The modern world pulls our attention relentlessly outward.
Notifications, algorithms, and compressed schedules shape how we think, feel, and move. Often leaving little room to simply be. Technology was once a tool. Increasingly, it now dictates our rhythms, focus, and emotional tone.
Yet beneath the noise, a choice remains. To pause. To notice and to return inward. To reconnect with body and breath, the earth beneath our feet and the ocean that still teaches us patience, timing, and restraint through our embodiment in its swirling currents.
When challenged and stressed by our environment our return to centre can be supported through the use of Positive Mental Anchors (Anchors)). These are internal reference points that allow us to meet pressure, uncertainty, and turbulence with clarity and calm rather than panic. Anchors are one way we remain connected to our humanness when the currents of chaos find a grip upon us.
What are positive mental anchors?
Positive mental anchors are not affirmations or positive thinking strategies. They are repeatable internal cues. Sensations, rhythms, images, or meanings that stabilise the nervous system when stress overwhelms our cognition.
As stress rises, the body shifts more toward a state of survival:
- Breathing becomes shallow and chest-driven
- Vision narrows
- Time distorts
- Sounds are excluded
- Decision-making degrades
When instinctive fighting or fleeing alone would see us burn through energy, oxygen, clarity, and time, anchors preserve them. This understanding is not only theoretical. It is forged through lived experience, consequence, and training.
Forged in the ocean
In freediving, spearfishing, and heavy surf, urgency often masquerades as intelligence. The instinct is to rush, when in reality, restraint is what will keep us alive.
My anchors in these environments are simple:
- Mentally scanning my body checking in with its parts and feeling the water pressing against it.
- Reducing excess sensory input by closing the eyes (if it’s safe to do so) or shifting my gaze momentarily from what could be overwhelming stimuli (threat).
- Returning to familiar rhythm by using breath and movement control to settle my mind
- Trusting my training and experience. Forged by repetitive programming and practise
Anchors don’t make conditions easier but the do enable you to respond more calmly and more rationally. I learned this lesson violently at twenty-one while surfing Pipeline on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Multiple hold-downs, minimal air, panic rising fast. I had no anchors then, only instinct and that instinct demanded force. When, what I actually needed was patience, restraint, and trust in a process. Luck intervened that day, but specific training would have given me more choices, much sooner and likely avoided the trauma that I carried for years to follow.
Anchors beyond the ocean
Years later, as a police officer, I found myself laying in the dirt taking cover behind a not so big rock, as a suspect discharged a firearm in my general direction. The same physiological cascade appeared tunnel vision, distorted time, urgency without clarity. The difference this time, was training. A simple rhythmic breathing anchor that I had developed whilst shooting on the pistol range and during scenario based training events, enabled me to slow my internal pace enough for rational decisions to replace fear-driven reactions.
Later still, working thousands of kilometres offshore as a Maritime Tactical Officer, anchors became non-negotiable. Wild seas, volatile weather, and high-risk operations reinforced a simple truth. Stress does not care who you are or what authority you hold and when all else failed, rhythm, breath, and presence are what returned me to calm and clarity.
Over time, these lessons evolved into what is now Apnea Survival. A breath and stress-control education system grounded in real-world consequence, not just theory.
Jason – Boarding operations somewhere in the Indian Ocean
How humans anchor under stress
Through years of operational experience and teaching, I’ve noticed four common responses to stress emerge and how each required different anchoring traits.
- The Over-Controller – Strong mind but panics when structure faulters.
Lesson: trust the body to lead by developing a repeatable process you can follow. Reinforce with repeated training. - The Physical Animal – Strong body but reacts quickly instead of taking time to calmly respond.
Lesson: efficiency over force, avoid trying to muscle things out. Remain composed find the rhythm in a situation and use self-talk to direct a calm response. - The Emotional Drifter – Sensitive and deeply intuitive but tends to overthink / dramatise things.
Lesson: stability precedes depth, use physical cues to calm the mind. - The Silent Operator – calm exterior but allows pressure boil and delays taking action.
Lesson: awareness prevents collapse, recognise the escalating urgency and take action sooner.
No type is better or worse. They are simply different, with require different methods to meet stress.
Remembering what we already know
Positive Mental Anchors are not a promise of control. They are a remembering of the intelligence beneath our thought. Of the body that knew how to breathe before it learned how to panic. Of the deeper rhythms that existed long before algorithms and urgency. In the water, cold, depth, pressure, and heat, we meet something ancient. A threshold where performance culture dissolves and truth remains. Where restraint becomes our strength. Where patience becomes our power and where presence becomes survival. Anchors do not remove intensity. They teach us how to sit inside it without being consumed. To anchor is to remain human in inhuman conditions. To meet chaos with intelligence responses and stand steady in the current without losing your shape.
I’ve only skimmed the surface of Anchors in this blog. If you’re keen to go deeper, check out our upcoming Monthly Medium Newsletter where I’ll be diving deeper into the topic,
May you continue to explore the depths of stillness and carry the lessons of breath control into every challenge and moment of growth.
Breathe fully.
Anchor intentionally.
Be your own dolphin.
Yours in calm stoke,
Jason