In late 2013, Frédéric Bénéton, a financial consultant in a major French bank, experiences profound professional exhaustion. Two doctors separately diagnose him with burnout and he is prescribed four months of sick leave.

For several years, Frédéric has observed that a week of diving underwater rejuvenates him more than a week of any other vacation. He sleeps better, feels better and manages his emotions and stressful situations better. The benefits he feels from diving are difficult to define precisely but he shares it with other divers and records their experiences verbatim in a notebook.

Frédéric decides to go diving with Vincent Meurice, manager of the Atlantis Formation club in Bouillante, Guadeloupe, a club he has been frequenting for 4 years with the hope that diving will help him recover faster.

Vincent Meurice was born to dive. Convinced from a young age that it would be his way of life, he starts diving at the age of 11, becomes a professional instructor at age 20 and subsequently a PADI Course Director and BEES2 in France. He starts his own business in diving, often providing services to individuals seeking peak performance in high-stress environments. In the early 2000s, faced with many anxieties, Vincent discovers the effectiveness of sophrology and becomes convinced that it would be a valuable addition to his personal and professional skillset. He decides to train to become a Sophrologist and begins to take advantage of the naturally calming underwater environment to practice these skills underwater. He soon realises that immersion in water deeply enhances the effects of meditative practice. A practice combining both diving and sophrology begins to take shape in his mind.

While the two men share their common intuitions in late 2013, they are far from imagining the adventures that await them. Frédéric returns to France feeling healed after 15 days of diving in Guadeloupe and quickly resumes work, much to the surprise of his doctors. From then on, Frédéric is convinced of the therapeutic effects of diving. However, aside from indirect observations in a handful of articles that suggested this possibility, there was no scientific evidence of this.

In early 2014, Frédéric travels to Marseille to meet researchers who have been studying diving-related risks for years.

"We've been studying the dangers of diving for 30 years; it's time to explore the benefits," says Bernard Gardette, then scientific director of Comex.

Frédéric decides to leave his job to undertake his research and enrols in a masters degree in physiology. He meets Dr. Marion Trousselard, a physician-researcher at the Biomedical Research Institute of the Armed Forces, a specialist in stress and mindfulness meditation. Marion is not familiar with diving, but over the course of their discussions, points out many analogies between diving and meditative practices. Together with Marion, Frédéric defines the criteria for measuring stress and creates the DivStress protocol. At his oral thesis presentation of the preliminary results of DivStress, one of When Frédéric presents the preliminary results of DivStress for his oral thesis presentation, one of Frédéric’s key conclusions is that “the diver meditates unknowingly.”