SHE DID IT!
Yesterday my wife became a certified OW diver.
And this even so she until more recently was an extremely accomplished life long water phobic who could not or just barely swim and a few years back would break out in complete and uncontrolled panic attacks when in water deeper than she can stand in.
I am so proud, I can't even tell you how proud!
Now, getting there was an odyssey I don't care to re-hash entirely, except for the parts immediately relevant to what we learned about what worked for us in doing an OW class and what in retrospect did not really work for us.
So, what worked:
1. Some initial snorkeling experience over the years, mostly with hand-holding only and some early mis-haps (uncontrolled panic). but they helped because they peaked some curiosity about a beautiful world down there and they clearly showcased that 'it can be done, even so it's scary as heck... and needs more work to ever be comfortable (a lot more as it turned out).
2. Kids old enough to have time to do what needed to be done ... and to offer additional motivation (family diving trips, hopefully) (Doing this before kids would have been all good too, while they were little, maybe through middle school, it would have been tough to do for us).
3. Swimming in a pool for half a year (about twice weekly) both ways: with fins and mask and snorkel as well as just swimming - however cumbersome, slow and non-swimming like. Just to build out a minimal level of water comfort. This "work" should go on to improve further ... hopefully. (shoutout to @Marie13 for that)
4. Doing some minimal drills in the pool (mask clearing, shoutout to @The Chairman for that) - just to set an expectation and to work on the "comfort level"
5. As it went, now my wife knows she can dive off boats, dive in bad visibility and dive in cold-ish water... in a very beginner kind of way. She knows she can handle it. Not that bad for someone who could not handle deep water at all at one point not too long ago...Not that bad with just a mere grand total of 136 minutes of "OW dive time"
... to be continued...
Yesterday my wife became a certified OW diver.
And this even so she until more recently was an extremely accomplished life long water phobic who could not or just barely swim and a few years back would break out in complete and uncontrolled panic attacks when in water deeper than she can stand in.
I am so proud, I can't even tell you how proud!
Now, getting there was an odyssey I don't care to re-hash entirely, except for the parts immediately relevant to what we learned about what worked for us in doing an OW class and what in retrospect did not really work for us.
So, what worked:
1. Some initial snorkeling experience over the years, mostly with hand-holding only and some early mis-haps (uncontrolled panic). but they helped because they peaked some curiosity about a beautiful world down there and they clearly showcased that 'it can be done, even so it's scary as heck... and needs more work to ever be comfortable (a lot more as it turned out).
2. Kids old enough to have time to do what needed to be done ... and to offer additional motivation (family diving trips, hopefully) (Doing this before kids would have been all good too, while they were little, maybe through middle school, it would have been tough to do for us).
3. Swimming in a pool for half a year (about twice weekly) both ways: with fins and mask and snorkel as well as just swimming - however cumbersome, slow and non-swimming like. Just to build out a minimal level of water comfort. This "work" should go on to improve further ... hopefully. (shoutout to @Marie13 for that)
4. Doing some minimal drills in the pool (mask clearing, shoutout to @The Chairman for that) - just to set an expectation and to work on the "comfort level"
5. As it went, now my wife knows she can dive off boats, dive in bad visibility and dive in cold-ish water... in a very beginner kind of way. She knows she can handle it. Not that bad for someone who could not handle deep water at all at one point not too long ago...Not that bad with just a mere grand total of 136 minutes of "OW dive time"
... to be continued...