By Adam Mountain, Co-Deputy Sports Editor
Having not followed the typical career path of a German and Italian UoB graduate, Sara Campbell’s story is an incredible tale of resilience, empowerment, and spirituality. Now running her Discover Your Depths programme, Sara speaks very openly with Epigram about the good and bad times, and how she found freediving to be the ultimate teacher of living a happy, fulfilled, and peaceful life.
A self-described ‘small and not athletic’ individual who ‘always came last,’ Sara’s rise to freediving stardom came as a surprise to many, including herself. ‘These world records were so out of nowhere! I mean, what is the most random thing you could be good at? Holding your breath under water!’ But her journey to success was far from easy.
After an unfulfilling and ‘conventional’ career in PR, difficult relationships, and a miscarriage, Sara was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a stress-related disorder causing severe abdominal pain. Prescribed a lifelong course of steroids, Sara rejected the prognosis, believing she could find and address the root cause of her illness. Already an avid yogi (a yoga enthusiast for those unaware), she was encouraged by her acupuncturist to visit Dahab, Egypt, in 2005 on a yoga retreat. Sceptical at first, the trip proved transformative.
‘After years of self-abuse, I realised I hadn’t been very nice to myself. Whether it’s illness, a relationship, or people that have had really tough childhoods, do they stay stuck in that victim mentality, or do they actually recognise that they are a free agent? […] We see something and it feels right, and for me I had that moment on a horse three days after I arrived in Dahab on the Red Sea.’
Determined to change her life, Sara left PR and London behind and returned to Dahab in 2006 to teach kundalini yoga, a practice incorporating breathwork. It was from this mastery of her breath that led a friend to encourage her to try freediving. However, before Sara could attempt her first dive, the Dahab bombings in April 2006 shook the area, killing at least 24 people and injuring another 80.
Deeply impacted by the tragedy, Sara has previously recalled divers being sent into the sea to find body parts, while she and a friend set up a private rooftop space where people could come and talk about their experiences. In the aftermath of this Sara says, ‘I realised that I was going into a state of depression’, so to try and break out of this I went diving for the first time.
‘I could take that heavy feeling and by the end of the dive fifty percent of it was gone. We went again the next day and the remaining fifty percent of that feeling was gone! I remember thinking, “Jesus! It’s only been two days”, and I’m doing something I really enjoy, so if it’s that simple to be happy I will just keep freediving.’

The rest, as they say, is history. Sara’s ascent (or rather descent) in the freediving world was meteoric. Within five weeks, she had reached a depth of 45m, closing in on the British national record. Months later, while aiming for 73m, Sara mistakenly descended to 83m after missing her rope markings to turn around. The world record at the time was 88m.
In 2007 at Dahab’s triple depth competition, Sara broke world records across all three depth disciplines – 81m in Free Immersion (FIM, divers descend and ascend by pulling themselves with a vertical rope), 90m in Constant Weight (CWT, divers use a mono-fin to swim without touching the rope), and 56m in Constant Weight No Fins (CNF, divers do not wear any fins, nor are they allowed to touch the rope) – within 48 hours, despite only having trained for nine months. Days later, she won gold at her first World Championship in Sharm El Sheikh, defeating freediving legend Natalia Molchanova.
Following her mother’s death in 2008, Sara took a break but returned to freediving in 2009. She reclaimed the CWT world record with a 96m dive at Vertical Blue in the Bahamas. Yet despite this achievement, the joy she initially found in freediving had dimmed. ‘I was caught up in the numbers game—ego, media, sponsorships. It distracted me from why I started freediving: happiness.’
Another hiatus in 2010 helped Sara realign with her purpose. Returning in 2011, she promised to dive only for joy. An unofficial world record dive of 104m that year marked a turning point. ‘It was a personal journey, mainly to recover from the grief of my mum’s death’, she explains. ‘But also to rediscover my joy, love of the ocean, and the deep spiritual experience that I know freediving can be, which I had lost in the blur of the world records.’

Many will be aware of the importance of divers equalising the pressure in their ears as they descend, or streamlining their dives to reduce energy used. But for Sara freediving requires a complete mastery of both physical skill and mental strength. ‘You’ve got your long distance runners who you can spot a mile off, or you’ve got your weightlifters’, she says. ‘But the only thing we find as a strong common denominator in freediving is mental strength, and that surprised me because I didn’t consider myself to be mentally strong.’
With this mental strength a freediver must be able to remain composed and relaxed. Admittedly, the thought of relaxing the body at 100m below sea level might seem like an impossibility to most, but Sara explains this is where the real challenge of freediving lies, ‘Freediving is a meditation. When people learn meditation, they’re training their mind to stay focused on one thing.’ She continues, ‘for me it’s observing full relaxation in the body and managing the air. That’s my single focus.’ This informs the basis of Sara’s teachings in her course, Discover Your Depths.
Now in La Palma, Spain, Sara strives to ‘help people with their life, and freediving is a metaphor for life.’ She says, ‘I take all of the wisdom from yoga, meditation and breathwork, and what I learned in the ocean. […] My work focuses on helping people have that new perspective about themselves, and to open them up to their potential.’

So what can we students learn from freediving? As it turns out, plenty. ‘You’re all at a big transition point in life,’ Sara explains. ‘For many people this is the last big educational milestone you pass through before you go into being totally self-sufficient, having a career, and looking to the future.’
‘I think a lot of people don’t question enough the path that is expected, and even if they do they haven’t considered an alternative, or think that it is not viable. I encourage everyone to walk the unconventional path, because it’s authentic and it’s theirs. Following somebody else’s dreams and expectations will cause us to miss our mark [and] remain in the fear and thinking, “but I should.”’
So for those of you under the additional pressure that comes with the uncertainty of leaving Bristol, rest assured that Sara knows the feeling. Now at a point in the university year where dissertations and final deadlines are just about within sight, feeling anxious about both the now and the future is normal. Sara’s advice shows that the path to fulfilment is rarely linear, and that, whether good or bad, the outcomes of this semester might not actually be the be-all and end-all.
As Sara discovered on that yoga retreat, what matters most is finding what brings you joy, and letting it carry you to depths you never thought possible.
Would you ever take the plunge with freediving?
Featured image: courtesy of Sara Campbell