Personal Benefit from DIR?

[UnderSeaBumbleBee]

What is the greatest personal benefit you have experienced since becoming or moving toward DIR?

 

[Cave Diver]

I would have to say it's a better idea how relatively simple things fit together to form a more complex overall picture and to understand the WHY.

Learning to think about the WHY is critical. Why one item over another, why the placement is so criitical and the way it will affect the placement of the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

Why it's so important to dive with a buddy with similar mindset, training and equipment.

To question and understand, not simply follow along.

 

[TSandM]

The single biggest benefit I've gotten is becoming a part of a diving community of like-minded people. This has allowed me to go a variety of places and jump in the water with a stranger, only to find it feels like diving with my close friends. To me, this is the absolute core strength of DIR diving -- it puts everybody on the same page.

Personally, I treasure the ability to position myself where I want to be in the water, and to pass through a dive site and leave it precisely as I found it. I also love the sense of connection underwater that comes from diving as a team. I like my equipment -- it's simple and rational and flexible.

But it's things like our upcoming Gathering weekend that really show the strength of the system. We'll have twenty divers together, any two (or three) of whom can group up and know that everybody understands the planning, the procedures, and the process of the dive.

 

[dsteding]

To question and understand, not simply follow along.

Agreed.

Another piece that is important for me is honest self-evaluation, as well as constructive evaluation of the dive as a team. Although I really only did ~7 dives before starting to dive with DIR trained divers, I rapidly found that the community I was in easily set aside egos and were very honest about themselves in terms of self analysis. As a newer diver, that encouraged me to do the same. In turn, this cuts down on the "you don't know what you don't know" part of your dive education.

So much in terms of learning to think has happened after dives and in debriefs. Because of the importance placed on understanding risk and communicating, my experience is that the debrief involved with a DIR team tends to be more constructive, and I find that very helpful in building an experience base.

 

[Geoff_H]

Personally, I treasure the ability to position myself where I want to be in the water, and to pass through a dive site and leave it precisely as I found it. I also love the sense of connection underwater that comes from diving as a team. I like my equipment -- it's simple and rational and flexible.

I love all those things too, none of which are exclusive to DIR.

 

[Adobo]

What is the greatest personal benefit you have experienced since becoming or moving toward DIR?

I made a lot of good friends.

 

[wreckchick]

I'm not really DIR but I kind of get it and what being around DIR divers did for me was gave me a skill set to aim for and I think I've pretty well achieved but before that I didn't really know what 'good divers' looked like. Thanks to all the Gilboa Quarriors for that!

Rachel

 

[Mike Manthe]

Hi,
We are a group of wreck divers from different countries. Imho the biggest benefit of DIR is that it made our logistics easier to handle (eg Gasses) . We can also add new divers to the team without long talking about procedures. It is very team-oriented.


jm2p

 

[Steve R]

Made diving dead-nutts simple and ever so easy.

 

[CameronMartz]

I've made some of the best friends of my life through the DIR community. There are a lot of people in this group who think like me- there are times during diving to be very serious, but the rest of the time, you should be laughing until it hurts. Many of the people I've met through GUE and the WKPP can switch back and forth between these modes instantly and effortlessly without error. This is a REAL dive skill.

It's just a symptom of self-selection, I think, because you have to be able to be serious about something to commit to the training, and you have to have a sense of self-deprecation in order to get the most you can out of your instructors and mentors.

Cameron