After a huge amount of work, effort, belief, professionalism,… from DDI Portugal, especially its Representatives, Paulo Guerreiro, I was able to hold the regulator in my mouth and control my lip movement, therefore controlling something almost uncontrollable for someone with cerebral palsy like myself, my spasticity. What a feeling!!! Flabbergasting!!!

Paulo Guerreiro, asked if I wanted to do the Open Water Diving course. I immediately said yes and can say the person I was then, is not the same as at present, because I not only hold the regulator firmly, but I can put on and take off the mask, put it in place while diving, something I did not have the sensibility to do, couldn’t feel if it was or was not in place. If this blowed my mind, being able to lift my right arm underwater, open my hand and shake my instructors hand, was something I would catagorize as unbelievable, so out of my world it seemed to me. More than that I feel as one with the sea… so relaxed that the instructors can put me upside down, turn me around and I have a blast!!! And to top this I’m now a certified DDI level 3 Open Water Diver!!!

So not only was diving important for me on a recreational level, but also on a rehab level physically by gaining more control over my movements and psychologically by boosting my self-confidence since I overcame limits I thought were unbeatable, widening my horizons and making me ready to conquer new frontiers, such as learning to scuba-dive.    

Dália Faria