Diving provides intense and immediate sensations of well-being.
All divers, whether beginners or experienced, have experienced this.
The BATHYSMED® adventure was born from this obvious and shared observation.
Convinced of the real benefits of diving, the polytechnician Frédéric Bénéton, PADI Course Director, sport mental trainer and sophrologist Vincent Meurice had the idea to combine them with the proven techniques of meditation and sophrology.
Until now, others had had this intuition and developed empirical methods mixing diving and relaxation exercises. But the duo decided to launch several clinical trials to scientifically measure the effects of this combination of techniques.
The BATHYSMED® protocol, the result of several years of research, was designed and evaluated during the first clinical trials conducted between 2014 and 2019 with survivors of terrorist attacks and military personnel suffering from post-traumatic stress.
The combination of proven methods of meditation, sophrology, sport mental preparation and diving brings specific benefits that were successfully measured during these trials.
These benefits also apply to healthy people. BATHYSMED® dives, accessible to all, are an innovative method to prevent and fight stress effectively.
The BATHYSMED® diver has a unique experience, with an increased perception of his sensations and of the underwater world.
All divers, whether beginners or experienced, have experienced this.
The BATHYSMED® adventure was born from this obvious and shared observation.
Convinced of the real benefits of diving, the polytechnician Frédéric Bénéton, PADI Course Director, sport mental trainer and sophrologist Vincent Meurice had the idea to combine them with the proven techniques of meditation and sophrology.
Until now, others had had this intuition and developed empirical methods mixing diving and relaxation exercises. But the duo decided to launch several clinical trials to scientifically measure the effects of this combination of techniques.
The BATHYSMED® protocol, the result of several years of research, was designed and evaluated during the first clinical trials conducted between 2014 and 2019 with survivors of terrorist attacks and military personnel suffering from post-traumatic stress.
The combination of proven methods of meditation, sophrology, sport mental preparation and diving brings specific benefits that were successfully measured during these trials.
These benefits also apply to healthy people. BATHYSMED® dives, accessible to all, are an innovative method to prevent and fight stress effectively.
The BATHYSMED® diver has a unique experience, with an increased perception of his sensations and of the underwater world.
The Genesis
BathysMed is above all the story of a meeting. That of two pilgrims who took different paths to find each other and come to a simple conclusion: diving heals and cures stress.
At the end of 2013, Frédéric Bénéton, a consultant banker in a large French bank, was going through a period of emptiness and needed to recharge his batteries. Professional exhaustion, burnout, the diagnosis is made by two doctors who prescribe him four months off work. He left to dive with Vincent Meurice, manager of the Atlantis training club in Bouillante, Guadeloupe, a club he had been attending for four years in the hope that diving would help him recover more quickly. Indeed, for several years now, Frederic has been living with the idea that diving is good for him, that a week underwater brings him more benefits than a week of vacations, no matter how sporty they are. He sleeps better, manages his emotions and stress better. This benefit is diffuse and difficult to define precisely, but he shares it with other divers, whose verbatim and testimonies he records in a notebook.
Vincent Meurice was born with diving. Convinced at a very young age that it would be his way of life, he started diving at 11 and became a professional instructor at 20. Confronted with certain anxieties, he discovered sophrology and its effectiveness in the early 2000s. After becoming a BEES2 and a Padi instructor, Vincent opens his own structure and decides to train in sophrology, convinced that it will be an additional string to his bow in his role as a manager of teams and athletes. During his training to become a sophrologist, he took advantage of some dives to practice in the calm of the water and realized that immersion multiplied the effects of the sessions. A combination of the two practices, diving and sophrology, then begins to germinate in his mind.
From intuitions to first tests
If the two men share their common intuitions at the end of 2013, they are far from suspecting the adventure that awaits them. Frédéric returned healed after 15 days of diving and resumed work very quickly, to the great surprise of the doctors. Frédéric is now convinced that diving has a little-known benefit. However, there is no proof in the scientific literature. Only indirect findings in a few articles suggest possibilities.
Frédéric went to Marseille in early 2014 to meet with researchers who had been working for years on the toxicity of diving. "We've been studying the dangers of diving for 30 years, it's time to explore the benefits," Bernard Gardette, Comex's scientific director at the time, told him. Frédéric decided to leave his job to undertake his research and enrolled in a DEA in physiology.
Frédéric met Dr. Marion Trousselard, a medical researcher at the Institut de Recherche Biomédical des Armées, a leading specialist in stress and mindfulness meditation. With Marion, Frédéric defined the criteria for measuring stress and the DivStress protocol. Marion is not familiar with diving, but during their discussions, she points out some analogies between the two practices. When Frédéric presented the first results of DivStress for his dissertation oral, one of the major conclusions of this first test was that "the diver meditates without knowing it".
