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.
