BJ Griffin is a musician and freediver from Virginia Beach. Freediving is where you hold your breath and dive deep underwater to explore the ocean. For BJ, freediving has drastically impacted his life. It's improved his health and lung capacity. It's helped him develop a meditation practice, and it's even influenced his life as an artist.
BJ Griffin is a musician and freediver from Virginia Beach. Freediving is where you hold your breath and dive deep underwater to explore the ocean. For BJ, freediving has drastically impacted his life. It's improved his health and lung capacity. It's helped him develop a meditation practice, and it's even influenced his life as an artist.
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BJ Griffin:
Diving changed the way I write music. Diving helped me connect better to my deeper self, my highest self. That enlightenment helped me go deeper into my music.
(singing)
Shelby Stanger:
That beautiful voice belongs to BJ Griffin, a musician and freediver from Virginia Beach. A few years ago, BJ's life completely changed when his friend introduced him to freediving. If you're unfamiliar with this sport, freediving is where you hold your breath and dive deep underwater to explore the ocean. For BJ, freediving has drastically impacted his life. It's improved his health and lung capacity. It's helped him develop a meditation practice, and it's even influenced his life as an artist. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living an REI Co-op Studios production.
BJ Griffin works as a professional cellist and singer. And a few years ago he also became a video artist. He and his friend Andrew started using a GoPro to film stunning clips of BJ freediving. In the videos, sunlight gleams through cerulean blue waters as BJ dances near coral reefs and rock formations. He wears flowing bright colors, and sometimes he even comes face to face with sea creatures like sharks, seahorses, turtles, and even dolphins. BJ pairs the videos with music and sound design to help portray a positive message or meditative vibe. These videos have gone viral, allowing BJ to share his love of freediving, and in turn, they've shifted the way people think about the sport. BJ Griffin, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
BJ Griffin:
Hello. Thanks for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
You are a really interesting, fascinating, exciting guy to talk to. I watched one of your Instagram videos, and I think my whole team decided that we could watch that every morning and we'd get pumped up for our day.
BJ Griffin:
Thanks so much.
Shelby Stanger:
So, your wild idea is to really use freediving as a form of meditation to bring inner peace and invite others to join you in this practice. And it's wild for a lot of reasons. But first, how did you get into freediving and scuba diving and find your love of water?
BJ Griffin:
My goodness. I got into freediving first back in 2019, before the pandemic. My girlfriend at the time and I took a trip down to this place called the Devil's Den. For some reason, I was obsessed with this place that had this crystal-clear waters, and there was this energetic attraction to this place. I've always been a swimmer; I've always been a fish in the water, but I was just like, "I have to go there." So we took a trip, and we drove all the way down to Florida from Virginia Beach. And I got to this place; it's a spring, and I didn't really know much about what a spring was at that point, but I got there, and it was this magical cave you walk down into, and it's this prehistoric-looking place, and then there's this crystal-clear water. And the first time I touched the water, I just felt so much beautiful healing energy from the springs. And I remember diving for the first time, and I just felt so free, and you can't really put it to words how peaceful I felt.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm looking up the Devil's Den. Wait, it's a spring. What does that even mean? Do you walk into a cave?
BJ Griffin:
Yeah. The spring system is a part of the aquifer. It's like a very large underwater system of fresh water that comes up from the earth. There's so many in Florida. And then, after I'd visited the Devil's Den, I went down to visit my good buddy, Andrew, and he actually moved to Crystal River, Florida, where there's a lot of springs in that area. And him and his girlfriend at the time took me out to this place called Three Sisters, where there's three different spring systems. And I just remember swimming with the fishes and diving, and he had been into freediving, and his girlfriend was a mermaid, and it was just so magical.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, wait, back up. You said your friend's girlfriend was a mermaid. What does that mean?
BJ Griffin:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
She dresses up as a mermaid?
BJ Griffin:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No. Well, she's a real mermaid.
Shelby Stanger:
Or she wears the thing?
BJ Griffin:
She's a mermaid. Mermaids are real. No, no. She puts on a tail. She had a mermaid tail. And it was my first time in the spring, and I just remember one of the dives where I fell in love with freediving was I dove down and... She puts on the rubber mermaid tail. She works for a place called the Mertailor.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, this is a thing.