Very promising results
DivStress shows unequivocally the benefits of diving on stress: divers leave an eight-day course with a lower level of perceived stress than at the beginning and this effect lasts for several weeks, even months. They also increase their ability to resist stress(1). This is the first publication worldwide to demonstrate that diving has a measurable therapeutic effect. The way is open to start talking about "healthy diving". Vincent and Frédéric are constantly exchanging and working on the triptych diving-meditation-sophrology.
If each of the practices has its own benefits, the two founders of BathysMed bet that by combining the three practices under water, the effects will not simply add up but will be potentiated and thus increase tenfold. Vincent gets down to the task, all the more easily as he has already started to test sophrology underwater. He then gave shape to what will become the BathysMed protocol with specific exercises combining recreational diving and underwater practice of mindfulness meditation, sophrology and mental preparation. All that remained was to validate the clinical effectiveness of the protocol. This will be DivHope with the survivors of the November 13, 2015 attacks and the fantastic adventure that will follow.
This adventure above all human and scientific that represents BathysMed has not finished to deliver us all its results. It is the fruit of meetings, intuitions, scientific requirement, research and passion for the exploration of new ways. Each person involved in this project, from the founders to the beneficiaries of the protocol through the certified diving instructors, is intimately convinced that the frontiers of knowledge are made to be surpassed by combining disciplines and profiles, and that the path of "augmented diving" is a therapeutic alternative that opens up new perspectives of stress prevention, care and well-being for the future.
At the end of 2013, Frédéric Bénéton, a consultant banker in a large French bank, was going through a period of emptiness and needed to recharge his batteries. Professional exhaustion, burnout, the diagnosis is made by two doctors who prescribe him four months off work. He left to dive with Vincent Meurice, manager of the Atlantis training club in Bouillante, Guadeloupe, a club he had been attending for four years in the hope that diving would help him recover more quickly. Indeed, for several years now, Frederic has been living with the idea that diving is good for him, that a week underwater brings him more benefits than a week of vacations, no matter how sporty they are. He sleeps better, manages his emotions and stress better. This benefit is diffuse and difficult to define precisely, but he shares it with other divers, whose verbatim and testimonies he records in a notebook.
Vincent Meurice was born with diving. Convinced at a very young age that it would be his way of life, he started diving at 11 and became a professional instructor at 20. Confronted with certain anxieties, he discovered sophrology and its effectiveness in the early 2000s. After becoming a BEES2 and a Padi instructor, Vincent opens his own structure and decides to train in sophrology, convinced that it will be an additional string to his bow in his role as a manager of teams and athletes. During his training to become a sophrologist, he took advantage of some dives to practice in the calm of the water and realized that immersion multiplied the effects of the sessions. A combination of the two practices, diving and sophrology, then begins to germinate in his mind.
From intuitions to first tests
If the two men share their common intuitions at the end of 2013, they are far from suspecting the adventure that awaits them. Frédéric returned healed after 15 days of diving and resumed work very quickly, to the great surprise of the doctors. Frédéric is now convinced that diving has a little-known benefit. However, there is no proof in the scientific literature. Only indirect findings in a few articles suggest possibilities.
Frédéric went to Marseille in early 2014 to meet with researchers who had been working for years on the toxicity of diving. "We've been studying the dangers of diving for 30 years, it's time to explore the benefits," Bernard Gardette, Comex's scientific director at the time, told him. Frédéric decided to leave his job to undertake his research and enrolled in a DEA in physiology.
Frédéric met Dr. Marion Trousselard, a medical researcher at the Institut de Recherche Biomédical des Armées, a leading specialist in stress and mindfulness meditation. With Marion, Frédéric defined the criteria for measuring stress and the DivStress protocol. Marion is not familiar with diving, but during their discussions, she points out some analogies between the two practices. When Frédéric presented the first results of DivStress for his dissertation oral, one of the major conclusions of this first test was that "the diver meditates without knowing it".
Very promising results
DivStress shows unequivocally the benefits of diving on stress: divers leave an eight-day course with a lower level of perceived stress than at the beginning and this effect lasts for several weeks, even months. They also increase their ability to resist stress(1). This is the first publication worldwide to demonstrate that diving has a measurable therapeutic effect. The way is open to start talking about "healthy diving". Vincent and Frédéric are constantly exchanging and working on the triptych diving-meditation-sophrology.
If each of the practices has its own benefits, the two founders of BathysMed bet that by combining the three practices under water, the effects will not simply add up but will be potentiated and thus increase tenfold. Vincent gets down to the task, all the more easily as he has already started to test sophrology underwater. He then gave shape to what will become the BathysMed protocol with specific exercises combining recreational diving and underwater practice of mindfulness meditation, sophrology and mental preparation. All that remained was to validate the clinical effectiveness of the protocol. This will be DivHope with the survivors of the November 13, 2015 attacks and the fantastic adventure that will follow.
