Description
For adult non-swimmers: learn to be responsible for their safety in water over their heads, overcome fear of deep water, and to prevent panic. Replace reliance on the bottom or the side of the pool with confidence and freedom in any depth. Learn how the water works; learn to move comfortably and without effort; to regain control if one begins to lose it. This takes 48 hours of class in two 24-hour courses: 8 sessions of three hours; one hour on land followed by 2 hours in warm water. It typically takes an adult 48-72 hours of our classes to overcome their lifelong fear and learn to swim.
Budget
$88,000
Category
Public, Society Benefit, General/Other Consumer Protection
Program Linked to Organizational Strategy
Yes
Population Served
Adults Minorities Poor,Economically Disadvantaged,Indigent
Short Term Success
By the end of 16 classes, 85% of students will be safe in water over their heads. 15% require additional 8 classes to be safe. Additional short-term successes include:
- Personal empowerment
- Saving lives: individual and family
- Healing fear
- Provide new way to recreate, exercise, and spend family time
- Universal system to heal fear
- Panic Prevention
- New paradigm to make schools and teaching work better
Long Term Success
- Personal Empowerment.
- Water Safety.
- End of Drowning Worldwide.
- This class guides students to understand what was missing from swimming lessons previously; and that failing to learn was not their fault (we place no blame). It teaches people how the water works and how to swim, despite previous failed attempts. It demonstrates that something they thought might be impossible, which they refused to believe was beyond reach which they pursued relentlessly was, in fact, achievable. This empowers. The program makes people safe in water, in boats, and around water, who would not have been safe otherwise. It saves lives. It informs people about swimming so that they pass on correct messages about learning to swim to family and friends. Parents who learn to swim are more successul getting their children to learn to swim because these parents teach and model encouraging, correct information.
- Drowning can be virtually ended not only in the U.S. but worldwide (where it is considered an epidemic) if this program is put into place. It is the only system we've heard of in 32 years (worldwide) that works for afraid adults, which, as mentioned, is half of adults in the U.S. but is likely higher in many other countries.
- When adults can swim, more public pools will remain open instead of shutting down which has been happening at an alarming rate in the past 5 years.
- If more adults could use swimming as a form of exercise, it would give them a non-weightbearing activity they could use to stay fit for the rest of their lives. This has bearing on health care costs and longevity.
Program Success Monitoring
We know it works by their smiles. We know by the feedback forms from every student we teach and that every one of our licensed instructors teaches.
We know by the videos and photos of them swimming freely in deep water.
We know by the classes they return to take: Ocean 101, 202, Snorkeling and SCUBA diving, then SCUBA vacations with us.
We know by their donations.
We will announce a new initiative in 2018: to teach all adult non-swimmers in Sarasota to be safe in water over their heads. To monitor our success, we will document baseline statistics on adult drowning and water accidents in our county and track them over the years of our project. Only the regular number of programs we offer are part this programming section, not the ramped up operations to begin the new initiative.
Program Success Examples
Dori lives in Ohio and has been terrified in water all her life. She hadn't put her face in the shower, her whole life. She found Miracle Swimming online last year. She was willing to come to Sarasota to learn in February. She took the class with her 4 classmates. She was more than astonished every day at her progress. She and her husband were beside themselves in disbelief, but on the other hand, they could see that the incremental progress she made was so simple and predictable and easy to understand that it was no surprise that she had such a great experience. Everyone around her did, too. Dori went home and she joined her local Y. She applied what she learned, even though she didn't have a teacher or spotter to help her. She used the principles she learned and became confident in deep water by herself. She now swims a mile in a pool that's shallow and deep, 3 times per week. She is absolutely dazzled with herself, as is her husband. Now they can swim together. She says (February, 2014)
"Yes, I'm swimming a mile now....can you believe it??? I'm thrilled; what a great feeling (and all the credit goes to my swim coach who continues to encourage me!).😊
"I'm thrilled to spread the word about your training technique. As a matter of fact, I spread the word every chance I get! From the pharmacy, to the grocery store, at the pool.....anyone who will listen. I'm out drumming up business for the ONLY adult training that actually works....and I'm proud to say I'm living proof!"
Description
Just as every math teacher should be able to teach any student to add 2+2, every swim instructor should be able to teach afraid adults to swim. There is no teaching system in the world that we know of that's literally infallible besides Miracle Swimming's 5 Circles. The errors being made currently by instructors of adults in the U.S. and around the globe are virtually all the same, are based on a premise opposite of what is true, and are invisible to most swim instructors. The suffering of adult LTS students being taught the traditional way is devastating, unnecessary, and preventable. As far as we've been able to tell in 35 years, every adult can be successful. FYI, sometimes, the pool is a factor as well as the teaching.
