Diving for the Feeling
Suzy Malseed and her Passion for Freediving
“The first time in my whole life I ever experienced silence was when I went underwater. Everything went quiet. I just fell in love.” — Suzy Malseed
“What’s this?”
Suzy Malseed stops short as she spots a table labeled Freediving across the room at the Auckland, New Zealand sports expo. She came here only one day after graduating from college as a way of getting to know her new city. Something about the word draws her in — even though she’s never heard of it.
“It’s going underwater and holding your breath,” says John Wright, the person manning the booth. Then he asks her a simple question that sends her plunging headfirst into a whole new world that, to this day, she hasn’t left and says she never will.
“Want to give it a try?”
“That. I’ll do that,” she says, agreeing to the offer. “That’s my thing.”
It was a knowing — and fortunately, there was a way to confirm it right away.
“Hop in the water,” Wright says, “and hold your breath as long as you can.”
Within seconds, Malseed is deep in the water, resembling a starfish with her head down and floating. Some time passes. Finally, she feels a tap on her shoulder.
“Why did you guys tell me to come up? I was still going!” she says to Wright and the rest of the No Bubbles Freediving Team. They are all staring at her, looking at her wild-eyed.
“You’ve been in there for three minutes already!” Wright says.
Malseed soon learns that a couple of the other girls had been training for months and were up to only two-and-a-half minutes under water. Three minutes — for a beginner? Unheard of.
“Everyone,” she says recalling the incident years later, “is looking at me like I’m an alien.” But shock turns to excitement and, before long, Wright is jumping into the air.
“Oh my God,” he says. “I got a good one here!”
***
That moment marked the beginning of Malseed’s passion for freediving and the first step toward her mastery of it. Today, she is a globally distinguished figure in the sport, shattering national records and proudly representing New Zealand on the world stage.
Capable of holding her breath for over six minutes, Malseed stands among the elite in a sport where every second is a battle against the limits of the human body. But while freediving is her passion, it’s also just one aspect of her multifaceted life. Beyond her freediving training, Malseed dedicates herself to mental-health research, focusing on the wellbeing of farmers and their communities. She also embraces the joys and challenges of running a farm with her family. Those who know her best will tell you: Malseed brings her enthusiasm to everything she does.
I met Malseed through our mutual friend, Steven Pressfield, who introduced us by highlighting our shared interests and suggesting she would make for a perfect On Fire profile. From her first Instagram message to me, I knew he was right. Malseed’s entire being exudes passion, whether she’s talking about art or neurodiversity or languages or research or farming.
But the thing that really lights her fire? Freediving.
Freediving is the practice of diving underwater on a single breath without the use of breathing apparatus. Instead, divers rely only on their capacity to hold their breath until resurfacing. The truth is that it’s a notoriously dangerous sport — the potential for brain damage due to the lack of oxygen is not negligible, and there are other risks too. But scientists in the peak performance community have been long fascinated by the sport. Freedivers have been playing at the edges of what the possible in the realm of breath and mind for years.
For most people (myself included), freediving sounds terrifying. The thought of holding my breath as pressure builds up in my ears and I am surrounded by blackness — with no ability to hear on top of that — makes me shudder.
But for Malseed, freediving isn’t just a sport — it’s a haven of peace. Self-diagnosed with ADHD, she finds that freediving uniquely calms her typically restless mind.
“I have such a busy mind. I have such a busy body,” she says. “That first time freediving was the first time in my whole life I ever experienced silence. Everything went quiet. I just fell in love.”
But while she fits perfectly in the water, she didn’t always fit in the world around her — and that’s where her story really starts.
“I grew up super active, super hypo,” she tells me, telling me about her upbringing in New Zealand in the 1980s. “I had so much freaking energy and was always freaking everyone out all around me. It was the sit down, shut up mantra. ‘Sit down, Susie, shut up.’” Back then, she tells me, people weren’t as understanding of learning differences.
Malseed was always drawn to sports, but despite her love of water, her family’s financial constraints meant she could never have formal swimming lessons. Her first significant encounter with competitive swimming was in junior high where she found herself outpaced by more experienced swimmers, leading to a moment of public embarrassment.
“I got absolutely smashed,” she remembers. “Everyone's laughing at me because the way I swam, there was water going everywhere. I had energy. I had passion. I had exuberance. But I had no technique.”
At thirteen, she joined the rowing team, where her physicality was seen as a strength, not a drawback.
“I got in the boat and all of a sudden, instead of hearing, ‘You're too big, you're too slow, you're too this,’ they were like, ‘You're strong.’” She started to believe it too.
Embracing her differences (or what she calls her “Suziness”), rather than being ashamed of them, inspired a newfound confidence that propelled her through high school. There she excelled in rowing, and even started to aspire to be part of the New Zealand rowing team until she faced another setback — she was told that she didn't fit the team's physical requirements.
Undeterred, Malseed carried her relentless determination into her college studies, majoring in International Business and Chinese. Yet she sensed there was a sport out there for her still — one that fully aligned with her fiery spirit and unique strengths. She just didn’t know what it was yet.
And then she went to that sports expo — and turned her head toward John Wright.
Wright didn’t just egg her on that day. He also became her coach — and within three months, she had increased her time from three minutes to up to six. She thought she had found her thing when she first encountered freediving. Now she knew it.
“Everyone’s got a thing,” she says. “Freediving is my thing. I don’t know why. I don’t know how, but everything I’ve ever done in my whole world led me to that point.”
