I had no set goals or specific competitions or results I need to achieve. I was just curious about what is possible with the body that I have. And for quite a long time I kept telling people, I was like, I just felt I learned something about me that is more than any teacher in my previous 20 years of school has taught me about me. And that was very powerful. And I think this sport is a way where it's kind of like a little simulator, just a couple minutes you can test yourself, change your mindset, just test yourself, observe the result and then you'll have the result of how did that mindset serve you in just a couple of minutes.  

Jessea:    00:42:10    Whereas I think in life we don't often see the result of how you put your mindset if you were consistent until quite a long time after, right? Could be weeks, could be months, could be years. And I was just amazed by that little sort of like mindset simulation experiment. But then in free diving the best measure is time or depth or distance. So we can compete on how long you can hold your breath, how far you can go on one breath horizontally in a swimming pool or how deep you can go in the ocean vertically with one breath. And in the ocean there's a bit more technique related to equalizing the ear pressure direction wise and all of that too. But if you practice and you have the right mindset and you will just feel it's a breeze to improve to achieve the next level, it doesn't feel like it is more intense, harder work. It's almost contrary to the other sports where the more relaxed you are, the more intuitive you are with your mind and body, the better you will go. So that's a very special thing about free diving.  

Matt:    00:43:27    You are now a free diving instructor and so when students come into your class, how do you teach them what you're describing here to sort of connect with that superpower within each person that maybe they don't know that they have? How do you teach that to a class of new prospective free divers? What are some of the exercises, whether they're mental or otherwise that you lead people through to try to get in touch with that and tap into things that they don't even know they're capable of?  

Jessea:    00:44:06    I get different kinds of students, it really depends on what they are coming in for initially, but then I can guide them to where I see values in free diving as well, right? So very common, I have different types of students. One is they're spear fishermen already they're already in ocean hunting and they just wanted to dive deeper, stay longer. They have some technique but we can help them to get better streamlining and some technique for safety. It's just better to have a proper safety practice so that there's no accident prevented, at least minimize risk. And then there are students who are interested in seeing animals and relax in the water and just enjoy, have a good time. And students want pictures. They really feel like this flowy and then the kind of marine environment gives that very graceful sense in the photo only, I would say really rarely students come into the class thinking about what mental benefits or anything beyond just a experience there may be to discover.  

Jessea:    00:45:20    It's the same reason I went into the class. So I didn't go into the class thinking, oh I'm gonna learn something so powerful about me. I just wanted to be able to dive with proficient skills and know where is the safety limit, at what point I need to turn around to the surface. But I've had students who messaged me on Christmas saying like, Hey Jesse, since the free diving class I've quit smoking, quit drinking, I no longer go out at night, hang out for long hours. I just find it's more peaceful to do breath work, stretching and I've got a yoga mat in my office now <laugh>. And he felt like it was a lifestyle change. I really appreciate that. I'm not saying like everybody who practice freedom needs to like quit smoking or drinking, which that's not a direct consequence of that practice. It's just making someone more aware of what they are feeling in the body and what they can do with their body.  

Jessea:    00:46:17    It's really about being the owner of your lifestyle and then you can actually change how you feel about certain things. A simple example, whole breath. Naturally you'll feel suffocating, right? Naturally doesn't feel good. But if you relax into it, if you are mentally just take a back seat and being an observer and suddenly what you thought was uncomfortable, it's no longer uncomfortable and just feels pleasant and familiar sometimes and easy. And therefore a lot of the things we find hard in life may not be actually hard except for the thoughts actually you put on it yourself. So it kind of links to the other from breath hold practice links to the other lifestyle things as well. And I really like to teach student on individual levels. So I used to do these group classes where it was more like a standard curriculum and you do skills A, B, C, D, E, F G and you finished this quiz and then we gave you a certification card.  

Jessea:    00:47:16    I did that for about two and a half years and I just realized I don't get as good of a thrill out of seeing the change in my student other than they get certified and I feel more connected with student on individual level to know what they need. So then now I pretty much only do one-to-one private coaching classes. And right now I have a student who is very special to my heart and he read about my teaching philosophy and he reached out to me, he called me and he says, I'm 82 years old, I have terminal cancer, don't worry about that. But I just really enjoy free diving and I'm not very good at it. I can't hold my breath very long. But the best sensation I ever felt in my life is when I'm under water holding my breath and being weightless and I just wanted to be able to experience more of that in my life.  

Jessea:    00:48:15    Could you help me with that? And ever since I've just been doing weekly or monthly touch base with him whenever I have time and he's feeling good. And then we would do some exercise online and then I met up with him in Hawaii as well. We did some ocean training together, got some better gear <laugh>, fixed some details in a wetsuit and got him best dive wetsuit as well. And we're still in conversation. He is getting better and having better results. And I've taught students also at different age groups, probably like between 12 and seventies, right? But he is <laugh> the most senior student I have so far. But he is looking for exactly what I really want to teach. That's why I feel there's a special connection there.  

