Freediving, Mindful Travel, and Ocean Conservation with Delia

Welcome back to Wildly Unplug, where we reconnect with nature and creativity through immersive stories and grounded conversations. In this episode, we dive deep—literally—with Delia, a freediver, mindful travel coach, and global conservation advocate who’s redefining what it means to live wildly and unplugged.

🧘‍♀️ How to Reconnect With Nature Today

Delia’s favorite nature ritual is something anyone can do—no travel required.

Try this:

1. Head to a quiet natural spot—forest, hill, beach, or park.
2. Close your eyes. Feel your heartbeat. Hear your breath.
3. Slowly open your senses:

• Notice the colors, shapes, and light
• Tune into sounds near and far
• Smell the air, the earth, the trees
• Touch a tree, feel the grass, or place bare feet on the ground

🌐 Stay Connected With Delia

Follow Delia on Instagram: @delia_co

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Transcript

 Welcome to wildly Unplug, sharing stories of nature conservation and creativity. Discover what develops when you unplug and step outdoors.

Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Thank you. It's my pleasure to be your guest. 

And you connect with nature in a really big way, in a way that I think a lot of people don't even dare imagining. What was life like before you became a free diver, and what inspired you to go down that path? 

Freediving has been part of my life forever.

I just didn't know it had a name when I was yeah, when I was a child. I grew up in Italy, on the beach, Mediterranean, and I was just swimming my whole life and in front of my parents and I thought that was just. The most beautiful thing in the world. But then they took me to Costa Rica when I was 13 and I discovered the ocean, like the real Pacific Ocean and the coral reef and all the animals.

And in that moment I was 13 and I realized, okay this is it. This is what I wanna be doing. I don't wanna swim on the beach where I live. I want to discover the real ocean. So I started. Even when I was 15, my first scuba diving experience and more and more aggressive snorkeling, which means like I was staying down there as deep as I could, as much as I could, but without really knowing it was it was a, something you could learn.

And then in the recent years after being scuba diving for a decade, I discovered free diving. And that was a journey back to the soul. It was. It's something I could only recommend to anyone because it's going past your fear, but also past what you think you're capable of. The first time I tried. Holding my breath.

The first day of training I did two and a half minutes, and before that I didn't know I, I could do it even train for a while. So with one breathing exercise, with one teacher explaining me, I realized, wow, these lungs, these bodies is capable. And if I can stay down there for minutes, I can live nature in such an intimate way.

Yeah, life before free diving was already connected to the ocean and after free diving, it's been, yeah, my, my reason to explore the world. 

Okay, so I got a couple questions right off the bat about free diving. So you started on your first training, dive around two minutes. What are you at now? How long can you hold your breath?

No, I haven't been training a lot of static breath holding. 'cause I just use my free diving training to go and snorkel around the world. And then there's a difference between static breath holding and actual swimming while down there. So I do maybe three minutes when I hold my breath. Nothing more at the moment, but when you swim, you consume much more energy and oxygen.

So my dynamic is less than that. And I am really not a competitive free diver. I'm just a fun free diver. And even just talking about one, two or three minutes can seem like a lot for normal people, and that's not my goal to just scare them off and think it's some sort of a weird activity. It's really something.

That everyone can, this is why I mentioned this two and a half minutes because I'm not the only one that starts a course and on the first day can do more than two minutes because this is something we all do. And nowadays with Wim Hof and other breathing techniques, everyone realize how accessible it is.

And it is not just for the sake of exploring the coral reef, it's just. A way for us to calm down our heart rate and to be more mindful in our bodies. This is in our fast-paced society. The most important thing, I had a hard time meditating on dry land, but down there, if you don't relax, you don't go down.

You don't go deep. So it's it's a meditation in motion as I call it. 

Yeah. I find that for me, when I scuba dive, just being under and just like listening to your breathing, that really calms me down. And I love that. You can bring cell phones underwater nowadays with all those gadgets and stuff, but, I don't, and I love being disconnected from my phone like that.

And for people that don't know, scuba diving is really loud. Like Darth Vader, the way they made his voice is with a, a, a. Regulator and I imagine that being a free diver, it's so much more quiet and the animals get a lot closer to you. Do you have any cool experiences where animals were able to check you out and get closer than they would with scuba diving?

