Scuba diving offered as physical therapy

Scuba diving lessons are being offered at Woy Woy as physical therapy for people living with disability and illness.

The Scuba Gym was born out of a desire to enable lasting change for people with special needs or disabilities and was founded by Ms Lyndi Leggett in September 2018.

It offers scuba therapy for all manner of special needs including for quadriplegics, cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome and post-tumatic stress dsorder.

Ms Leggett said she travelled to aquatic centres around Sydney and the Hunter to deliver scuba sessions.

She conducted sessions at the Peninsula Leisure Centre.

According to Ms Leggett, scuba therapy provides people with a weightless environment in which to exercise and undertake physical therapy.

A year since opening, Ms Leggett said she and her team had helped numerous people reclaim their bodies and find a new lease on life.

She said the antigravity environment was the key to the unique therapy's success as it allowed people will all manner of physical or mental constraints to perform movements and exercises they typically could not above the surface.

"At the Scuba Gym, individualised workouts without gravity are designed to naturally heal the body.

"The benefits are personal to each participant and can often be life-changing," Ms Leggett said.

"For many of our divers, just scuba diving is massive in itself as most of the able-bodied population is terrified of it.

"This mental strength and trust are what's needed to enable them to push through the workout, to believe in themselves and to start the healing or rewiring process in a different way," she said.

Ms Leggett said this type of healing fell under the banner of neuro plasticity and nerve regeneration.

The Scuba Gym is working with people who are self-managed, or plan managed according to the NDIS, and also offers sponsorship for those divers who are self-funded and cannot get funded by the NDIS.

SOURCE:

Website, 11 Sep 2019

Lyndi Leggett, The Scuba Gym Australia