Sarasota, FL, August 12, 2024 — Teaching swimming skills on top of fear rather than healing fear first, according to Melon (M. Ellen) Dash of Miracle Swimming, has caused a state of emergency in the U.S. and around the world: adults too often emerge unsafe from conventional lessons. Most adults in swimming lessons are afraid. Learning strokes doesn’t remove their fear.
Now:
· Over 50% of adults in the U.S. (more than 120 million) are afraid in water and cannot swim
· Eighty percent of drownings in the U.S. are by adults
· Drowning increased by 19% in adults ages 65–74 in 2022 compared to 2019
—CDC
The American Red Cross reports that “85% of adults say they can swim, but half of those can’t execute basic water skills.”
“The large instructional agencies don’t realize it,” explains Miracle Swimming School for Adults founder Melon (M. Ellen) Dash in Sarasota, Florida, “but traditional adult swimming lessons don’t teach basic water skills. They overlook fear. Thus, most adults who are afraid in water fail to become safe or confident in lessons. This feeds into the high drowning rate.”
Afraid students and their instructors have opposing definitions of learning to swim.
Respectively:
1. I can rest and play comfortably in deep water for as long as I’d like, even if I don’t know formal strokes.
2. I can do a stroke from here to there in shallow water.
The first is a portrayal of water safety. Students expect to become calm and safe in deep water. Strokes can be learned later.
The second is a definition commonly found in the public and in conventional lessons. It implies, “I can swim because I can move my arms and legs ‘like this.’” This is insufficient to make students safe or confident in deep water. Their fear can lead to panic. Panic is the most likely cause of adult drownings. To heal fear is to significantly reduce panic and therefore drowning.
Diana Nyad, the swimmer of the 111 miles from Cuba to Florida whose story is told in Nyad (Netflix) has done television spots on Miracle Swimming. She asserts: “It is flat-out alarming how many adults in our country die from drowning every year. Eighty percent of drownings are by adults. These senseless deaths can be prevented. Most adult swimming programs are not thorough enough to teach someone to save her/his own life. This is the 100%-effective set of skills every adult needs. Let’s do something about adult drownings.”
A new body of knowledge emerged from over 40 years of exclusively teaching nearly 6,000 afraid adults by Dash and her staff. The advances have rendered conventional methods of adult beginning swimming instruction obsolete. The agencies are unaware of the evolution.
Examples of the new knowledge are:
Prevents Learning
-A correct float is horizontal.
-Learning a stroke, like freestyle, makes you safe in deep water.
-Being told to relax when you’re terrified. Despite fear, blow bubbles, let go of the wall, glide, kick.
-If you can do it in the shallow end, you can do it in the deep.
-The standard ‘swimming test’ of motions determines whether someone is safe.
Enables Learning
– A correct float can be horizontal, diagonal or vertical.
– The ability to remain peaceful going nowhere in deep water makes you safe. Strokes make you safe only if you can out-swim something chasing you.
– If you’re afraid in water, allow yourself to be where you are. Ask all your questions. Stay true to yourself. Learn to trust yourself.
– If afraid, you think differently in the deep. If afraid, you’re not safe in shallow or deep, regardless of what you “can do.”
– The determinant of whether someone is safe is the ability to rest peacefully in deep water for 10 minutes.
Andrea Andrews, aquatic specialist in the U.K and a Director of The Lifesaving Foundation, CLG in Ireland confirms, “Research shows that adults give up on learning to swim in lessons where they don’t feel safe.”
Dr. Shayne Baker, drowning prevention and water safety expert from the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia reports, “There is a deficiency in the data available for learn-to-swim and water safety programs for adults. Urgent attention is necessary to neutralize the state of emergency.”
This emergency requires action by students, instructors, and instructional agencies. The best hope for world water safety is to campaign against shame of being afraid, revise curricula of conventional lessons, rewrite instructor training manuals, and train instructors nationally and internationally in a proven system that makes afraid adults and therefore “all” adults safe.
On October 5, 2024, “Get Comfortable in Water Day,” will be held to demonstrate the teaching of an infallible system for afraid adults, their instructors, learn-to-swim agencies and the press.