Oh my 

God, yes, I've, as I said, I've been scuba diving a lot, and you feel a bit clumsy with the gear, and it is loud and all the bubbles. Of course, it allows you to be on down there for a while, but it, there's a completely different feeling having almost no gear except for your mask and fin basically.

Being part of the environment without scaring the animals with bubbles and noises. So this year I had probably the most incredible free diving moment of my life. I was doing an expedition in the Galapagos Islands and it's a place where hammer, hammerhead sharks swim in big schools. And, the group spread around the rock to, to look for them. I wasn't alone in that part 'cause everyone was sc scouting different parts of the rock. And I went, it was maybe like 15 meters down. Nothing. Nothing too crazy. But then all of a sudden I see the sharks all around me, all this hammerhead sharks. And it was the most.

Quiet moment. You could think it's a moment of adrenaline and it's exciting and your heart just pumps, but they are so elegant and so graceful, and you are there just completely invisible to them. They just float by and I think this can be seen on a scuba diving trip, but I was so glad that. It was concentrated in maybe one and a half minutes for eternity for the rest of my life.

I had this close private encounter with all these sharks, just me being still there with my mask and my fins and them swimming around me and they were gone. And I don't even have video of that, but it, you don't do it for her. For the followers you do it for you, I can say this. This is what free diving allows you.

And it's, obviously you should never free dive alone. You should always do it with a buddy, but that was an expedition for people with experience. So we could sometimes go on our own and then you see. Sea lions and marine iguanas playing with each other. Penguins and turtles on top of it, was the most insane place I've ever been in the water.

So Galapagos is a different world. 

That sounds incredible. And just the sharks alone would've been crazy. I used to scuba dive with sharks and every time I tell people that, they're like, oh my gosh, aren't you scared? And it's hard to explain to people like. They're not out to eat you. So what are some things that you tell people?

No, because you said in the pre-interview portion like online that you've swam with sharks and raised and snakes in remote places. Like how do you get, tell people that you're not afraid and it's okay. 

I want to respect fears of other people because fear is not something rational. So I can't make fun of people, oh, you should not be afraid of sharks because the movie's conditioned you.

It is something very subconscious. Everyone has some sort of subconscious fear, but then the rational mind should kick in and say. Wait a minute. We think the sharks are these killing machines. But look at the numbers. It's not true. We are the ones killing them. And the few times that they kill a human, it's because they think they are prey, because we go surfing in the wrong spots, in the wrong times, and we look like.

Seals and that's our mistake. If I know that this is a place where sharks go feed and hunt at sunset, I don't, I would never go surf there. People risk their faith and then they blame the sharks. And I know that there's been accidents even in places where it wasn't meant to, but we are disrupting the whole.

Chain and biodiversity of the ocean with our overfishing and thinning and all of that. And then we think that the sharks are killing machines. It is not true, and most of the species are not interested in us in any way. And the biggest sharks, they don't even eat fish. If you think of the whale sharks, it just.

Feed of the plankton. So we have this really distorted image, and this is why I wanna tell people, try with some species in some safe ways and you realize that it is just the most beautiful thing you can witness in your life. And I think. We are going in the right direction. 'cause if you have a look at shark influencers nowadays, they're getting more and more following, like people are getting the hype and you care.

Like you protect what you care about. And if we people start caring about sharks and loving them, then they will start being more interested in conservation. And if you protect the sharks, you're basically protecting the whole chain. If the oceans are healthy, then it gives back the oxygen, which is what will keep us alive.

So I think we're, we are spreading awareness. 

That's great. And you've got an Instagram following, do you do a lot of your spreading the awareness on Instagram? Or are you making a business out of free diving or is there something else you're doing? 

I've been sharing. My world travels on my Instagram for almost a decade, and free diving has been part of it that yeah, lots of people ask me about.

I haven't worked with free diving, but now because I was a freelance translator all these years, I was working online and I could travel the world just. With my language work, medical translations, interpreting, and all of that. But on our early I realized, oh, I became a travel influencer or a travel consultant.

People asked me, people wanna travel with me. And aspiring solo travelers, aspiring digital nos want my advice and even brands wanna work with me. Instead of just focusing on the ocean part of it, I now. Realize that my my thing is combining the passion for traveling and the outdoors in general with mindful living and nature conservation.