Our instructor training program, a 16-lesson online training (45 hours) plus a 90-hour hands-on training plus a 4-month follow-up trains instructors to deliver Miracle Swimming.
It changes the teacher's outlook on successful teaching and imparts deeper understanding of learning and overcoming fear, therefore impacting all their teaching, not just that of afraid adults.
Budget
$21,200
Category
Public Safety, Disaster Services, General/Other Safety Education
Program Linked to Organizational Strategy
Yes
Population Served
Adults Blacks, African Heritage Families
Short Term Success
Improvements: More people learning to swim-- adults and children. More people safe in deep water: this empowers people. Fewer accidents around water; fewer drownings, emergency room visits, ambulance calls, insurance claims, law suits, and blame for accidents. Less sorrow among families and communities. Better swimming pool programming: citizens getting what they need. More use of swimming pools; growth of aquatics industries.
Achievements:
Instructors who have never had success with afraid adults now will be virtually 100% successful. Instructors' confidence mushrooms. They reach out to help other instructors. They meet the water safety demands of their community. They send out messages in their community of healing and correct information, dispersing swim rumors and misunderstandings and replacing them with facts. Communities become safer in water. There are fewer accidents and drownings. The swimming public becomes more informed and grounded in safety.
New questions will be asked: "Can we take this paradigm to other sports and subjects?" Yes. "What are the possibilities for other learning? How does The 5 Circles System apply to autism? Can we prevent obesity by teaching kids and adults to overcome fear and swim who couldn't learn before? Can learning to swim with the 5 Circles help stressed soldiers who have returned home? Can learning to overcome fear build confidence and intra-personal connection that helps shy children, bullies, and gang members?" There are many avenues to explore.
Long Term Success
1. All people will know how to swim.
When all adults learn to swim, all children will learn to swim.
2. All adults who take swimming lessons will succeed on their first try. They will love their swimming classes!
Swimming instructors will understand that adults are not children and have different needs for explanation, demonstration, proof, choice, responsibility, respect, and understanding of fear: how it's formed and how to heal it. Instructors will end their mistaken association between strokes and safety. They will lose the mentality of managing fear and learn to teach fear's healing. Instructors will define safety in the students' terms rather than in their own. Instructors, and therefore the public, will learn and accept the correct definition of "learn to swim" which is not learning strokes, but the ability to rely on oneself for one's safety in deep water. Water safety will enter a new era of success and smooth sailing. The swimming sports will expand exponentially.
Program Success Monitoring
We receive feedback forms of every adult that's taught. We know the Instructor Training program is working because their students' forms read as happily as the forms of our own students.
We sell more Student Handbooks (to teach classes) to instructors each year. Other instructors come to become trained. More queries about the training. Newly trained instructors send us thank you notes of astonishment about triumphs they've never before had.
If the training were not working, then 1) we have not screened applicants adequately, 2) trainees would not pass the online-training or hands-on training.
Program Success Examples
"Melon,
I want you to know how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to observe you teaching in Palm Springs and have you train me. It is a true honor to be accepted as a Miracle Swimming Instructor. I feel so lucky. I learned an inordinate amount at the training. It was so rewarding to see the process working first hand. I have never met anyone who provides as much support as you do. Thank you for taking my concerns seriously, for your encouragement and guidance with "difficult" students.... I look forward to joining you in preventing drowning worldwide." ZS, NYC, 2014
Melon,
I feel as if I've been on a journey that will change the rest of my life and those I cross paths with. I will carry your life's work with me and devote my time to sharing it. You have given my life a purpose. I am committed to sharing your vision that the world become free in deep water. No more unnecessary deaths due to drowning. You changed so many lives in these 2 weeks. Standing O!-- C.P., Seattle, 2017
Description
101:
Safety and confidence in the ocean
202:
Learn to body surf, snorkel, kayak and stand-up paddle
Ocean 101 transfers the skill of remaining in control in deep water in a pool to open water. It teaches the self-confidence and freedom of
knowing it doesn't matter that in open water there are no "sides" and
the bottom is uncertain. It teaches a way to keep oneself safe even when you can't see through the water and don't know what's in it with you.
It teaches the ability to feel at ease with water that moves, what to do
in currents, how waves behave, how to avoid rip currents and what to do
if caught in one.
