Ex Special Forces provide healing at Quiet Healing centre

Major Vivek Jacob spent 14 years as an elite para commander in the Indian Army, of which over nine years were spent in combat in the mountains. One day, his parachute malfunctioned during a combat skydive and he suffered spinal injuries. While recovering in a military hospital, he formed a close bond with an Indian Air Force officer who had been permanently paralyzed from the waist down in a freak accident, and who had spent the past four years in the hospital in a wheelchair. When the officer expressed his desire to scuba dive, Vivek promised he would try to make it happen. It inspired Vivek to explore a whole new world of adaptive adventure sports and its potential to change the narrative around disabilities.

Vivek was already looking for a change in his life. “In Special Forces you are basically trained to hunt people.  And we became extremely good at it. But I reached a point where I didn’t want to kill people any more; I understood it was so stupid.  After so many near-death experiences, I had learned the value of life, so now I wanted to focus upon creation rather than destruction. I locked my weapon and said I’m not touching it any more. It was when I was wondering what to do next that I met this guy in hospital, and that experience gave me a new focus.

“When I started focusing on helping that one person, I realized that for him to scuba dive while in a wheelchair he would need support from a lot of different people.  Then I thought there must be so many other people like him across the world who may also want to do skydiving or mountaineering, and there must be more people like me who are trained and want to help out, so if I can connect people who have these dreams with people who can support them, we can create a win-win situation.”

He resigned from the army and in 2019 he launched Special Forces Adventures with a focus to design and implement large-scale employment solutions for people with disabilities and those who are underprivileged. He was joined by others with a military background who were also looking for a different way to serve humanity. “We didn’t have money but serving and ex-Special Forces soldiers kept coming to help because they were totally captured by the vision. They wanted to focus their energy on healing because they had been dealing with death.” 

One of them was Major Arun who had had a similarly transformative experience while hospitalized after getting injured in combat.  “In India the most conservative estimates consider that seven crore people suffer from some kind of disability.  Most of them don’t have jobs, they are not independent, and they are locked up inside their homes, out of sight.  When I heard about this project I found it so inspiring.”

Vivek explains that Special Forces have a particular mindset, which is that when you are surrounded by hostility, you find a way to survive. It leads them to believe they can do anything, conquer anything. 

Interestingly, he learned that many people with disabilities have a similar mindset. “That is the mindset that is keeping them alive. They go through thoughts of suicide sometimes, but after that they make the decision to live.  That’s a very powerful shift.  So we don’t grow that in them. They already have made that shift; we are just unlocking it.”

They soon discovered there was a big demand and over the past year a team of close to 200 volunteers, comprising both serving and ex-Special Forces personnel working pro bono, have trained over a hundred people with disabilities to scuba dive. 

But what is it about scuba diving that is so beneficial to those with disabilities? 

Vivek explains there are many factors. People with physical disabilities are bound by gravity on land, but in the water they can move freely. The pressure on the body increases as one goes deeper, and this causes the body’s healing mechanism to work much more efficiently. “Also, when you dive you hear only your own breathing, and you are floating effortlessly while captivated by this wonderful subterranean world. So it’s a form of meditation, deep meditation, which heals the brain.” 

Everywhere, the team received help. People offered their swimming pools, diving shops loaned diving equipment. “I realized that if what you are doing is good for the universe, the universal will support it,” says Vivek.  

At a certain point, however, he became depressed. “I felt I was a slave to circumstances. I was constantly having to ask people, ‘Can we use your swimming pool? Can you give me this?’ I wanted to get rid of the pity and charity because it’s a wrong perception: the people who we were helping have as strong a spirit as anybody else. But how to demonstrate this to the world?”

He visited his mother in Kerala.  One morning a vision crystallized.  “I got the idea of creating three world records. We, former Special Forces soldiers from across the globe, would support the largest group ever of people with disabilities to conquer land, sea and air. One group will dive off the Maldives, another will skydive in Dubai, and a third group will ascend the Siachen glacier, site of the world’s highest battlefield.  It’s all about unity – participants and support staff will be drawn from every religion, class, nationality status – and shattering the belief that people with disabilities are the weakest sector of human society and need charity, because they will do what 99% of the people on the planet will not have done. And as it will be filmed and put on the Internet the whole world will watch.”

The C.L.A.W. (Conquer Land, Air, Water) project was launched in January 2020. The triple world record attempts will happen in 2021.

The other part of the vision was to establish a facility for people with disabilities where everybody, rich or poor, could come to be rehabilitated, re-skilled and get the possibility of employment. It would also be a full spectrum research facility, where scientists from across the world would collaborate in finding ways to improve treatment of disabilities.   “Ultimately, we want to crush disability,” says Arun.

Where does Auroville fit into all this? 

After Arun was hospitalized after getting injured in combat, he did a lot of reading. “I wanted to know why there is so little harmony in the world and developed a fire to find solutions. I was searching the entire landscape of human knowledge about three years back when I came across a reference to Auroville.  I stayed here for some months to find out more about the idea behind and realized that while it is facing challenges, it has the potential to bring about overall human unity and harmony.”

He is also very inspired by the afforestation work, and for the past two years has regularly been coming as a volunteer to work in Revelation forest. 

 “I was mesmerized by the information he gave me about the forest as well as the larger Auroville project,” says Vivek. “I realized that what’s happening here is how human beings should think and live.”

But when he finally got here he realized there was also another factor. “The energy is very strong here, you can feel it. It’s a very different dimension from outside Auroville; there are possibilities that don’t exist elsewhere. And there is so much knowledge here; I’ve talked to so many people with expertise in different domains. So it’s an ideal environment for a project like ours. Our team is giving one form of healing, scuba-diving, but there are so many other things that could be offered in Auroville to those with disabilities. So I feel we will flourish because we are associated with Auroville, and we will help Auroville flourish, too.”

And the work has already begun. So far they have trained twelve people (six of whom have disabilities) in scuba diving in the Quiet Healing Centre pool and in the ocean; participants have also enjoyed Watsu and massage sessions at Quiet.    

“In the end,” says Vivek, “it’s all about freedom, helping those with disabilities to no longer be a slave of circumstances. And it’s happening: they are acquiring new confidence and some of them have become instructors, training other people with disabilities. But it’s not just about them. For me, freedom is a collective experience; it’s about unlocking the human capacity of everyone. Either all of us are free or none of us are.  That’s the key idea behind everything we do.”

For more information on the project: contact@claw.global