This adventure above all human and scientific that represents BathysMed has not finished to deliver us all its results. It is the fruit of meetings, intuitions, scientific requirement, research and passion for the exploration of new ways. Each person involved in this project, from the founders to the beneficiaries of the protocol through the certified diving instructors, is intimately convinced that the frontiers of knowledge are made to be surpassed by combining disciplines and profiles, and that the path of "augmented diving" is a therapeutic alternative that opens up new perspectives of stress prevention, care and well-being for the future.
The TEAM
The BATHYSMED® project is above all a great human adventure.
Born from the meeting between several specialists with complementary expertise and shared convictions, this project could not have developed without a perfect alchemy between science and passion.
At the beginning, the somewhat crazy hope of scientifically proving that diving is good for the mind, and why not, to understand how and why...
Although many people have noted the benefits of underwater practice on stress and well-being, no one had had the idea or the means to measure it in clinical trials. This did not frighten the founders who embarked on the adventure and set up trials including survivors of terrorist attacks and soldiers in a state of post-traumatic stress.
Each of them brings the expertise that allows for the scientific validation of very promising results.
Frédéric Bénéton
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
- Polytechnique (X94), Master 2 in physiology of extreme conditions (2015)
- 17 years of experience in corporate and investment banking - CEO of Progelife, a biotech specialized in pathological aging
- Initiated research on the positive effects of diving on stress in 2014
President
- BEES2/DESJEPS French State Diving instructor trainer
- Course Director PADI
- Master Specialist in Caycedian Sophrology
- Certified in sports psychology and sports mental preparation
- NLP/Hypnosis Technician
Scientific Director (CSO)
- Anesthesiologist - resuscitator
- PU- PH, Head of the Emergency Department of the Timone, AP-HM
- World specialist in the management of drowning
Bathysmed in a nutshell
What is it?
A new approach that mixes recreational diving with meditation, sophrology and mental preparation techniques through a protocol created by experts from several disciplines (diving, sophrology, medicine). Its well-being and anti-stress effects have been measured in clinical trials since 2015.
How does it work?
Cardiac coherence, used in relaxation techniques, comes into play because, with the regulator in your mouth, you naturally adopt a wide and slow ventilation. In immersion, sophrology and meditation increase their effects tenfold.
We also know that regular exposure to nitrogen has a natural antidepressant effect.
Who is it for?
For everyone! Divers or beginners, from the age of 8. It's a natural, accessible and fun way to feel good and discover a new way of diving by multiplying the sensations. Ideal to prevent and better manage stress or hyperactivity, without addiction and without side effects.
Who is it?
Frédéric Bénéton, Polytechnician and serial entrepreneur, accompanied by Vincent Meurice, diving instructor and sophrologist, joined by Pr Pierre Michelet, resuscitator and emergency doctor, had the idea of this innovative protocol of care by the sea, at the crossroads of disciplines.
Where is it?
In France (mainland, West Indies and Polynesia), but also in Europe (Belgium and Switzerland) and now also in Canada.
Thanks to the network of qualified instructors, trained in our diving school. The practice is possible in sea, lake or pit. Whether you live near the sea or not, find the nearest certified instructor and book your trial dive!
BATHYSMED® dives, accessible to all, are an innovative method to increase well-being and effectively prevent stress.
A new approach that mixes recreational diving with meditation, sophrology and mental preparation techniques through a protocol created by experts from several disciplines (diving, sophrology, medicine). Its well-being and anti-stress effects have been measured in clinical trials since 2015.
How does it work?
Cardiac coherence, used in relaxation techniques, comes into play because, with the regulator in your mouth, you naturally adopt a wide and slow ventilation. In immersion, sophrology and meditation increase their effects tenfold.
We also know that regular exposure to nitrogen has a natural antidepressant effect.
Who is it for?
For everyone! Divers or beginners, from the age of 8. It's a natural, accessible and fun way to feel good and discover a new way of diving by multiplying the sensations. Ideal to prevent and better manage stress or hyperactivity, without addiction and without side effects.
Who is it?
Frédéric Bénéton, Polytechnician and serial entrepreneur, accompanied by Vincent Meurice, diving instructor and sophrologist, joined by Pr Pierre Michelet, resuscitator and emergency doctor, had the idea of this innovative protocol of care by the sea, at the crossroads of disciplines.
Where is it?
In France (mainland, West Indies and Polynesia), but also in Europe (Belgium and Switzerland) and now also in Canada.
Thanks to the network of qualified instructors, trained in our diving school. The practice is possible in sea, lake or pit. Whether you live near the sea or not, find the nearest certified instructor and book your trial dive!
BATHYSMED® dives, accessible to all, are an innovative method to increase well-being and effectively prevent stress.