So I don't wanna tell people 15 things to do in London. I'd rather tell people 10 things you can do to be a less, wasteful traveler or to make a better impact on your travels? Because we don't need more travelers. We need more mindful travelers. 'cause it's it's not just about, oh, you should go and see as many places as possible and take them off your bucket list.

It's how can you do it in a way that is sustainable if you're all doing that. So yeah, this is the idea of my coaching now and my consulting. I am starting to collaborate with two projects. One is a project for University of Edinburgh. It's about nature connectedness, and I was very happy that they reached out to me to be a consultant 'cause they were looking for people who embody this lifestyle.

Who are really living outdoors most of their time. And yeah, I'm one of these people 'cause I don't even have a home base. I just basically travel, travel, travel full time and most of the times to nature and ocean destinations. So I know what it means to, to be always out there. And the other project that is.

Even more important for me now is to spread awareness around sustainable tourism in Africa. So I'm working with Fair Travel Tanzania. Safaris are a dream for most people, even people who don't travel a lot. Everyone has this dream to visit in Africa, African Wildlife, safari Park, but, non, not all of these companies are fair in terms of the impact they have there the wages offered to the workers there. And this is why I'm telling you, yes, let's travel, but let's make meaningful choices. And I decided to work with Fair Travel Tanzania because all. The revenue, all the profits are reinvested in Nature Conservation Project there benefiting the local community, the local economy and nature projects and all of the CO2 emissions are offset with.

Projects free forestation there. And I'm so passionate right now and they want my help to improve their social media presence and online presence. And because I'm, I'm a lot on social media. I love doing this. I decide now that I'm gonna be working only with this kind of projects that really deserve attention and awareness.

So I don't wanna be a standard travel influencers. I'm not, interested in going to. Five star resorts. I just really wanna give visibility to, to these kind of projects. 

So how can we be a more mindful traveler? I feel like things are so busy and people just sign up for the next thing without stopping and thinking, how does this hotel.

Impact our environment or how does this safari, because, that's something I don't think I would've even thought about is the fair pay and everything. How do they reach out to someone like you? How do we become more mindful? 

Anytime you plan a trip, you can start with your conscious choices.

Okay, we are flying. Are we the bad guys because we're flying well. The aviation industry is only 12% of global emissions. So it's not that we are monsters because we fly. It's much 

worse 

out there, but we can also offset our flights and this is something that you can decide to do even while booking your flight or anyone can pay to support reforestation projects or coral projects.

It's something we can decide to do if we wanna feel better about flying. But it's not just about transportation. It's also Okay. As you said, it's a hotel. There are so many eco-friendly hotels nowadays, and even on simple platforms like Booking, you can see the different green flags that they have, the the measures they have in place there.

So this is one thing, but also if you book a simple apartment, like I don't like hotels that much. I always go to small Airbnb or yeah, little rental places. And there again. Our choice should be to have as little as an impact as possible on the place that we're visiting, especially economies where local people don't preserve nature that much.

Maybe you've seen it in Asia, like people, they have this amazing islands and beautiful places, but they just. Throw a lot of plastic and wrap everything in plastic and you don't know, is it ever gonna be recycled then no. You see it swimming, floating and I realized, okay, we traveled there. We need to help them, and at least we should limit our impact.

So using our. Reusable products. I always travel with my own calorie and bottle, like metal bottle and my fabric bags, everything that I can reuse. Even the choices I make in consumption and clothing. I upcycle a lot. I only buy secondhand, like I try. It's just one person. But if many people like, or the majority of people makes make these choices, then we have an impact instead of just waiting for someone to save the world.

We're billions and each one of us matters in this. I. There's different, like nutrition is a big thing. I'm a vegetarian, been a vegetarian for 10 years. Sometimes if I'm on a small island and they're just catching some fish, I eat it. But, as an ocean lover, I know how bad industrial fishing is and we all know it.

Meanwhile, so I said. No to that and to me. So I try to compensate for my frequent flying in other ways. And it's not about being perfect, it's just about being mindful in all these choices. For example you want, you really wanna see wildlife, but there are places where it's just an exploitation.

