Dive Into Your Imagination

Learning to scuba dive changed my life so profoundly that I have spent nearly the past two decades dedicated to the ocean. I knew becoming a scuba diving instructor was my gateway to freedom and travel. Find out why it's so easy to take diving classes!

That was nearly 17 years ago and I still believe that learning to dive is so easy because of the formula designed to teach scuba diving. You read a book, watch a dvd, practice in a pool and then go to the ocean. You can even sign up for an online course and do most of your classroom work right online. It really is easy to pass the tests and the exercises, because they are designed for your success.

Most open water scuba diving classes are divided into five modules. There are rules and guidelines need to follow when they teach people how to scuba dive, and within the guidelines there is a bit of flexibility. First of all there are five modules and you can either teach these in five separate sections or combine a couple of them. Because we learned of “J’s” fear of the water and the fact that he could not really swim and tread water on the first days of class, I knew I needed to take this slowly with him to ensure his success. So we set up a schedule that we followed and basically did one module a week over the course of about five weeks. When I usually teach students we did everything in a four to five day week, so having this time to go slowly with J and Rebecca was a huge commitment on our part for time.

They were amazed at how much equipment is involved. Scuba equipment is expensive when you buy your entire set, but once you have the equipment, it will last you for a really long time as long as you take care of it. The most important thing is not to be overwhelmed by the amount of equipment and breaking it down piece by piece. I was a bit nervous to teach them because I rave about what a life altering experience it was for me, that I feared that they might not feel the same way…

But after one session in the pool, I knew they were hooked. It was great that we took it slow because J went from not being able to tread water for more than two minutes to being able to tread water for more than 12 minutes. It was a great experience for all of us and after five times in the pool, they were ready to go to the ocean. I knew that they were really confident of their pool skills, yet as an instructor, I knew that their egos were soon going to be deflated as we entered the ocean because when you wear 7 mm wetsuits and 24 pounds of led, everything is a bit more difficult! So pool diving was definitely successful, check back next week to find out what happened in the ocean dives!