Tinamarie Hernandez & Jim Elliott With Diveheart

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the business radio studio in Chicago, Illinois. It’s time for Chicago Business Radio. Brought to you by firm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firm space.com. Now here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter. And before we get started, today’s show is sponsored by Firm Space. Firm Space. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. And we got a really good one for you today. We actually have two guests on the show today. We have the executive director of Dive Heart, Tinamarie Hernandez, and the president and founder of Dive Heart, Jim Elliott. Welcome to the show, guys.

Jim and Tinamarie: [00:00:48] Thank you so much. Hi, Max.

Max Kantor: [00:00:50] Thank you. So let’s jump right in. Tell me a little bit about Dive Heart.

Tinamarie Hernandez: [00:00:55] So depart is a 20 plus year 500 1c3 where based out of Downers Grove, Illinois. And we’re actually a global nonprofit that works with people with cognitive and physical disabilities, and we do that through scuba therapy. So scuba diving and pools, lakes, oceans, and that’s basically it.

Max Kantor: [00:01:19] How did Dive Hard get started?

Jim Elliot: [00:01:22] Well, I was in the media business for decades, and I started guiding and teaching blind skiers back in the eighties because my eldest daughter was blind. And I started actually diving in college as a young journalism major, thinking, if I ever met someone like Jacques Cousteau, I’d better not scuba dive. Right. So? So, yes, I was brainstorming for decades, really thinking, gosh, you know, skiing, you can only do it at certain times of the year, certain places in the world. But diving, all you need is a swimming pool, right? So you get a guy out of a wheelchair, you get him in a swimming pool and he’s standing up going, Oh my God, this is the first time I’ve stood up since my injury. So I thought that’d be pretty cool. So after I left the media business, I decided to start Dive Heart in 2001.

Max Kantor: [00:02:08] And at the time, was this an innovative way to do therapy? Because I’ve heard of like, you know, animal therapy, but this is the first time I’ve heard of diving therapy. So at the time, was this a very new thing?

Jim Elliot: [00:02:20] Yeah, we actually coined the phrase scuba therapy. I taught the first class at Good Samaritan Hospital when they opened their rehab center and had a therapy pool. And we got a nice full page story on it. So we approved and it was. But yeah, we just started. We thought we were going to be like a little local thing in the Chicagoland area, do some pool stuff and go to the quarry and no summer once in a while and maybe do a trip or two a year. But in the last eight weeks we’ve been to four separate countries and I presented at a medical conference in Malaysia just like two and a half weeks ago. So it’s really taken off in a way that I never thought we changed the dive industry. Now every dive training agency addresses some form of adaptive scuba, and we changed it from really people were calling people handicapped divers and disabled divers. And I said, I don’t like that. I said, It’s about adapting. So we decided to change it to adaptive diving and our training program reflects that.

Max Kantor: [00:03:17] So what are some of the benefits of adaptive diving for its participants?

Tinamarie Hernandez: [00:03:23] Well, what a lot of people will tell you is freedom is the big thing. People feel very free under the water. If it might be freedom from using a wheelchair or a walker all the time, it might be freedom from feeling kind of less than for some people, freedom from pain. For a lot of people, they experience less pain or no pain either during the dive or sometimes after diving, especially if they’re going on like a week long trip and then mentally just freedom from stressors and the chaos that might be happening above the water. And let me tell you, every diver will tell you some of those things. They don’t have to be an adaptive diver to get these types of benefits. And it was kind of like a secret, but not intentionally that all of us experience as divers. And then we decided to open it up to people who were not being asked to join in on that and get that type of relief. And that’s one of the beautiful things about what we do, is we’re able to open this type of experience to a lot of people who never thought that they could do it.

Max Kantor: [00:04:39] And to to participate in adaptive diving. Do you have to know how to swim or be trained in diving?

Tinamarie Hernandez: [00:04:46] We do. There’s things obviously you have to learn, like number one rule in diving is keep breathing. You’re always breathing. You don’t hold your breath ever. And other little tidbits you have to get to know the gear and things like that. So when we do pool programs, which is where we start, everybody, we introduce people and we have instructors who introduce people who’ve not done it before to these basic things. And then if someone is interested in becoming more trained up and certified as an adaptive diver, we we offer that. The other thing is we do dive with people who cannot necessarily use their arms or their legs or maybe they don’t have arms and legs. And so, no, you don’t have to be a swimmer. We will help you in the water. And what’s the beautiful part about our program is it’s based on need. So if you can be a more independent person under the water, we will. We’ll let you be as independent as you can be and we’ll hopefully show you. For some people, they think they’re not going to be independent underwater. And then they realize that they are part fish and they’re able to be very independent underwater.

