What event made you head toward/away from DIR?

[matt t.]

Sorry to make anyone spit out their Kool-Aid this morning, just wanted to reiterate that DIR is really nothing new or revolutionary, just condensed and pulled from many sources and experienced and placed into a context where it can be applied to most divers in most situations. Even the "Holistic" approach is old news. The cavern diver manual from IANTD has several chapters of Tom Mount going on an on about Chakras, meditation, pressure points, physical fitness and mindset. The rest of the gas management, dive planning, and configuration stuff are anything you'll learn from the 'big 3' in their Trimix and Cave courses. But that I think is the real beauty of GUE's DIR course, to give you the useful skills that any diver can apply, without taking 5 courses to get to Advanced Trimix, and 3-4 courses plus a trip to Florida to get a Cave card.

As far as sidemount, I had been scouring the internet for the "How To Select a DIR Dive Buddy" I believe by Dan Volker which talked about staying away from photographers and spear fishermen, when I came across the Gospel on DIR Sidemount Diving according to none other than Irvine himself. You can read it yourself . It's mostly good except when he starts to show his true personality in the last paragraph.


Paul

-[/quote]

Agreed 100%.