The Padi No Fear Diving Specialty Course

[ScubaSteve]

I think it has absolutely nothing to do with diving. I do not believe that an Instructor has any right to be treating a person with a pathological fear of water. That is why Therapists and psychologists exist. I for one no longer believe that this is all BS. PADI is in no way supporting this. No way, no how. I emplore anybody to prove me wrong since the OP won't.

 

[xspect]

and how much is your class/workshop ? Do you also customize it to how much you clients can pay.

 

[rhwestfall]

All in two days???? All I can think of is the old Sam Kinison "Dog & Psychotherapy" bit....

google it if you wish...

 

[Wookie]

Not to give excuses, I think the course is not a good idea, but the guy is a therapist as well as a dive instructor.

 

[Peter_C]

The first step at the beginning of this course is a detailed discussion. The focus is to gain a comprehensive overviewabout YOUR concerns, problems and stressors related to scuba diving.
The second step is to figure out together your personal goals and topics and to edit and integrate them into the PADI "No Fear DIVING" specialty course.The third step is the development of your individual course plan based on your personal needs and wishes. It includes extensive advice and an explanation of your personal course challenges.Participants will be confronted with individual stressors in an adequate, secured & supervised frame.
The PADI- NO FEAR DIVING course contains one confined and one open water dive. The dives will be documented on video. After each dive we will have an extensive debriefing and reflection about your experiences and impressions during the dives. This PADI- No Fear Diving specialty course will help you to cope with individual stressors and will enable you to enjoy your dives in a new way.

We dive in the Red Triangle, the same place Marco Flagg was bitten by an 18ft Great White shark, and dive in the same place that Randy Fry had his head bite clean off while his dive buddy watched. Many surfers are bitten and have died in the sames areas. We have been planning on diving at the Farallon Islands which is the home of the Great White sharks that we call the Landlord. Sometimes I hear the "ominous music" and get scared, especially when a seal lion sneaks up on us at 90ft with less than 8ft of vis, and smacks into my leg hard with no warning, or when a 14ft Elephant Seal passes by right at the edge of visibility (I got off the trigger as my heart skipped a beat). Would you video the dive at the Farallon's? Can you help with my fears?

 

[Tigerman]

I still find the major problem with a class like this to be the fact that its for CERTIFIED DIVERS!
Divers who need to get over their fear of water/diving shouldnt be divers in the first place!

The brain actually learn extremely fast and fears can be something you gained in a fraction of a second when you where a kid, just like you learned in a fraction of a second that touching the hot plate is a bloody bad idea..

 

[tye1138]

I think someone is playing a prank on us...

 

[mobeeno]

Welcome to scubaboard Oliv!

 

[Diver0001]

This PADI-No Fear Diving specialty course is especially created for people with fears and concerns in context with scuba diving & water (Hydrophobia).

I had a customer once who had Hydrophobia. There was no way she could learn how to dive. I turned her down politely and told her that if she wanted to learn how to scuba dive she would have to start by taking swimming lessons and showing me a diploma.

She never came back.

R..

P.S. Cute post, btw. Making it look like a tag cloud did actually cause me to grind through reading all of it while looking for the deeper meaning

R..

 

[Thalassamania]

I still find the major problem with a class like this to be the fact that its for CERTIFIED DIVERS!
Divers who need to get over their fear of water/diving shouldnt be divers in the first place!

The brain actually learn extremely fast and fears can be something you gained in a fraction of a second when you where a kid, just like you learned in a fraction of a second that touching the hot plate is a bloody bad idea..

You hit the nail on the head. There are three possible situations:

1. Someone with a fear of water or diving takes a class. In the course a normal diving class a knowledgeable and skilled instructor will deal with students' normal fears.
2. Someone taking a dive class discovers that they have a fear of water or diving. Students who have morbid fears or problems that reach a clinical phobia should never have been certified in the first place.
3. Diving is used as part of a treatment regimen to overcome some set of fears. Fine.

But ... and this is where I have a problem with this, PADI has already outsourced many things that were a normal part of entry level training, free diving skills, rescue skills, gas consumption and planning topics, buoyancy and trim, etc. Is this course the cutting edge where mental adaptation to diving begins to be outsourced also? It's bad enough that the average instructor today needs little more classroom skills than knowing how, in a pinch, to start the video, not having to be able to deal with students' fears and concerns truly will turn the dive instructor into an organ-grinder's monkey.