Photo by: Niccolo Stevens
CEBU CITY, Philippines— To breathe with ease under any circumstance is the key to beautiful and peaceful well-being.
The simple gesture of inhaling and exhaling takes us to a place we don’t often visit, a place of peace and serenity.
This Women’s Month let us celebrate this talented and amazing lady from Moalboal, Cebu who can take us into the deep blue via freediving and to the blossom of calm and tranquility through yoga.
Christine Armie Marquez, 33, freediver and yoga instructor in Moalboal shows how beautiful life is, be it underwater and on land.
Marquez is a nurse by profession but heeded a totally different call in 2015.
That’s to start her freediving and yoga journey.
“Freediving to me is a form of Yoga where you are in a deep flow of meditation and it literally makes me feel completely free, floating in that fluid environment that is nourishing and vitalizing. Sometimes, I feel like we are often distracted by our superficial culture and materialistic desires that sometimes we lose touch with the depths of our soul, those we love and the natural world around us,” she said.
Freediving and yoga share common denominators, that is to focus on the good and ease your mind.
“In my own experience, Yoga and Freediving ask you to work in uncomfortable areas. It so happens that going to a place of discomfort is the key to growth. It gives us the chance to learn to control the mind and begin to dive deeply into life. Both mental and physical practices help you create awareness. It brings us to a mindful state in which our brain is relaxed but focused. It benefits the mind and body on a number of different levels and even heals what’s broken,” she added.
Women often than not are perceived to be the weaker gender but through the years, women refused to make this perception linger.
Marquez believes that in freediving and yoga, women can feel more empowered and confident.
“To me, a woman is powerful when she knows her own worth and is not threatened by other women and does not feel inferior to men. Through practicing Yoga and Freediving, I have grown to be more comfortable in who I am and so can they,” she said.
Marquez holds yoga classes in Moalboal and in other neighboring towns and has a national record of freediving for 36 meters deep.
Breathing is powerful and so are you, ladies. Dive into the unknown and know yourselves a little deeper every day. /rcg