Ocean 202 continues to teach confidence in open water via learning water sports skills. As students become more confident, they have attention to spare for focussing on balance, snorkeling equipment, kayaking. This builds further confidence.
Ocean 101: 2400
Ocean 202: 3200
Budget
$5,600
Category
Public, Society Benefit, General/Other Citizen Participation Programs
Program Linked to Organizational Strategy
Yes
Population Served
Adults General/Unspecified Aging, Elderly, Senior Citizens
Short Term Success
Adults' self-esteem and personal possibilities expand when they overcome a lifelong fear and learn to swim. Possibilities: use of swimming for exercise; better health and fitness, weight control, decreased health costs; increased quality of life and productivity. Adults want to be safe at the beach. They want to enjoy going into the water, socializing with friends, supervising kids and grandkids, playing in the water, and participating in the sports they've seen others enjoy. They want to have a choice about participating rather than being unable to due to fear and lack of understanding. When adults take our classes, their worlds expand. They are safer in the ocean. They give more informed messages to children and others about being in the ocean.
After the 101 class, students have lost a great deal of fear of being in the ocean. It is not such a mystery anymore. They haven't been in all conditions and they don't have a lot of experience, but the top level of their fear is gone.
After the 202 class, students begin to see themselves as "normal" people who can choose to participate or not. They have a new self-image. They are safer in the ocean.
Long Term Success
Adults become safe in open water.
The ultimate change that results from our programs is the virtual end of drowning worldwide. Fewer accidents, emergency calls, deaths, mourning, families' lives altered.
Though some drownings will still occur—people will still get trapped in submerged vehicles, etc.—the useless loss of life just because someone fell out of a boat or jumped into a lake to get his dog, or a ferry sank or an adult fell into a backyard pool can end. If it can end, then it should and must end. It's just a matter of educating instructors and the public.
Secondly, personal empowerment and personal safety skyrocket when adults who have been afraid in water for decades overcome their fear and learn to swim. "Next, the moon!" is one graduate's comment. The success and change of self-image is a turning point which ripples out into their lives.
Economic result: the growth and explosion of the aquatic sports industries: tourism at beaches, snorkeling, boating, SCUBA diving, sailing, water parks. The biggest (and most invisible) limit to these industries' growth is the vast population of adults who cannot swim.
Program Success Monitoring
We know by comments like this:
"Thank you again for such a wonderful adventure, great vacation, and such a uplifting, inspirational, challenging, motivating learning experience, I had a great time, wonderful accommodations at hotel, very hospitable, I enjoyed my classmates very much, and meeting new ones from around the globe (literally). That says a lot about how sucessful your Miracle Swimming concept and program is. As I continue on my journey, and as I learn more and more about the ocean, my personal relationship with the ocean, as well as my respect and admiration for the ocean grows stronger, and stronger, when I returned home I did rent and see the movie, Ocean. It was great, very soothing, intriguing, gratifying to know more about this other world called ocean, and to see how the other half of the world lives.:) I admire you so much, you're a great inspiration to all of us. Have a great time in Turks & Caicos, wish I was there.
We also know it's working from feedback forms from each student in every class; and as students send post cards from their family vacations in Hawaii and the Caribbean and after going on cruises. They come back to learn advanced levels of watermanship: strokes, snorkeling, SCUBA; participating in triathlons, telling others; and they donate money. We have a core of SCUBA divers who have been all over the world with us. They started at the very beginning.
Program Success Examples
Bob F. was a father of two but he could not swim with his children as they grew up. He took classes but they never worked for him. He vowed that when he retired, he would learn to swim. He found us when he was 67 in 2003. He loved learning to swim with us. He took our snorkeling class in Hawaii after his introductory classes. He didn't think he would ever want to scuba dive but once he took snorkeling, he found that he wanted to be deeper, closer to the reef. In 2008 he went on our 25th anniversary trip to Bali to learn to scuba dive. Upon passing, he declared, "I'm an imposter." He couldn't believe that HE was now a certified diver. Not only was he a new diver, but he was a safe diver: one whom the instructors and I were not worried about because we knew he wouldn't panic, due to his Miracle Diving training. Now Bob has been diving with us in Honduras, Cozumel, Hawaii, Turks & Caicos, and The Maldives. He is hooked. He is 82.
We have 30 such stories. Everyone who has taken our scuba class has become certified divers except 2. One was 24 when she learned, and has made it her career.
