This is the little story of someone who has OCD and chose traveling and diving as a therapy. This is my story.
I’m from a small French island in the Indian Ocean called La Reunion. I started traveling around the world three years ago, after a Master Degree in Law. Traveling was the first step to fight my sickness: After a trip around Europe, I got bored and OCD came back while I was staying in a beautiful place called Dubrovnik (Croatia). My therapist always told me that meditation would help me for curing my sickness but i’m not someone that, unfortunately, can stay concentrated in pure meditation, and then, I saw an ad on the wall of the hostel where I was working in Dubrovnik about being an Open Water Diver. I thought about this for two weeks and then decided to this wonderful world of diving.
More than enjoying the fact of being in the ocean and loving this new world full of life, the main thing is that I found my new therapy: Diving was my form of meditation.
Underwater, you leave the problem behind, and focus on breathing and seeing a completely new world. You communicate with hands, and silence means something. Each day you see something new, even diving in the same place. You never get bored; this is the most important for me.
And I kept traveling, with the goal of becoming a Diving Instructor, as I love to share with people, and find in diving a “smile maker” in the face of everyone.
During the three years that I was traveling the world, I worked on Customer Service and the Tourism industry, to save some money and realize my dream: Being able to teach diving and share my new passion with other people. I also hope that one day I can open a Diving Therapy company to help people to recover their smile, and enjoying life again after a depression sickness, and not decompression sickness! (promise will make sure to try to avoid that 🙂 ) or help every kind of mental illness with diving therapy.
So here I am in Lembongan, happy to share my first experience of the Divemaster course with you.
I arrived a couple of weeks ago at Two Fish Divers Lembongan. I’m thankful to Arnaud, who organized everything for me before I arrived. The staff of this company is really helpful to get you prepare for your Divemaster. But the Volcano started waking up, so I was not able to do my Divemaster in Amed with Arnaud anymore, and he managed to arrange for me to do it in Lembongan.
And Lembongan is such a great place to do the course! The people here is really chill and relax, with the guides, staff and locals being really friendly, always with a communicative smile; it’s a very good environment to learn.
In the first two days diving I saw: two turtles, four Mola Mola, Manta rays, sharks etc. But, more than that, the best here is that you have a team of people that are happy to do their job and share with you everyday. They never look at the watch, and always take time to answer all of your questions, delivering the best learning I ever had on diving.
Anna, Emily and Dani are the three Diving Instructors that are there at the moment, and I love how they dedicate their time to their students. All three of them are a good example for me, as I hope to be a Diving Instructor in mid December.
So far, in Lembongan, I have been going to sleep thinking in diving and wake up to go diving, it’s a little dream come true, and the opportunity for me to have an healthy life and keep doing my own therapy. Dream is not only fun, you also have to learn a lot and help the staff as you gonna prepare yourself to be a professional, and also have to provide a good customer service everyday. I definitively love this world of bubbles, and seeing divers every day leaving the resort with a big smile.
So if you are a diver who would like to be a profesional Divemaster, see a lot of wonderful animals and work with passionated staff, I think that Two Fish Lembongan is the place to be (except for the mosquitoes, they are like vampires! 🙂 ).
(written by Thomas Grodin)