BJ Griffin:
Yeah, yeah, it's a big thing.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, so this is the thing. where people wear mermaid tails, but it's also pretty liberating and cool.
BJ Griffin:
Yeah, it's a whole culture. Yes, mermaids are real. I consider myself a mermaid.
Shelby Stanger:
I love it.
BJ Griffin:
It's a whole energetic feeling. Just a freeing feeling in the water.
Shelby Stanger:
For a small subset of people, freediving and mermaid culture go hand in hand. There are some freedivers that wear a mermaid tail while they're diving. Honestly, at first I didn't get it, but it makes sense. freediving can have this sense of mythical magic to it. BJ doesn't wear a tail, but he is part of this mermaid subculture, and I can understand why. If you watch his videos, you'll see how naturally he moves under the water.
When did you first freedive? Was that 2019? The very first time?
BJ Griffin:
Technically. Because it was submersion and I was holding my breath, but in 2020 is when I got trained in freediving in Florida, and I got my level one in PADI for freediving, and that's when I learned enlightenment through apnea. And I connected to freediving with such a... It was kind of unexpected. I didn't really think that it would be a mental health practice for me. But once I learned about connecting to myself, and breathing, and meditating, and really bringing my body into that parasympathetic state, all the benefits from that and learning freediving just exploded into this whole new lifestyle for me because there were so many things about freediving that carried into the rest of my life. I was like, "I can use this meditation and this calm that I find while freediving and bring it to all the other difficult things in my life."
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me some more about that. Do you have a story of how you used freediving into the rest of your life?
BJ Griffin:
Yeah. Actually, I almost died from COVID in 2021. And that was like-
Shelby Stanger:
You did? Wow.
BJ Griffin:
-the beginning of... So once I survived that, I was like, "You know what? I am going to live exactly how I want to live. There's this crazy pandemic going on, but I'm going to be safe and do all the things I always wanted to do." So that's when I started. I started flying to Florida every week. As a musician, I work on the weekends, but I started to fly in Florida during the week. There was these cheap flights for like 25, 30 bucks to go from Virginia Beach to Florida, and I booked them for the whole year, basically. And I started going to Florida and freediving. So I started training, and there were definitely some deficits in my lung capacity and things like that. And the training from freediving really helped me get back to my normal lung, even better than my normal lung capacity.
Shelby Stanger:
Were you outdoorsy as a kid? Does anybody in your family dive? What do they think of this?
BJ Griffin:
I was not outdoorsy as a kid. I've been scared of bugs most of my life. Sometimes I forget that freediving actually was something that helped me get through that because most of the spots that I love freediving are in the woods somewhere. And it was tough. I've always loved the ocean, but the woods and bugs used to be a big struggle for me. Getting closer to myself and really elevating my mental health helped me face my fears. So yeah, I was not outdoorsy. My parents weren't really outdoorsy. I had never camped until I actually started freediving. Freediving is the reason I started camping. And now you can't get me out of the woods. I love the woods. I love bugs. It's crazy.
Shelby Stanger:
Ever since recovering from COVID, BJ has taken his freediving practice very seriously. He does breathwork training that has increased his lung capacity and changed the way his body consumes oxygen. BJ can hold his breath underwater for up to two and a half minutes. He's been certified in many levels of the sport, and it's taken him to Thailand, the Maldives, Mexico, and Dubai. In each location, he does different types of dives. Some are specifically for training, and some are just for fun. On these fun dives, BJ doesn't wear a mask, and he focuses on dancing and exploring with the rhythm of the ocean. Like most freedivers, BJ holds a weighted rope called a dive line as he goes down between 20 and 80 feet. The dive line guides freedivers underwater, helping them navigate as they come back up to the surface.
Can you take me through a freedive, like prep to actually getting to the ocean or spring or diving hole, whatever you're doing, and then what you see, and then what happens after? Just take me through the whole thing.
BJ Griffin:
Normally, we have to hike through the woods to our favorite diving hole, and we have to get all of our wetsuits and things and our weights. And the dive line is like an inner tube with a 25-pound weight and a rope attached to it. And we have to put that out into the water. And we have to make sure all of our stuff, all of our goggles, and our GoPro, and our mask and snorkel are safe inside the buoy. I sometimes wear a wetsuit, sometimes I don't. A lot of the places I dive, the water is 72 degrees, and for me, that's not too cold. But most people, they're like, "Ooh, freezing." But I have a natural built-in wetsuit with my body fat, so it's easier for me to go with no wetsuit. So then I stretch my sinuses out, I stretch my body, I stretch my neck.