Matt:    00:49:05    That's so amazing. Well I also wanna ask you for your reflections on peak performance because it's one thing to be the best in your class or to be better than a number of your contemporaries, but to be the best in the world is an entirely different thing. To be breaking world records and winning 15 gold medals and being ranked in number one female all around free diver is an entirely another level of an accomplishment. And I wanna ask, when you think back about that journey to getting to that level of excellence in your chosen sport, your chosen area, what reflections or tips do you have about achieving peak performance?  

Jessea:    00:50:00    I would say sometimes doing less is more. I never completely quit my job and become a full-time free diver. I did try the different balances when I first started off, I competed first time in 2015. I was kind of like a new diver to the scene, to my first competition. I just took like a vacation for my work and when the result came back I was still progressing and doing better than I thought. I put more time in it. So I gradually shifted my work hour to less of work and more free diving. But over this duration from 15 to 19 where at in 2019 was when I had maybe only 20% of my usual work amount and the rest of it for free diving. But during this time, between 2015 and 2019, after I discovered free diving and even a little bit before that when I was still scuba diving, I just realized that I couldn't do everything.  

Jessea:    00:51:04    I just needed to be more selective with how I spend my time. I was not good at a particular hobby before that. I never had a unique skill that I can showcase in front of my friends or my classmates. And I just realized, okay, I would really like to try if I committed to one thing, one hobby, and if I just streamline my efforts and my time and energy, what would happen. So that I think just landed on diving and coincidentally free diving came into my world and coincidentally I started doing competitions before most of people from my country were actually competing. There were a few but not a lot. So that's how everything kind of just linked together. I remember that my lifestyles was very simple but so smooth and peaceful. I would just do my work and I would do my day of routine of stretching and do my training and think about diving, talk to friends about diving.  

Jessea:    00:52:04    And I felt very good during those times. I did not have other social obligations or other things on the plate, even though I'm still interested in many other things, which I'm starting to pick back up and learn other skills. I just really enjoyed that focus, those years of just being very focused and committed. Even though I wasn't training very, very hard like a professional athlete because I had almost full-time job when I started. I was needed to balance my work and I was living alone in Hawaii so I did not have a support system. So I was managing my day-to-day living situation. Everything involves in survival on island as well. Then even with that, I felt like I was just like a part-time free diver. I was able to achieve these results because I think I wasn't distracted. I was paying attention to all these details.  

Jessea:    00:52:58    But towards maybe more at the peak performance level, stress is a huge factor and before you really deal with it, first time you actually don't recognize or don't even know that you are currently being affected by stress for that peak performance, right? It's just the goal in your mind that is actually holding you back and it's almost like you don't know what you don't know. But once you've experienced it, then you recognize all these signs and you know when to take a step back and not over train or overwork. And as I said, free diving is a hugely mental sport. If your mindset is not in the right place, then the performance will not be good. So it, it is a very, very interesting experiment on that spectrum of a mind to go through these elite competitions and see how you feel and what your result will be and then adjust after that. I think sometimes it's hard to be theoretical about it and learn upfront and try to avoid all the mistakes. It's almost like you have to just do it and then make the mistake and then hopefully don't hurt yourself and just do it in a proper way and have proper safety and progressively do it and then you know what to do next time and do it better.  

Matt:    00:54:13    Jessea, you have some of the most extraordinary underwater photographs that I have ever seen in my life and you have been able to use your free diving skills and your really extended breath hold ability and everything else to do some incredible underwater things. The first thing I want to ask you about is some of these underwater modeling pictures where you are wearing these gorgeous, extraordinary elegant flowing dresses and you're under the water on the bottom and you're being photographed modeling these dresses underwater. I mean this is some of the most incredible stuff I've ever seen. I'm definitely gonna put a link in the show notes cause I want folks to go and look at these pictures cuz they're absolutely extraordinary. But can you start talking about some of those experiences and what that was all about?  

Jessea:    00:55:13    I would say underwater modeling with dresses is probably harder than competitive free diving. <laugh>, some of these photo shoots are incredibly terrifying. I remember there was one shoot with a designer outfit that's equivalent of two queen size sheets of fabric and I was being planted on a sandy patch amongst all the coral heads with heavily weighted belts so that I'm not floating up. I had to display the dress and not able to use my arms to move or swim or even to balance and not seeing anything because I didn't have a mask and I was only being fed by another support scuba divers, divers secondary regulator. So the only thing I could do was just nod my head if I was feeling okay. I no my head if I was not feeling okay, I'm not my head if I need oxygen, I no my head if I don't want oxygen anymore, I not my head.  

