FEDERICO MANA

Founder and president of Moving Limits

I wanted to become a professional basketball player, but my ankles are fragile, and also my feet were kind of unsure, so I had to say goodbye to my dreams of professionalism. I was studying optometry then. But I was young, I was twenty-five years old, and I became a trainer. It is a beautiful job that I will never stop doing. I love learning new things, experimenting them and teaching them to others. I am a disciple of methods, and I create protocols. I like protocols because they break down the complexity and go straight to the point. I also love the discipline of protocols, because, coupled with my natural talent, it has helped me to reach unimaginable goals.

I encountered freediving by chance in 1996, and seven years later I moved to Egypt and I dedicated myself to teaching freediving, yoga and to record attempts, because I wanted to prove to myself that the training protocols that I had developed actually worked. So from 2007 to 2011 I broke eight Italian records, and I remained unbeaten until 2013.

In 2013, after seven years of study, trials and errors, I finalized the Handsfree Protocol and started to apply it successfully even in remote mode. The joy in the eyes of the people who learned to equalize handsfree still fills me with pride and energy.

Today Moving Limits has grown, it is now a living community with its own identity, but it has tight boundaries and cannot reach all the people that we would like to. The Moving Limits Project arises from the desire to expand these boundaries, and to create a space of free sharing where to convey the energy and enthusiasm that feed our passion.

I am lucky I can make a living with freediving, but I have never considered it a job. My left foot has a hole in it: a Tahitiana spearpierced it during a fishing trip. I love fishing. I have two beautiful children whom I love immensely, and to whom I hope I can teach that dreams can come true.

Federico Mana - Compensazione Handsfree

Handsfree equalization

Freediving was a strong passion from the beginning, but as it happens to many, I had to deal with my ears. After every weekend at the sea followed a visit to the otorhinolaryngologist, due to more or less serious problems. In the first year I met many doctors and gathered many opinions, often suggesting surgery.

I am rather stubborn, and my ankle surgery to try and get me back to play basketball had not been successful, so I started working with wilful determination to perfect my equalizing technique. My ear problems disappeared, and I no more needed medical examinations.

I became an instructor and an athlete, and I gained excellent control of the techniques, but the real challenge for me was to understand how to transfer my awareness onto others. I could not give a name to the sensations I was feeling during the procedures, and I did not have a systemic vision of the organs involved.

I met Patrick Musimu in 2008 and I was struck by lightning: he taught me how to recognize and catalog sensations, and to create an ideal bridge with my students. I quickly walked that bridge, and in 2009 I wrote my first book on equalisation. In this book I declared that equalising without hands is not possible if there is no genetic predisposition, but in 2010, by chance, during a day at sea, I equalised without bringing my hands to the nose, and that day I remained until sunset in the water for fear of losing the magic.

I have spent many days outside and inside the water trying to understand how to reproduce and then teach that perfect joint that is handsfree equalization.

Federico Mana - Yoga

Breathing

From 1998 to 2002 I attended yoga school every day to learn the basics of pranayama breathing.

I did it because I wanted to improve the performance in apnea, be a more prepared teacher, and because it helped me to feel better in the present.

Daily practice and a natural aversion to dogma led me to use what I have studied, and I experimented to redefine the concepts of ventilation and hyperventilation in an innovative way, and to introduce them in the preparation of a real performance. In these years I have collaborated with researchers and physiologists to develop breathing training methodologies that guarantee the achievement of the best balance between performance, relaxation, meditation, and respect for human physiology.

New breathing protocols, new experiences and new training programmes have developed from these collaborations, and also events aimed at anyone wanting to improve and explore their potential and have a better quality of life.

To date, there are hundreds of people who follow our Moving Limits breathing programs and collaborate with several companies.

Federico Mana - Record

Record

From 2007 to 2011 I was a professional athlete and I dedicated myself to record attempts. The things that I remember with the greatest enthusiasm of those days are the new sensations that every improvement in depth gave me, and the ability to transform every dive into information to help me make better decisions in the future.

Record

  • CNF 65 meters
  • CWT 100 meters
  • FIM 92 meters

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