It's just a tourist trap where the animals are in a cage. Would you really want, do you really want these selfie with the monkey deaths? That's. Kate, no. We should see animals in the wilderness and only, and until you can do that, you should. Only until that moment, you should wait until that moment, until you see wildlife.

This is why I don't go to an aquarium. If I wanna see a gigantic oceanic Monterey, I find my way to the ocean if I wanna see that. Otherwise, I see the animals that I, that live around us. It's as simple as that. We are not there to enjoy the show at the cost of nature. 

You mentioned like trash around in certain places growing up, swimming in the ocean.

Have you noticed a difference between when you were younger to now the amount of plastic rubbish that's around? 

Yeah. Also, 'cause I keep going back to some places and I've seen things, worsening. Also, what really breaks my heart is when I'm around boats and like little harbors I love sailing and being on boats and when I see that the behavior of just throwing everything off the boat in 2024 I shiver and then I go on cleaning missions.

Sometimes I just. With other friends, we just free dive and we pick up the trash that stays because a bottle or a jar or a can, they get filled with water and they sink, and then they stay in the bottom of the ocean forever. So we collect all these trash and, the bags, the turtles confuse us jellyfish, and then they choke it.

So sad. There's been some like viral videos recently, I think Indonesia. 'cause so many people wanna go to Bali and then they complain that the, yeah, the beaches there are full of plastic or in the maldive there's whole islands are just basically mountains of stress and that needs to be addressed.

But the solution is not just. We need to recycle more because you can only recycle plastic a couple of times and then it really loses its its value. So it's the source is a problem. Do we really need to open a little plastic bottle every time when we're thirsty? No. I really try to convince everyone around me carry a big.

Thermos bottle that keeps drinks hot or cold as you want, and then refill them at stations where just drinkable water and you're good the whole day. You don't have to because these bottles that you're just opening at every automatic distributor, they will end up either now on the beach because people here don't recycle or very soon there, or best case, they become microplastics later on at the end of the process.

So it's. Something, we shouldn't even discuss it. It should be so obvious, but I still see it. And I am not always nice to people especially if I've told them a couple of times, if they travel with me or they're around I really like to fight for this as if it was, someone.

Throwing garbage in into my garden. I don't have a garden. Maybe I will, I'll never have my own garden, but this is why the entire world feels like my garden to me. 

Yeah. Yeah. I saw at the, I think it was the Olympics, they were using reusable cups, but the drinks were coming in plastic bottles, so it was like we're, we were on the right track with the reusable cup, but they were pouring it from two liters, and it's guys, we.

We're not quite there yet. And I think you're right, like the source it, once we have some sort of company that is giving us sustainable items I don't think anything's gonna change.

I have no words for that example, but yes, as you were saying before, choices when we travel are the same choices that we can make in our daily life because some people do just travel once per year, the impact is a daily habit. It's a daily choice. When you, of course when you travel, you wanna choose tour companies, hotels, whatever, keep an eye on these topics.

But in your daily life, you can make so many choices. And we're so used to producing so much waste, consuming so much stuff. I have friends who order take away food twice per day. I'm like all this, wrapping, all this, but you think it's just you, but it's not just you. Like the landfills are filled already and yeah.

Best case they're gonna burn it, but we don't need extra heat in this world. All this temperature increasing all the acidification of the ocean. Like I go to the Great Barrier Reef and I see bleached corals. And animals can't thrive there. And then there is extinctions and we think we're detached to those consequences, but it's just so many people repeating the same bad habits created.

But, so we're all involved. 

So 10 year plan. What do you hope your impact is for the environment? 

I will keep in my own private life and choices to be as, as mindful as I can. Of course, nobody's perfect, but the awareness needs to be always present, but I plan to keep spreading. The awareness, collaborating with who is doing good already in the world and needs more attention.

So this is why I am I'm loving this kind of collaborations and also I'm planning to start new projects with my network of of friends who are conservationists, biologists. Wildlife photographers and yeah, advocates in general who are doing great each in their own field. And I'm a big networker and I know all these people in different places.

