Our Powerful Higher Learning Tools

A miracle is not the suspension of natural law: but the operation of a higher law. At Miracle Swimming, we use laws of learning that will make total sense to you but which you will not find elsewhere. We urge you to test them rigorously. Our 4000 students and 19 MSI-trained instructors (worldwide) agree. See if you can find these laws used anywhere else. We couldn't! And that's why you haven't learned to swim, though you may have tried.

DVD

The Miracle Swimmer/ Learn to Be in Control in Water, Shallow and Deep: Prevent Panic is available in VHS, DVD, and PAL formats. The video/DVD is also available bundled with the book for additional savings. The video/DVD shows adult beginners overcoming their concerns about being in the water: the same concerns you have. It shows the questions they had, the steps they took, and how it works to overcome fear in a gentle, fun, guaranteed-to-be-successful way.

BOOK

Conquer Your Fear of Water: An Innovative Self-Discovery Course in Swimming, by Melon Dash, is available in both book and e-book formats. The book is also bundled with the video or with the dvd for additional savings. The book, unlike any other swimming book, breaks down the overcoming of fear into its smallest components which make sense and apply to everyday life. You can't find this information elsewhere, we've been told over and over. It gives you all the steps needed to make yourself comfortable in the water, learn how it works, and gain new confidence: all the confidence you've wished you had. We think it'll become a classic. Soon to be renamed, Why Haven't I learned to Swim: Teaching's Missing Link. If you buy the current book and want the new one when it comes out, we'll send it to you free as an e-book. Just let us know. Don't delay getting this information. It makes all the difference.

A Snap Shot of Swimming Lessons...

For a century, adults have taken formal beginning swimming lessons. Often, the classes do not meet students at their ability level; the classes teach strokes, but students are not all ready to learn strokes. Students say: "I can't focus on proper technique. What if I drown? I want to feel safe." But they have believed that if their teachers wanted them to learn strokes, they should learn strokes--which "should" help them overcome their fear of drowning.

They grin and bear the lessons as long as they can, and then they quit. Many adults, resigned to a life without swimming, never return to classes. Others try again in bouts of inspiration, thinking there must be a way, but the experience is the same.

Instructors patiently teach stroke mechanics to their students, noticing that a few people learn the strokes but cannot do them comfortably in deep water. Nor can they learn to breathe. These students hurry across the deep end to get to the other side. They cannot stop in the middle. Many students never learn strokes, unable to get past floating.

In other words, the students who are worried about drowning never learn to swim comfortably and safely in deep water. They are not safe if they fall out of a boat or get thrown into a pool, drift into deep water, or step into a hole in the river.

These are the people who drown every month, every year, in every state and every country.

Q: How could a beginning swimming class not meet beginners at their ability level?

A: By presuming students know something they don't, and teaching as if they did. Though some beginners are ready to put their faces in the water and move their limbs, most are not.

What is swimming?

Yes, it's strokes, but that's not all. It's also comfort in water, confidence, and being in control: the ability to be yourself in water, whether it's shallow or deep, pool, lake, or ocean. It's being able to rely on yourself--not on the bottom or the side of the pool--for your safety. Being able to rely on yourself for your safety means you know how your body and the water work together, and you know how to remain in control. Neither of these skills is related to arms and legs. Neither is taught in traditional swimming lessons. In fact, they're so intangible, most instructors haven't given them any thought.

What's the problem?

Drowning is the problem. Missing out on all the fun is another problem. The nation's swimming and recreation industries have awakened to the fact that most drownings are preventable. Their biggest efforts have gone into providing good fences around pools, better life guarding, and stepped-up lessons for minority children. But what about teaching each person to be responsible for his or her own safety? What about learning to be comfortable in deep water? Who's ensuring that everyone masters these skills?

Adults, like children, are being taught in a system that doesn't teach the most basic skills (though some students learn some of them anyway). Forty-six percent of American adults are afraid in water over their heads in pools. Sixty-four percent are afraid in deep, open water. Thirty-nine percent are afraid to put their heads under water. (Gallup Poll, 1998) If they're afraid, they don't know how the water works and they can't keep themselves from panicking in many unforeseen situations. Many adults who are afraid in water prevent their children from taking lessons out of fear that their kids will drown or will have the same unpleasant experiences they had.

What's the answer?

Twenty-five years ago, as a traditionally trained swimming instructor teaching a college beginning swimming class, MSI founder Dash asked why the system was not working for 10 of her 20 students. The answer was simple: With their attention on survival, they could not focus on stroke mechanics.

A new system was born.

Four thousand students and fourteen newly trained instructors later (internationally), it's clear to every one involved with MSI that this is the missing ventricle from the heart of beginning swimming lessons:

Teach students how to be comfortable, feel safe, and remain in control. Teach them how the water works. Swimming comfortably and feeling safe in deep water is the inevitable result. That's what this book is about.

336 pages including 200 photographs and diagrams. Learn step-by-tiny step. The book enhances and fleshes out (yet does not require) MSI's video or DVD, 47 minutes, "The Miracle Swimmer: How to Overcome Fear and Discomfort in Water, Shallow and Deep." © M.Dash 2000.

M. Ellen Dash's classes have been featured on NBC's Today Show, MSNBC, CNN's Headline News, NPR, New York Times Play magazine, in the San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News, Tampa Tribune, Cincinnati Business Courier, Albany Times Union, and numerous other newspapers, radio, and television programs. Most recent coverage: Minneapolis Star Tribune, All You magazine, KGO's Joanie Greggains Health and Fitness Radio Show, San Francisco, Open Exchange magazine, Associated Press, and Channel 22 News, Springfield, MA.

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