Bevin Reynolds has never been one to play small. An avid swimmer and swimming teacher, she dreamed of representing her country at Olympic level. But her hopes were crushed when she was diagnosed in adulthood with scoliosis. While the condition – an abnormal curvature of the spine – can present in varying degrees with a range of side effects, Bevin began to suffer from chronic pain on a daily basis. And for a while, she almost believed this was her life. “It's interesting, what happens is you can become quite normalised to the pain,” she says. Having previously danced her way out of depression, Bevin turned to physical therapy to heal. “I went to a yoga teacher who specialises in scoliosis and within three months of doing my exercises with her, I started to feel so much stronger again and much more alive,” she says. But could her treatment revive her sporting potential?
With each passing day, Bevin felt her body improve. Soon, she was back in the pool, first swimming and then freediving – but not competitively. “I had gone beyond the point of believing that it was possible to achieve in sport,” she said. Yet in the process, a peculiar thing was happening. “Within a month of training, I was starting to already do fairly big distances that were getting quite close to the national record,” Bevin says. “That was kind of the point where I was like, ‘Okay, I can do this’.” Not content to simply be able to move without pain, Bevin wanted to see how far she could push herself. First, she competed at a local freediving competition where she breezed past professional freedivers in a single breath. Then she set a more audacious goal: train and qualify to participate at the AIDA World Indoor Freediving Championship which took place in South Korea. And true to her nature, Bevin smashed her goal, taking home one gold and two silver medals, breaking three national and three continental records, and earning the title of Vice World Champion Freediver.
Bevin’s journey from living in pain to emerging victorious may seem deceptively straightforward. But behind her wins has been a long path paved by the athlete’s resilience and absolute stubbornness to give in to her diagnosis. “They often talk about freediving as being 100% physical and 100% mental because it definitely requires a certain mental fortitude,” Bevin says. “There's a point where it can start to become very uncomfortable. I think I learnt something from that, living in pain for so long.” Rather than weakening her, her scoliosis diagnosis taught Bevin to be stronger than ever. Sometimes, it is not our conditions that define us, but how we respond to them and what we choose to accept. ‘We can have dreams that we put to bed or give up on or surrender because we think it's impossible,” Bevin reflects. “And actually, you never know what might happen.”
Some footage and images in this film supplied by Bevin Reynnolds, with credit to @diver.junchi, @nopicx_, and @ian.graphy.
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