So we, every time we chat, we basically brainstorm potential ideas of tours to bring people, explore the ocean or the rainforest or a mountain, and workshops on, on. The more you learn about something, the more you care about something. It works well with whales, for example. Everyone who goes on a whale watching tour, they just, they get so touched because it's life changing, but it's not just the whales.

Like even smaller things can. Have an impact on you that you wanna protect forever. So we're thinking of different tours involving not only diving and free diving and snowing and that, but also walks in nature to, to get connected to the forest because the forest is something we all have more or less near, where we live, more accessible.

And we tend to think it's boring. We tend to think that forest is the, I don't know, best case we go and collect some mushrooms or berries and that's it. But I've spent the summer in Scandinavia this year and I've spent so much time in, in the forest and I realized how alive it is and how it can impact our own nervous system, our own.

This project that I told you about from the University of Edinburgh is promoting the walks in nature as a form of therapy. Because if you go to a therapist because you feel stressed and burnt out, but you're still in your mind and you're still in a room, you're not in your body, you're not doing any somatic work that's connecting you to something greater.

So it's a really novel project, but it should be, yeah. Again, the most obvious thing you go where your nervous system can relax, which is. Among trees, for example, and you start automatically slowing down the pace of your thinking and the pace of your heart because you're basically bathing in nature.

And yeah. I'm gonna tell you more in the final question because it was my favorite in question. 

We are almost outta time. How can people connect with you and follow along on all your journeys? 

Okay. For now, I would invite them to follow me on Instagram alliance or co and that's where I post all my adventures and my world travels.

And then the next months I'm gonna go overseas again on big Journeys. Around the world. Not just this year, also the next always like there for people interested in traveling. There's always something happening on my Instagram. But I'm also launching a website soon where I am diving deeper into these aspects.

And yeah, new projects are coming soon, but they will be, they will all be announced on my Instagram. So it's, that's the quickest way to, to connect. 

Perfect. I will make sure that in the show notes, your Instagram is connected there, so people can just click right on over and check you out there.

And before we go, what is one thing that you would suggest to someone that would like to connect or maybe reconnect with nature? 

Yes, I love this question. The, as I told you before, the power of nature and water on our nervous system is scientifically pro proven meanwhile, and the power of meditation is also proven meanwhile.

So my tip would be to combine these two very powerful tools. In a very simple way that we can all try, like everyone has access to a little forest or a hill or something far from buildings and noise pollution and try this mindfulness practice. Obviously we turn off our phones and also music and we just even close our eyes until we feel fully present.

The only thing you are aware of is your own breath and your own heartbeat. When you're there, you open your eyes and you start what a meditation is called, the body scan. Instead of just scanning your body, you scan the surroundings. Because usually when we walk, even if we're gonna hike, we're not really present.

We talk to other people. We have our headphones, but we really need to scan the surroundings. So we start by things that we can see. Really paying attention to what we see, then what we hear, and you think there's nothing to hear, but there is always something to hear. Like I said the forest is alive and if you go closer to sunset, it's really alive.

Then what we can smell, this is for sure something we don't smell walking in our city, so we use all our senses and then it's really powerful to use a sense of touch. Have you ever hugged a tree? It sounds like the most hippy things to do, but if you do it, you really feel that it's alive.

And if you put your feet on the earth on, on the field, on the grass, it's the practice called grounding. It's scientifically proven again that the elements are helping your body re release. They're free radicals and it's, it has an impact on, on, on your wellbeing. So you are basically bombing yourself with the good things all in very simple, in a very simple way.

More powerful than anything you can do, just staying in your mind. So you do all of this until you realize, how am I feeling? Oh, I'm feeling calmer, I'm feeling fuller. I'm feeling. Far away from my problems, and I haven't even, and didn't even have to go far away. I'm just doing something that I consider boring or useless.

So this is what I've realized, and I didn't have to go all the way to the other side of the world to notice it. I notice it like. Every single time I've been in, in a nature environment that moment is all we need. And when I'm in a stressful situation somewhere in a crowded space or whatever I just tell myself, soon you'll be again in that space and you'll release all the tension and you will connect to.

To this mother because nature is our mother and you will feel so protected. So the minimum you can do to give back is to protect her in return. 

It's beautiful advice. Thank you so much for being here today. 

Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been an absolute honor for me. 

And until next time, get outside and see what develops.

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