Not everyone was as excited about Malseed’s “thing” as her — twenty years ago, even more than today, the sport was seen as extremely dangerous. Sometimes, Malseed would come up from a dive covered in mud from the bottom of the lake where she often trained, and her fellow divers would look at her like she was crazy.
“They’re like, ‘You went to the bottom?’ And I’m like, ‘You said go as far as you can go!’” she says, laughing. “I’ve just scared people my whole life.”
Malseed went on to join the first New Zealand freediving team. She trained as much as she could while still having a full-time job. After only training for under a year, she came in as the third deepest woman, coming out of nowhere to make a splash in the freediving community.
“I went from zero to a hundred,” she says.
Before long, she was competing at the highest level, joining the first ever New Zealand freediving team and setting records while also working full time at a corporate job.
She managed to balance that, but just five years after finding her passion, she came up for air — and traded freediving for family.
At first, she fell into denial when her doctor told her that she would need to give up extreme activities in order for IVF therapy to have the best chance of working. And although it took some convincing, she finally admitted that freediving just might fit on that list of extreme activities.
“I parked it because I wanted kids more than I wanted to free dive, right?” she says. “I still stand by that decision to this day.”
The IVF journey culminated in joy for Malseed and her husband, Robbie, as they welcomed twins, Max and Poppy, into their lives.
Embracing motherhood with the same fervor she brought to freediving, Malseed was soon back in the water — not in her freediving gear, but in swimming gear with her kids. She put fins on them as soon as they were old enough and gave them those swimming lessons she never got to experience as a child.
A full decade passed before she returned to the freediving scene.
“I have to be honest,” she tells me, a somber look on her face. “I did think that the world of freediving was lost to me. I thought it was gone. And the reason was that my husband was very scared. I’m a mum now. I’m a wife. It’s not all about me anymore.”
But some callings keep on ringing — and, 12 years after her last dive, she was back in the ocean after convincing her family of the safety of her sport. (Competitions are the safest way to free dive, she tells me, because the paramedics are nearby and every precaution is taken.) She returned slowly at first, with a pool competition in 2022, and then set her sights on the World Pool Championships in South Korea.
To prepare for her competitions, she swims in a pool while visualizing herself swimming in the ocean. Other freedivers told her she was crazy — the standard is to train in the ocean for months in order to prepare your body for the enormous pressure — but, as usual, she swam against the current and didn’t let that stop her.
“All the other freedivers, they all train in the ocean, right?” she says. “That's the ultimate. That's what you want to be doing. But I don't have access to that, not without walking away from my husband and my farm and our kids. Which I'll never do. I'm very committed in this life.”
But she was also committed to her craft. “I just wanted to see what I could do,” she says. “I wanted to see where my fire — my passion — would take me.”
Far, it turns out. At 46, with only a few months of training behind her, she set a New Zealand national record — an astounding 46m — in the constant weight bi-fins class at the Poseidon Depth Games in the Philippines.
But no matter how far she goes, she wants to keep it a passion, not a career.
“The sport has exploded with full-time, sponsored athletes,” she says, insisting that for her, it’s not about the records or achievements. “I think I'm having way more fun knowing that it's my special passion. Freediving is my wonderful, beautiful, amazing inspiring playground. I’ve given myself full permission to just follow my passion and enjoy.”
One day, she says, she will dive more — but never at the expense of her family or the life she’s built for herself.
“I have found a way to be a freediver, a mum, a wife, a farmer and a researcher... I think that is my real achievement,” she says. “I think I'm definitely on track for being one of the happiest freedivers in the world.”
“I’m just diving for the feeling,” she adds. “This… I’m going to do this forever.”
Takeaways
Here is one big thing I learned this week about passion, one exercise you can do to stoke your own inner fire, and one aspect of Malseed’s intense enthusiasm that rubbed off on me — and that I now want to learn more about, too!
One Lesson: Recognize That Your Passion Doesn’t Need to Be Everything
Malseed’s journey teaches us the value of balancing our passions with other aspects of life. Although she clearly has talent, her story is also a reminder that while passions enrich our lives, they don't have to define us entirely. We can pursue what we love while also embracing other roles and responsibilities.
One Exercise: Box Breathing
When we first connected, Malseed and I exchanged performance-related tips — I gave her some advice on getting started training handstands, and she gave me breath holding tips. She recommended starting with box breathing: four seconds inhale, four seconds hold. Repeat and build up to longer amounts of time. Though I don’t see myself getting into free diving anytime soon, I’m going to start incorporating this more into my day — box breathing is known to have a number of benefits, including improved concentration, lowered stress and anxiety, and better sleep.
One Curiosity: Flow and Neurodivergence
Like Malseed, I identify as neurodivergent, and her story got me wondering whether flow — a state of deep immersion and engagement in an activity — is even more important for people who typically struggle with traditional focus and attention. My research so far has shown that I might be on to something: being in a flow state, I’m learning, can provide a structure within which neurodivergent people can engage deeply with a task, often leading to enhanced concentration and productivity. Yet another reason to find that thing that makes you feel on fire.
Links
Perspective YouTube video that Malseed sent me (it’s amazing!)
Great one, Krista! "No Air" Suzy is the real thing. So glad you guys have connected!
Ahhh so much I love here - such an inspiring read and echo your curiosity on flow x neurodivergence.
"Freediving is my wonderful, beautiful, amazing inspiring playground. I’ve given myself full permission to just follow my passion and enjoy" - a message I hope sticks with all us ambitious folk.
Thank you Krista & Suzy!