The Padi No Fear Diving Specialty Course

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Support in producing distinctive specialties is a service that PADI makes available to all of its instructors.

I know an instructor who made a distinctive specialty for our area so he could market dives to go watch cuttlefish lay eggs. He was smart with his marketing and made a lot of money on that specialty. It's a cool dive but not so cool that you'd expect a card for it but PADI allowed it to become a distinctive specialty because it conformed to the rules.

Same thing happening in this case, I would imagine.

R..
 
I'm wondering why PADI would take all that on for a single instructor who would seem to be promoting a worthy cause, yet won't share materials with other instructors so that the benefit could be had in other areas of the world, or even his own country.

Because the PADI "MD" rating hasn't been developed yet....
 
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Ok...

We released the new webpage for the PADI No Fear Diving course....:D
Please let me know what you think about it & if you have any further questions...

No Fear Diving
No Fear Diving


In the blog section of my webpage you can read an article & see some pictures about Justin,
the first client for the No Fear Diving course...

Blog
Blog

I´m very happy to read about your opinions... ....
 
We released the new webpage for the PADI No Fear Diving course . . . . Please let me know what you think about it
Nice website - love the first picture!

I think I now have a better understanding of what you work with the student / client to accomplish in the course, based on points 1 and 2 on the site:

>>To gain theoretical knowledge about your concerns, anxiousness and fears and to understand their cause; To learn how you can responsibly handle them and find your individual solutions<<

For example, if a diver has an exaggerated fear of becoming separated from a buddy underwater, because of some prior experience with that situation, and their ability to dive is undermined by the overwhelming fear?

Or, a diver has an exaggerated fear of diving in low visibility conditions, because of some prior frightening experience in low visibility conditions, and their ability to dive is compromised by the overwhelming fear?

It appears that you are taking your professional skill set (ergo-therapy) and applying it in the context of a personal love of diving. A very nice combination.

The discussion about whether this should be a course, or some form of workshop, is interesting. And, naturally, the usual and customary comments about PADI and money - specifically extracting more money from divers - are, not unexpectedly, thrown in. But, four thoughts occur to me:
Diver0001:
Support in producing distinctive specialties is a service that PADI makes available to all of its instructors.
1. Rob stated it very well: PADI does do a good job of helping members develop unique offerings. I believe they do as good a job as any agency in that regard. Can it be taken to an extreme? Possibly. Any good practice can be taken to a 'not so good' extreme. But, I am not sure that is the case here.

2. There was another recent thread in the Instructor forum that focused on offering post-OW certification 'workshops'. and whether or not dive professional insurance would cover an instructor offering a skills workshop if something untoward were to happen to a participant. If the workshop is not a 'course', and there are no specific standards, or - more to the point - in offering such a workshop a PADI instructor included a skill that is not part of the 'standards' of any course, would there be personal liability? Possibly. Having a recognized course, with standards, even standards that you, as the course author, wrote yourself, would seem to mitigate that possibility. The application, course content, standards, etc. would have been reviewed by and approved by a recognized training agency.

3. There are any number of threads on SB that lament the low / poor compensation that dive professionals generally receive, and there are also threads that criticize dive professionals for offering instruction for free, or below cost, because that contributes to the low compensation (in a competitive market) and devalues the instruction. I find it hard to criticize someone who develops a unqiue learning eperience, and then charges for it. No one is compelled to take the course. But, if a diver with some partiocular fear associated ith diving chooses to take the course, and pay for it, great. Either the course will turn out to be valuable for a specific subset of the diving population, or it won't. One way to find out is to offer it and see.

4. Likewise, there are any number of SB threads addressing the panic cycle, its roots and consequences, and how to deal with it. If a particular fear - rational or irrational - can become overwhelming underwater and trigger a panic response, then it should be addressed. The best immediate solution may not be to simply say to the diver, 'Sorry, you shouldn't dive ever again, because you have a debilitating fear of - sharks / equipment failure / running out of air / post-dive foot fungus, whatever - and it might cause you to panic underwater. You must leave the diving to those of us who aren't subject to that silly problem.' Maybe, the better solution is training to help the diver recognize, address, and overcome that fear. And, if a Distinctive Specialty is an effective format to provide the training, support the student, and protect the dive professional, and allow for fair compensation for the instructor, then so be it.
 