Max Kantor: [00:05:58] Well, what’s super cool about what you guys are doing, what it sounds like is, you know, you’re just opening up the world of diving for so many people who otherwise might have been excluded from it historically.

Jim Elliot: [00:06:10] Absolutely. In fact, right now, the best way people could find out about us is going to dive heart dot org and write on the front page immediately pops up. A documentary that was premiered in Downers Grove, actually in May called Adapting to Dive. We met a filmmaker last year who did a documentary, and the twist is really unbelievable. A week before he was coming on the trip in December, we had 40 divers, eight with disabilities, five wheelchair users. His son came over for Thanksgiving and had a wonderful dinner with him, had just gotten out of rehab. He was addicted to opioids, went in his room and overdosed and died. So now the filmmaker from L.A. had to decide, Do I go? I’ve done all these back stories on all these die hard people with disabilities and challenges they face. And his family said, Go, don’t get sucked down into this hole of depression. He came and he said nothing to us. We had no idea. He and his brother were filming on two different boats. And the last night we do a go round and say, Hey, Max, how was the trip? What do you think? And it’s all Kumbaya stuff. And then at the very end, he kind of says, Well, I didn’t tell you this, but and it was so emotional and so and it was he said, this has been a transformational trip in my life. My son just passed. And so and it’s winning awards in international film festivals all over the world. So that’s a great way to see what we do at an open water trip. For sure. The heavy lifting is done in swimming pools for sure all over the country. But.

Max Kantor: [00:07:44] So eventually you you take people, you know, they start in the pools, but eventually you offer programs in other bodies of water.

Tinamarie Hernandez: [00:07:52] Correct. I mean, every one of our largest tenants and depart is challenged by choice. So anyone who wants to come on and continue doing the pool programs and never move beyond that, we’re 100% backing that. However, a lot of people are like, This is so cool in the pool. What would it be like to go to the quarry or what would it be like to go on a trip, even an international trip? And we do offer those opportunities. They’re not all free like they are with the pool programs, but we jointly fundraise with people and we get sponsorships and we work to make sure if someone really wants to come on a trip, we help them do that.

Max Kantor: [00:08:32] So what does the future of therapy in zero gravity look like? What would be some of your predictions?

Tinamarie Hernandez: [00:08:39] I hope that people. We need more hardcore scientists, which Jim and I are not medical people, but we’ve been partnering with them for a long time. I’d love to see more research done in and around scuba therapy and figuring out how does our body react to certain things. You know, we have a feeling about a lot of stuff. Like I feel like our bodies probably metabolize some of the medications. We’re on a little bit quicker when we’re underwater. How does that affect when we get out of the water? How does that affect something that you might be on or if these people who have relief from pain? Is that something that you could partner with the medication you’re currently on and maybe they don’t have to be on as much? Or you can say, well, if you guys are going to be diving this week and that’s where it leads into the fact that we have this dream of building a facility. And that facility would be meant our primary focuses would be research, rehabilitation, therapy given to people on a more regular basis, because you can’t do that all just through international trips or trips down to the Keys. And a lot of times the reason we’re taking these trips and taking people there is cold water is not a friend of someone who has a Thermoregulation issue. So someone who might be a paraplegic or quadriplegic or if they have a condition that doesn’t let circulation happen, as with other people to help keep them warm in the water, we’re all going to get cold in the water, but certain conditions cause it to happen quicker. And so that’s why we dive a lot of times in warm water. But this this pool, this facility that we’re hoping to build is going to really be conducive to more research and rehabilitation and more training and getting people in the water and those experiences that hopefully will bring relief. And. 21. Go ahead.

Max Kantor: [00:10:44] Oh, no, go ahead, Jim.

Jim Elliot: [00:10:46] I was just going to say, 21 years into this, we’ve done 11 international adaptive scuba symposiums with professors and physicians and therapists from all over the country. Most recently, Edinburgh, Scotland. We had one of the first scuba therapy research professors join us in a virtual symposium that we did. But we know those symposiums are on a playlist, along with our medical stories and our military stories on our YouTube channel. You just go to YouTube, channel dive art and just click on playlist and you could look at the fun stuff. You could look at the science stuff. The science stuff, yeah, the medical stuff. I mean, it’s it’s all right there and it’s it’s something like I said, I didn’t know we’d be doing the training program, for example, that we have. The reason we go on trips is because it’s experience based. I was training a lot of instructors that if we didn’t give them the experience, they weren’t actually doing anything with the certification we were giving them. So we decided, well, let’s build experience into a trip training program. So when we go to Cozumel, we we were December trip to Cozumel and we have nine adaptive divers. We can’t accept any more right now until we get more instructors and buddies on that trip. But they will be able to work with a kid with autism one day and then somebody with a spinal cord injury the next day with traumatic brain injury or ALS. By the end of that week, they really have had an opportunity to really drill down and get to know the person you know, in and out of the water. And that really gives people a lot more confidence. And then they can go back to their part of their country or their part of the world, and they can help facilitate a program there in their community.