Shelby Stanger:
What the heck is a sinus stretch?
BJ Griffin:
Oh, stretch your sinuses. It's really like your eustachian tube and your sinuses. Everything's connected. Because I had some problems with equalizing, which is when you dive down, you have to equalize the pressure and your ears to match what the pressure is going down. I started doing some sinus stretching. You stretch your eustachian tube.
Shelby Stanger:
Just a note here; if you're unfamiliar, the eustachian tube is a small passageway that runs from the middle of the ear to the back of the nose and throat. This tiny tube helps regulate ear pressure, which is super important for divers because the pressure gets more intense the deeper they go.
BJ Griffin:
Like, kind of stretching your neck and getting all that loose kind of pulls your eustachian tube open, and then you kind of pull your sinuses, kind of get your sinuses loose and ready to equalize better.
Shelby Stanger:
You can't see us, but we're basically massaging our sinuses in a way and spreading them open with our fingers manually.
BJ Griffin:
And then sometimes I do a jump in and just get my body used to the cold. And that's another opportunity to meditate. When you're holding your breath under the water, it's really important to be as gentle as you can because as you go deeper, you get to one bar, that's 33 feet; two bars is 66 feet; the pressure doubles, and then triples, and quadruples the deeper you go. So it's really important that you be really gentle with your lungs because, as you're going deeper, your lungs are just getting smaller. Some people, if they exert too much force under the water, they can get a lung squeeze or rip something. So it's really important while you're diving. And that's why I'm always thinking, "Okay, be calm." Especially being a bigger person diving. When you get down to the bottom of the rope, you turn and then you come back up, and then you get back to the surface, and your dive buddy is usually your safety, and you take three inhalations, and then you have to signal with your three fingers in a circle and say, I'm okay. And that's freediving.
Shelby Stanger:
When we come back, BJ talks about how he creates his stunning videos, how the sport has influenced his work as an artist, and the energy he brings to freediving.
When musician and freediver BJ Griffin goes diving with his friend Andrew, they take a GoPro with them. They've been making videos together for several years. And at this point, filming these clips has become a finely tuned process. Before they get into the water, BJ thinks about the message he wants to convey and chooses bright, flowing clothes that will showcase his moves. These breathtaking clips have gone viral, with millions of views on Instagram and TikTok.
BJ Griffin:
The response to my freediving videos has been really... It was really surprising. I shared a video on Instagram of me doing a dive at one of my favorite places, Ginnie Springs in Florida, and it just went viral. And I had no clue it would. And then I realized people have never seen someone that looks like me being overweight. There's not a lot of plus-sized people; there's not a lot of African-American people diving, and that was a shock to them. And I've gone viral for some music videos before, but being influential in that way, I got so many positive comments about, "Oh my goodness, this is so freeing." I mean, I got DMs and voice messages from people crying, saying that they felt so free watching my videos and how much it inspired them to go be free, especially during COVID when people were really struggling with everything.
And anybody can do this. It's not just the people that look the same, the people that have historically done it. That's something I wanted to share with the world and everybody, especially people who you wouldn't normally see on Instagram freediving or doing extreme water sports. So, during that time when I started sharing that, I realized was therapy for me. And then I felt this sense. I said, "Oh my goodness, this is a platform. This is an opportunity." And I realized how important that was for me to spread that joy and encourage people to find whatever it is, freediving, skydiving, surfing, whatever it is, find a place to really find yourself, and raise your consciousness, and dive deeper into yourself. Because that's what changes the world, is when we're better people for ourselves, we can be better people for each other.
Speaker 2:
So how did you start making these videos?
BJ Griffin:
My family gave me a GoPro for Christmas one year. And my buddy Andrew and I, we would just be freediving, and he started taking videos of me just doing fun dives. Him and I will set up, and we'll look at a scenery and figure out what kind of dive I'm going to do. And he said, "You know, you should go into the sun rays here." And I was like, "Okay, cool. I'm going to go down." I'll tell him my dive plan. And usually, when I'm fun diving, I don't like wearing a mask. Most freedivers dive with a mask and snorkel. And for me, I have a deeper connection to the water when I open my eyes in the water. And I actually didn't realize that most people couldn't see well underwater. I developed this sense of sight underwater for some reason. So I'll do a dive, and I'll kind of really channel the energy that I'm going through, and I'll dive down and just flow.