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It certainly is not for the marketing available since the Distinct Specialty courses is not a list that is available to anybody. Silliness that is. As for Insurance, I bet PADI has a team of lawyers that have already guaranteed them that this cannot bite them in the butt......I would bet but am still speculating.

I would suspect that the OP believes that having a PADI endorsement makes the course appear more legitimate.....not that it is not but it likely seems more solid than an unknown scuba certification that is not a certification.

It would be bizarre for PADI to authorize a class that had any significant amount of additional liability. All their other classes have counterparts in agencies all over the world and the can point and say "SSI/NAUI/whoever" also teaches Night and Low Viz and the injury rate is very low.

With the "no fear" class all they can say is "Oliver Radosav said it was OK".

I'm really having a hard time coming up with a way this could be authorized, that didn't involve some sort of mistake on PADI's part, or a distinctive specialty description in their files that differs quite a bit from what was described here and on the website.
 
The new website has a nice look and feel, however, I still have two issues:

1. It is made to appear that the course is one developed by PADI and taught only by Oliver Radosav. The truth of the matter is that the course was developed by Oliver Radosav and PADI approved his offering it. That is not the same thing.

2. The claim is made that: "The supervision of diving clients is set up in a very close 'frame'. Nearly no other dive course offers such a close supervision for diving students." While there is the wienie word "nearly" in there, there are many instructors out there who teach on a one-to-one basis and never move into a "group setting." IMHO it would be better to drop the comparative "no other dive course" sentence entire.
 
@Colliam7

Thank you for your interesting post, I really like your liberal point of view.

About the standards of the course I can say, that of course, me as the course author, defined the standards.
But at the end PADI had a great influence on it & they restricted some of my suggestions . It was a long process
of negotiation & arguing.

@Thalassamania

Thank you for your point of view.

1) I agree ... it´might "appear" a bit like this but.... if you read one of the first sentence you´ll find out, it´s not like this.

[FONT=liberation_Sans]Through my work and journeys as a PADI Instructor and Ergo-therapist I have noticed that many diving clients feel uncomfortable and unsafe under water, for various reasons.[/FONT]
[FONT=liberation_Sans]Motivated by many requests, I created the individual and client centered PADI distinctive specialty course named:[/FONT]
[h=2]NO FEAR DIVING[/h]
2) It´s a interesting opinion & point of view...

I will think about it ....
 
About the standards of the course I can say, that of course, me as the course author, defined the standards. But at the end PADI had a great influence on it & they restricted some of my suggestions . It was a long process
I am sure it was. And, quite possibly frustrating at times. Notwithstanding some of the periodic criticisms of PADI on SB, I believe the organization does a very thorough review of applications for Distinctive Specialties, and the final product is generally made stronger by that review, and input. It may require the author / applicant to revise some aspects of the proposed course, but in the end that is usually a positive contribution.
Thalassamania:
1. It is made to appear that the course is one developed by PADI and taught only by Oliver Radosav. The truth of the matter is that the course was developed by Oliver Radosav and PADI approved his offering it. That is not the same thing.
Thal makes a good point, that you may wish to consider in maintenance of the website. I did not have the same initial impression. But, I have considerable respect for Thal's views and he appears to have interpreted the material differently. If he did, then others may as well, and I suggest you think about how to ensure clarity.
 
@flythefish

But its only the op without the vision to share this healing with diving as a whole.

Soooo I'm still calling BS !!!

Please let me tell you .. that I have the vision to share .... & I´m willing to transmit No Fear Diving to any PADI Instructor who is interested in.

Do decide about the qualification of every single instructor who is willing to do this, is not in my hands.

The decision about it, belongs only to PADI.

If anybody is interested to do this .... please request @ PADI

As long as this can not take place, I am temporary the only PADI Instructor,
authorized to teach & to certify No Fear Diving & I´m not sad about this ...:wink:
 
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