Successful for you I want to hear about because I am always looking to steal new ideas, successful for me is under different parameters, and there are real reasons why parts of the approach you lay out fails to result in positive outcomes in direct to ocean training because it pretty much immediately results in negative feedback, or ingraining bad behaviors.
Well I would say that I had some very good behaviors ingrained while taking this course. Neutral buoyancy was taught to me in the pool and it was directly translated to diving in the ocean.
I agree completely with TSandM, I started on the surface and let air out of my BC until underwater. The times I was pushing myself off the bottom was when I wasn't neutrally buoyant and at NO time did I push off from the bottom hard enough to go back to the surface. It took some time in the pool and a dive or two to really "get" neutral buoyancy. Once I did, my third dive I spent completely relaxed. I never touched my inflator and I came up with almost 1000 more psi in my tank than the previous dive and the dive was only 8 minutes shorter.
FloridaPhil, Imbodie, and pocky21 - you will never regret taking NetDoc's course