I'm not too much of a dancer. I do love dancing, but for some reason I developed this movement underwater to communicate what I'm going through while diving because I want people to feel that. I want people to see that there's this freedom. And that's what I feel when I dive; it's free. So I ended up moving or twirling. I have this famous twirl that people talk about. I didn't realize it until after I watched my videos back-to-back. I was like, "Oh yeah, I do twirl for some reason." Then I started wearing more flowy things because I love how it looked in the water. Then I realized, "Oh my gosh, this became a whole art piece." So everything became more intentional. I don't consider myself a tactile artist. As a musician, I was like, "Oh, I can't draw." But this kind of art for me, I was like, "Oh, this is dancing mixed with the vision, mixed with, really, sport diving, and just this energetic message."
So it became very intentional. And then my outfits, I really love colorful things. I really am into Ganesh, and I had a Ganesh shirt, so I just dive in it. So then, once I realized I wanted to make more videos, I had this, "Okay, what am I going to wear next?" So it got into, "Okay, I need to develop a whole underwater line of outfits that I wanted to wear." I use compression shorts mostly, and then I have these shirts that kind of represent the energy I'm going for during the dive that I'm trying to convey. But yeah, Andrew always has been the videographer most of the videos, and he's kind of the unsung hero here because he's usually holding his breath longer than me. I can see pretty well underwater, but I can't see everything, so he'll help me be safe, and he'll say, "You should do that again, and twirl a little bit slower." So he's kind of like my director. It's been really awesome.
Shelby Stanger:
Once Andrew finishes recording, he gives the footage to BJ. From there, BJ chooses music or spoken word to accompany the clip. His first freediving video to go viral actually featured one of BJ's original songs, which was great exposure for him. BJ's Diving practice has also inspired his songwriting. When he is underwater, his creative juices start to flow.
BJ Griffin:
I wrote a song from a dive, kind of inspired by a dive. This song is called Let Your Worries Float Away. (singing)
Shelby Stanger:
I love it. I love it. I'm curious, how does music in your diving go hand in hand?
BJ Griffin:
Oh my goodness. First of all, diving changed the way I write music. Diving helped me connect better to my deeper self, my highest self, and that enlightenment helped me go deeper into my music. There's been a few songs that I will write right after I dive.
Shelby Stanger:
So when you're diving, you get inspiration for songs. But the problem with diving is it's not like you have a pen and paper.
BJ Griffin:
Right.
Shelby Stanger:
Underwater. So how do you do that?
BJ Griffin:
Yeah. After I dive and I really get inspired, I'll actually hear a melody underwater. I was in Tulum, Mexico. The scenery at this cenote was just like a church. It was this huge cavern, all the stalactites or stalagmites. I cannot remember which one they are. But I dove there, and I did some fun dives, and did some training. But then right afterwards, I was like, "I need to get to my phone." When I was diving, I heard melodies. It's never like, "Oh, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write this type of song." Usually, I'll be inspired by something, and the melody will just come to me. So that's what happened after this particular dive, and a lot of the diving that's inspired my music. And I'll have to get out real quick and go to my phone and record it because it's so hard to remember it sometimes. But that diving has really enhanced the way I feel music.
Shelby Stanger:
These two passions in BJ's life play off of and influence each other. For BJ, music is a very communal practice. He loves playing with people from all walks of life. He's applying that love of community to diving too. BJ and his friend Andrew started an organization called Dive for Peace that brings people together to camp, freedive, play music, and heal together. One of their core beliefs is that everyone can freedive, no matter their race, gender, or body size. BJ and Andrew have built an inclusive community of water enthusiasts who are all passionate about personal growth, healing, and connecting with the natural world.
If you do anything after listening to this episode, please let it be going to BJ's Instagram @bjgriffinmusic and watch his videos. I promise you will not be disappointed. Once again, his Instagram handle is @bjgriffinmusic, that's B-J-G-R-I-F-F-I-N music. To learn more about Dive for Peace, find them on Instagram @diveforpeace or@diveforpeace.com.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. And our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow this show, rate it, and take the time to write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.