Scuba Diving as a Person with a Disability

How I fell in love with Scuba Diving

My life went a bit crazy for a while, but one thing to come from it was it gave me a new outlook on life. Life is for living so make the most of it whilst you’ve got it. This new outlook on life led to me taking up a new hobby, I had wanted to try Scuba Diving for several years after a try dive on a holiday in Tenerife.

Little did I know at the time that the experience I had was nothing compared to the experience I was going to have. My previous experience was much about being made to feel disabled, being dragged around like a rag doll rather than being enabled to experience the freedom I learnt I was able to have. I truly feel free and equal to everyone else once I am in the water even though my technique is different to most other people.

During the year where my life changed forever, I stayed with friends for a while, they also have disabilities and they introduced me to the Scuba Trust. This is a charity focussed on providing support and instruction to individuals who want to learn to dive but have a disability. I soon got hooked and decided that I was going to work towards my PADI Open Water qualification. For anyone unfamiliar with this, there are certain skills that you have to practice and achieve in the pool before even being allowed in open water. I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to complete all the skills required.

The Scuba Trust only meets once a month for pool sessions (one common limitation of many clubs related to disability) and so I knew I only had a few sessions to get the skills I required before going on my first holiday. As I mentioned this was during the year which I will refer to as the crazy year. I knew I had to attend all the sessions to be able to achieve what was needed.

Unfortunately, this was also around the time I was also going through a family bereavement. This led to me losing time in the pool, but this wasn’t the end of the dream. My instructor arranged for me to have a couple more sessions in a pool and yay I finally managed to complete all the skills. For those of you who know anything about these skills my mask clear was my nemesis, but once I got it, I turned a corner and this was the beginning of my love for Scuba Diving.

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