Description
After someone learns to swim, they're prepared to learn strokes, an efficient means of propulsion which is good for exercise without injury, participating in masters swimming for fitness or competition, triathlons, and passing swim tests.
It takes 30-40 hours to learn freestyle and the information a new freestyler needs to know. It takes 42 hours to learn the other three strokes, building on the knowledge achieved in the freestyle class. This time includes an hour of video playback and discussion for every 2 hours in the pool. The Freestyle class is 10 three-hour sessions of one hour on land followed by 2 hours in the pool. The 2-Strokes class (breaststroke and butterfly) is 10 three-hour sessions. The Backstrokes class teaches two backstrokes and takes 3 days and 15 hours.
Budget
$8,504
Category
Public, Society Benefit, General/Other Citizen Participation Programs
Program Linked to Organizational Strategy
Yes
Population Served
Adults Aging, Elderly, Senior Citizens Females
Short Term Success
More adults using swimming as exercise.
More use of the community's pools.
Increased fitness and health.
Long Term Success
People who could not swim their whole lives become lap swimmers or masters swimmers and triathletes. Health benefits, self-esteem benefits and productivity benefits, as well as personal safety benefits result.
Growth of aquatic sports industries locally and in communities where these classes are taught.
It is possible that every adult could use swimming as a form of recreation and exercise. This could keep pools open, keep personal stress levels down (the therapeutic effects of exercise), decrease health care costs long term, and help people maintain wellness.
Program Success Monitoring
We know it's working because graduates send us thank-you's and updates on their lap swimming experiences. They come back for more strokes classes. They tell friends who inquire and register for our Beginning class.
Program Success Examples
When Bob retired, he finally had time to learn to swim. He had taken lessons before but they never worked. In his late 60s he took Miracle Swimming. He took our ocean classes and became a SCUBA diver. He took our Freestyle class.
Now he has made swimming his main form of exercise. He swims laps 5 days a week year round. He has become a regular. It's who he is now. He is still astonished and his family is beside themselves with pride. He plays in the water with his grandchildren, one of his greatest joys. He is 82. He took our 3-Strokes class and learned to legally do backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly: he could enter a masters meet and be just like one of the lifelong swimmers.
Gregory was terrified in water and he threw himself fully into our Beginning class. He was a changed man when he finished class. He registered for our Next Step class. There, he thought pushing himself would take him to his goals, so he only made so much progress. He didn't become free in deep water. He took the class twice more, each time slowing down and embodying more of the Miracle Swimming message. He became completely free. His business took off, due to his new sense of himself and understanding of how to take great care of himself. Now he has taken Freestyle twice and 2 Strokes. He can swim three strokes and he uses swimming as his main form of exercise. He now has a swagger around the pool.
Description
Adults who have been afraid in water their whole lives dream of being able to see what's below the surface of the ocean and sights they've seen on TV. When they finish our beginning classes, the possibility grows in their minds that maybe it is even possible for them to enjoy the ocean and learn to be under water. Our Ocean 101 and 202 classes are the transition classes, if needed, to prepare them for a week of learning to snorkel in Hawaii or St. John in perfect conditions with a gentle progression.
We also teach ocean stewardship and conservation.
The SCUBA class takes a student who now understands how typical ocean water works and who can be at ease there to the skills, experience and new universe of SCUBA diving. It is successful because of the 5 Circles Teaching System. If the diving industry used this system, diving would become safer and the industry would explode.
Budget
$15,200
Category
Public, Society Benefit, General/Other Citizen Participation Programs
Program Linked to Organizational Strategy
Yes
Population Served
Adults Females Aging, Elderly, Senior Citizens
Short Term Success
Personal empowerment, new kinds of vacations, and water safety. Ability to snorkel and SCUBA dive safely. More informed messages from students to children, grandchildren, and friends regarding being in the water.
Long Term Success
More adults being safe in open water, able to enjoy the ocean, learning an appreciation of the ocean and its preservation; more water vacations by people who are equipped to participate in water sports. Positive messages about being in the ocean are spread by people who are informed, now that they have learned about it and enjoyed it.
Program Success Monitoring
These comments are de rigeur:
Describe your Snorkeling class in 5 words:
"1 Fun, fun, fun
2 enlightening
3 inspiring
4 relaxed
5 challenging at just the right pace and with small "Next Steps" "
Program Success Examples
Students send us postcards from island vacations about their snorkeling with turtles, or off a boat, or in deep water and being able to enjoy it with their families.
Students returning to become SCUBA divers.