Blog: "Underwater diving is a really liberating experience"
The English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) website features a blog post every Friday through the year. In 2016 we’ll be taking a look at an A-Z of accessible sporting and fitness opportunities available to disabled people. This week it’s U for underwater diving, and Lindsay Harper discusses how liberating a sense of adventure feels.
Lindsay’s blog:
I love underwater diving for the adventure. People might think a paralysed person can’t go on an adventure, but diving gives me that experience and it gets the adrenaline pumping.
I’m 58 and live in Suffolk. I started scuba diving in 2007 – I had always fancied giving it a go.
On holiday in Rhodes in Greece, a diving company agreed to let me have a go. I got all kitted up, dived in and loved it – I took to it like a duck to water. We went to a little bay and I went down with the lead instructor. And I successfully swam around, looking at all the fish.
I really loved it, so when I got home I searched for “diving with disabilities” on the internet, and later was able to gain loads of diving qualifications.
I am paralysed after being in a motorbike accident in 1976. I can't move anything below my ribcage and mid-back, though I have a fairly strong upper body.
I dive mostly on holiday but also at Stoney Cove, the National Diving Centre in Leicestershire. And recently the Trust has enjoyed our first open water sea dive off the UK coast.
When I dive I am helped when I get kitted up, putting on the buoyancy jacket and the tanks. I dive wearing webbed gloves, which gives me extra power in my hands and arms – I have to dive using my hands rather than my legs.
Once ready, I roll into the water off the back of the boat I descend and feel independent underwater. It is a really liberating experience.
Being freed from my wheelchair is also enjoyable – my body gets a chance to stretch out and it helps to relax me physically. My legs ease out behind me and any tension in my lower body starts to relax.
I don’t feel my disability when I’m diving, because of the weightlessness. It’s how I imagine it must be in space – you’re just floating. I’m just like anyone else underwater, because apart from the fact I don’t wear fins on my feet nobody would know I’m disabled.