Matt:    00:56:14    <laugh>This picture though is absolutely unbelievable and they know that you can hold your breath for up to eight minutes and so they know that you can model the dress and stay there. But you're saying that when you do it like that and you don't have any goggles on and you don't have a mask or anything else, you can't even see, you lose your sensory perception about what's around you when you're actually in that moment.  

Jessea:    00:56:39    Yeah, the eyes cannot focus. Um, being naked in the water, you can see shapes in that shoot. There were about 2030 reef sharks surrounding me all the time. I can see shapes moving <laugh>. I cannot see any person or any gesture or anybody's face and just pretty much see blur and then they wanna make sure they're putting someone in that position that that person's not gonna panic on the water and it was a completely very vulnerable position of loss, of total control. Right. So everything is totally dependent on the people around me. I think that's harder than competitive free diving.   

Matt:    00:57:15    Yeah, It's unbelievable. I mean this is one of the most extraordinary pictures I've ever seen cuz you have sharks swimming around you and you are in this enormous flowing, elegant dress and you appear to be just standing there on the bottom of the ocean wearing this amazing dress with sharks swimming around you. But you're saying sort of behind the scenes you obviously have no oxygen so you can't breathe. You're holding your breath and you can't see and you have no sensory sort of experience <laugh> and so you're just standing there. So that is absolutely remarkable, but people have to see this picture. So we are gonna put a link up in the show notes to this, but you've done some other ones as well. There was one where you were underneath the water on the bottom of the ocean as well and you're playing an instrument and you're in a different dress. Can you explain what that one was?  

Jessea:    00:58:07    That was a photo shoot I did with my good friend an older photographer videographer Ping. We wanted to showcase some Chinese element in the photo shoot at the time in 2016 when we did that shoot, there were only western dresses, wedding dresses, things like that on the water. And we thought, we found to do stage a Chinese background with something unique. So we shipped a string instrument called Guzheng from China and then the traditional Chinese woman's dress. We were in Rainbow River in Florida with some currents so that the dress in my hair with flow, there's just the two of us. We were thinking about how could we make it look nice and beautiful. It was so difficult to actually make the instrument and me in the right position at the same time cuz the current was strong pushing everything. So we had to brainstorm and we found some fishing line and we tied weights on the bottom of the fishing line. So we were letting this instrument float midwater stationary while I swim up current and go underwater and then drift with the current across the bottom with a river bed that's like a big grassy field. And then as I'm drifting over this instrument, I've got one and a half second to pose this shoot in that position before I'm drifting away from the instruments. And then we did that just multiple times until we got it right <laugh>.  

Matt:    00:59:50    That is unbelievable. These pictures are completely insane. I've literally never seen anything like this. Alright, we are gonna pause here and call at the end of part one. And by the way folks, if you're interested in learning more about the Remote Year Program that Jesse and I are currently traveling on, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes. And if you've been listening to recent Maverick show episodes, you know Dr. Aprile Andelle, you know Alondo Brewington, you know Tammer Abiyu, and they're all traveling together with me and Jessea on this Remote Year Program. None of us knew each other before the trip. We all know each other very well now. And that's what Remote Year does. They put together itineraries that are either four months or 12 months and then they bring a community together. We've got about 25 location independent professionals in our community.  

Matt:    01:00:42    And then you travel the world together. You live in a different city each month. And so if that sounds interesting to you, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes that will give you a $100 credit towards your first remote year program. If you use the link in the show notes that is gonna be there as well as links to everything else that we have discussed and mentioned in this episode. It'll all be at one place. Just go to themaverickshow.com and go to the show notes for this episode and please remember to subscribe to the podcast and tune in next week to hear the conclusion of my interview with Jesse Lou. Goodnight everybody.  

Outro:    01:01:21    Be sure to visit the show notes page  at themaverickshow.com for direct links to all the books, people and resources mentioned in this episode. You'll find all that and much more at themaverickshow.com.  

Kristin:    01:01:35    I hope you enjoyed today's guest episode of the Maverick Show Podcast hosted by our friend Matt Bowles. To listen to part two of this conversation, head over to the link in the show notes at badassdigitalnomads.com or go to themaverickshow.com and look up episode 215. That's episode 215. And also make sure to leave Matt a podcast review if you like this episode, and tell him that you came over from Badass Digital Nomads.

And remember, we have a special Father's Day deal going on right now with Travel Pro. Use the link in the show notes to get 15% off on a gift for that special guy in your life who loves to travel or use it on yourself. No judgment. That sale ends on June 18th and that also includes free shipping a and hassle-free returns, just in case. Have a great day, morning, evening, wherever you are in the world, and look forward to seeing you again next week.