The Dragons Eye of Dugi Otok

Dragons eye & intuition

Last month we went out of our comfort zone - pushed our own boundaries, and it has everything to do with intuition and the Dragons Eye of Croatia.

If you have seen our newest episode, you know I (Rianne) practiced synchronize swimming for years but stopped ad the age of 21. I was pretty good at keeping my breath and swimming underwater. Unfortunately, I choose not to keep this up, and since we live on the sea, I would love to be good at free diving and catching our own fish. And secretly wished I kept up with my underwater skills. 

It is funny how fast we can unlearn things and even lose our confidence. 

Since we live on the sea, I haven't found my confidence and love for swimming underwater again. When I was young, I really adored being underwater and spent there every second I could.

But now, living on our sailing boat since 2019, I haven't really found the courage and confidence again. From time to time, I take a leap of faith and swim underneath our boat or between rocks and through schools of fish. At those moments, I'm in paradise, but still, I have some inner fear of not having enough breath. I panic just during that last second when I'm swimming up to the surface, where I can see the sun touch the waves, and I know if I get there, I'm safe again. Then at that moment, just two strikes away from being safe, I have a little voice that asks, what if you can't make it....

I know where this fear and this little voice came from. It has been with me for a little bit longer than two years now. It is the fear of Benjamin needing to grow up without his mother. It is that accountability you get and only understand when you become a parent -that extra load on your shoulders that changes everything. Although being a parent is truly the most beautiful gift I could wish for, it also changed my life in so many more ways than I  ever could have held possible.

So with freediving and sailing from time to time, I have this inner fear, not about dying, but about Benjamin not having a mother when he grows up.

This is my biggest challenge on mindset currently, and I found out that all my mindset hacks can't fix this one except one. And that is connecting with my intuition, getting out of my head and into my body, truly feeling and knowing what I'm capable of and when something is safe. And this happened when we got to the Dragons Eye of Dugi Otok. 

Two days earlier, I read on google about this underwater tunnel of 16 meters (I think it is a bit less, but 16 sounds good) through the rocks that connect the inner pool with the open sea. And with reading this, my inner child was excited and couldn't wait to start exploring, but my mother side was afraid and said that looking at it was more than enough.

So when we got there, we explored the eye from a distance as a family, and indeed we looked at this magnificent piece of art made by nature. After that, we paddled a bit further, did some proper cave exploring, and on our way back to the boat, we passed the eye again. This time there was a guy who was swimming in the middle of the eye. We asked him if he had found the underwater tunnel. He said he looked for it but that there was none.

I couldn't believe it, and while we were paddling further towards the boat, I was looking in the water to see the tunnel. Indeed I couldn't see anything, but there was this opening in the rocks, and I just had this feeling it would be there. 

As we got back to the boat, I couldn't resist. Grabbed my goggles, fins, and snorkel and dove into the water. And at exactly the same spot, where I thought the tunnel would be, I dove down. And I could indeed see a tunnel and the light at the end of the Dragons Eye. It was way further than any dive I had done in the last 13 years, but I knew I could make it. 

I took a deep breath, dove down, and halfway through the tunnel, there was this voice again, what if you can't make it? But in the silence of the sea, I knew she wasn't right, I knew I could do this, and so I did. I focused on holding my breath and enjoying my dive through the water, and before I knew it, I made it and got to the surface next to the guy that couldn't find the tunnel.

By connecting to nature and my body, I found my intuition stronger than any voice inside my head. Something I lost years ago, something I'm gaining back every day a little bit more - my guiding intuition.

We hope you enjoy this episode, thank you for your support and much love from all of us.

X - Rianne, Gerben & Benjamin