I had been a little sporty, I enjoyed cross-country running, cycling, and scuba diving, having undertaken over 600 dives around the world. But as I grew older, my exercise regime became less, no badminton or squash, no scuba diving, and yes the inevitable happened I gained weight.
I noticed that I started to get the old aches and pains which unfortunately accompanies our age progression, saying to myself, I must exercise, get myself fit, I would do a bit for a couple of weeks, half an hour each morning, floor, stretching, push-up exercises, then relapse into the comfort of taking it easy.
I noticed a slight ache in my neck on occasions, nothing much, just enough to notice. It seemed to occur when I expended a little energy, but it was OK.
I noticed that walking in the morning up Taxim Hill in Istanbul, that would be sweating, and on occasions I would arrive in the training room soaking wet.
Still I did nothing, just said to myself, do more exercise.
I put all my energy into delivering my courses, and one in particular was in Antalya in Southern Turkey. My translator, Asuman Yildirim hear my stories and metaphors about scuba diving, and as the hotel we were holding the course had a diving school and diving facilities, she asked if I would take her on a dive. Of cause I had to say no, as Asu had never dived before, and one has to have a diving qualification to hire the equipment and partake in a dive. Even though I am a Dive Master, I insisted she takes a Padi Diving course.
On Asu’s last qualifying session, she ask her instructor if I could accompany them, and the instructor, having had checked my qualifications, agreed as long as I could prove to him I could handle myself in the water upon entering. This I did, but had difficulty clearing or equalising the pressure in my ears.
As I had paid a lot of money to hire the scuba diving equipment, and made a promise, I decided to still accompany Asu and the diving instructor, but stay at a depth on 10 feet or 3 meters.
After ten minutes swimming along above the other two, the whole world began to spin, I was not happy, there was something not right, and I aborted the dive, and the others came up to the surface with me.
Visit my web page to see some of my diving pictures http://www.nlpnow.net/scuba.htm .
Perhaps tomorrow I will continue.
(note 9/10/07, my web sites are again down, as the ISP (www.legend.co.uk or www.thus.com) has big problems, so much so, I am moving to another service provider, sorry for any convenience).