When a doctor from Mayo Clinic approached me three years ago at an international scuba diving trade show and asked if I might be interested in presenting at Mayo’s annual conference on the subject of scuba therapy, I thought he was kidding.
Klaus Torp, a Mayo Clinic hyperbaric physician, assured me he was not kidding. When I realized he was serious, I immediately accepted his invitation. After all, since 2001 as the president of Diveheart I have presented to physicians’ groups and at medical conferences around the world. Everything from Grand Rounds at Duke and Northwestern University medical centers to medical conferences in Boston and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
It was actually on my first open water dive in the Florida Keys that I realized that scuba diving was therapeutic. Not only does scuba diving allow a person to escape gravity which provides physical benefits, but it also provides psychological benefits. After all, it’s not natural to breath underwater and it really is a bit of a mindbender when you take your first breath underwater.
Some people immediately pop their head out of the water hyperventilating in a semi panic. I smile and remind them that their brain is telling them that they should not be breathing underwater. Once a person gets past the breathing underwater thing, then they lean to enjoy neutral buoyancy in a zero-gravity environment.
This is nothing short of flying or hovering in midair like a superhero. Once you wrap your head around the fact that you are totally weightless, and you are breathing underwater, something changes in your perspective of what you can and can’t do.
People of all abilities realize that if they can fly and breathe underwater, they can probably do anything. And many who undergo this amazing experience come out on the other side taking on challenges in their everyday lives that they may never have attempted before. It truly is a game changer and can flip a person’s perspective and attitude faster than anything I’ve ever seen; and this realization comes only after guiding and teaching blind children and adults how to downhill ski for decades.
I somehow knew that scuba diving would be a powerful therapy. This year again Diveheart will be presenting at the annual Mayo Clinic Medical Conference. The first year was on physical disabilities and last year was on cognitive disabilities and scuba therapy. This year we’ll be talking about how we can scale up to serve more people by building a deep warm water therapy pool. Stay tuned.