Max Kantor: [00:12:30] So I love to ask each of my guests this question, so I would love to ask each of you this to you. What is the most rewarding part about what you do with Dive Heart?

Tinamarie Hernandez: [00:12:44] The feeling that we give people of community and family is really I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a parent or the person themselves say, I really feel a part of something. And that was something maybe that was missing in their lives. I love when people say, you know, I really like coming to these programs because if I didn’t come, someone would miss me. That means a lot to me and it means a lot to. We talk a lot these days about inclusivity. And that’s where this came from, really. This it was created initially because we wanted people to feel included and to be able to get experiences that they thought were close to them. So that for me is the biggest reward. Yeah, we started Dive Hard to build confidence, independence and self esteem in individuals of all abilities. We don’t look at disabilities, we just look at their abilities and we work with what abilities they have. The thrill for me is when I get a guy or anyone in the first time standing up and they’re in water out of their wheelchair, and they look down and they get this look of shock on their face and they go, Oh my God, this is the first time I’ve stood up since my spinal cord injury.

Jim Elliot: [00:13:57] And the thing I love about that is not only it feels good, it immediately creates a paradigm shift. It’s not Johnny in a wheelchair anymore. It’s Jonny, the scuba diver. And then he goes, Wow, what else can I take on? And when I get him neutrally buoyant and there’s swimming around the pool in ten feet of water, completely independent, that’s really a thrill. And I mentioned earlier I guided and taught blind skiers for years, and it takes the better part of a week on a trip to get somebody acclimated to the equipment and the fall line of the hill and all the things you need to know in downhill skiing with somebody who’s blind or disabled. But in diving in 30 minutes, I can have somebody completely independent in a swimming pool for the first time in their life, and they may never have swam before. But the equipment is very forgiving and the techniques that we’ve developed over the years are innovative and have really speeded up the process. We can assimilate these people into a zero gravity environment very fast.

Max Kantor: [00:14:55] So if people want to learn more about dive heart or even participate, where are you guys located? And also how can they learn more online?

Tinamarie and Jim: [00:15:04] Online the best way it’s info at dive parked up or go. That’s our website and they can email us at info info at dive heart dot org. And then we’re located in Downers Grove. We’re about to do a grand opening of our first ever outreach center. It’s on the main street in downtown Downers Grove, and we’re really excited to invite the community to come and find out more about us. Come talk to us, come figure out who we are. We’re really excited. Jim’s always thinking up. He’s an entrepreneur from his tippy top head to his toes. And so he’s always coming up with various ideas of how do we get the community involved? How can we do various activities? And now that we have this outreach center, we’re going to be really busy. Yeah, we, we helped facilitate the first research in the world on autism and scuba therapy and with Midwestern University and Downers Grove. And we’ll probably have little mini symposiums in our in our outreach center at 5147 Main Street in downtown Downers Grove. You know, Bailey Doyle’s Irish pub right next to it. Right. Very close to it. But or talk about chronic pain. Talk about how doctors from Hopkins went with one of the teams we trained and found out that if you go to 66 feet underwater, there’s an extra output of serotonin and that helps with pain management. And we’ve had people with chronic pain who they’re pain free on the trip and then their chronic pain doesn’t start coming back for two more weeks or on that same study, PTSD symptoms, veterans, 80% of their symptoms are relieved during a pilot study with Hopkins. So there’s I mean, the facility we want to build is going to really usher in new, exciting research, which is going to revolutionize rehabilitation. For example, a drug company. We know what your drug does at one atmosphere. What will it do it to atmospheres at 50% or two or something like that. So there’s a lot of cool things that lie ahead.

Max Kantor: [00:17:11] Absolutely. And Teena marie and Jim, it’s been awesome to talk to you. You both have incredible stories and it’s really heartwarming and just inspiring the way that you are impacting so many people’s lives, so many different people’s lives are being changed because of you guys. So and the work that Die Hard is doing. So thank you. And we appreciate you for everything that that you do with Dive Heart.

Tinamarie and Jim: [00:17:34] Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing the story. Yeah, thank you.

Max Kantor: [00:17:37] And thanks to you for listening to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Cantor. And we’ll see you next time.

Intro: [00:17:46] This episode of Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by firm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firmspace.com.