Water makes up over 70% of the Earth’s surface and you can’t say you have lived your life fully until you have tried diving. It is an experience that is completely different from anything else, and it is worthy of your time and effort and is probably easier than you imagine. You just need to be able to swim and breathe properly and your diving instructor will explain everything you need to know and accompany you on your first dive. Here are just a few reasons why you should do it:
Silence and peace
Once you get underwater, the world as you know it ceases to exist, together with all its distractions and noise. You don’t hear anything except the bubbles you make breathing and that’s it! No other sounds, no voices, no boats, nothing. There is a change that happens when you shift the focus of your senses, from talking, listening and looking, only to looking and feeling the touch of water with your entire body. Silence gets a whole new meaning and a sense of peace and calm comes over you.
Freedom
When you think about it, there are not many experiences that offer the gift of feeling completely free, but diving is one of them. It is like skydiving, but without the danger of a fall. Your body is free to move in any direction, left, right, up, down, sideways … you are weightless. You won’t even feel the weight of your equipment once you are in the water. When you have equalized your ears by pinching your nose closed and gently breathing out against your nostrils and when you have reached the right depth, you don’t need to worry about anything else, you can swim fast and enjoy the rush of water against your body, you can change direction easily or just float freely without any movement.
Beauty
There will be beauty everywhere you look. When you look up, you will see a rolling surface against daylight, you will be under the waves and see them from the upside down. Depending on how sunny the day is, you can see the diffused and blurred sun, and even clouds and birds. You will see the dissolving bubbles travelling up to the surface and breaking into tiny silver particles all around you.
On a bright day, rays of light can be seen playing on the ocean floor, if it is not too deep. This alone will give you material to look at for hours, but enter marine life! The colors of many different fish, corals, reefs and seaweeds are just indescribable. Creatures you have never seen appear in front of your eyes in all their glory, and there is an endless supply of them.
Pristine nature
There and not many places in the world that are untouched by man, but if you take up diving, you will discover they exist and where they are, since good diving sites usually mean pristine nature. They are usually nature reserves or biospheres or are completely uninhabited and isolated. Take diving on Koh Lipe, one of Thailand’s most popular dive sites, for example – it is surrounded by the Tarutao National Marine Park and more than a dozen uninhabited islands that can be explored, with their abundance of flora and fauna that only other fellow divers have ever laid their eyes on.
Experiencing these gifts of diving will certainly provide you with a sense of joy and satisfaction, it will broaden your perspective and enrich your life in many ways. Apart from being highly enjoyable, diving is also very healthy, it teaches us how to breathe properly and how to move consciously. It lets us experience a dimension of its own, so we say, take the plunge, you will never regret it.
