Now I Swim: Without Fear

By Susana Jimenez-Mueller

This is the story of how I overcame and healed my fear of water after a lifetime of living with water phobia. I became a water aerobics and a swim instructor. From fear to freedom, this is my story. The book also includes my daily journal entries which illustrate my journey of anguish, frustrations, transitions, and the final liberation from fear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SusanasBooks LLC
• Release date: Jul 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005615697

Susana Jimenez-Mueller

A Cuban-American writer, the author of Now I Swim, collaborator of Perico - The Amazing Burro, and co-author of Like Finding Water in the Desert.Susana writes prose and poetry about love for family, genealogy, and the microscopic. She holds a Master in Business Continuity Management from Norwich University, a Bachelor in Chemistry from Florida International University, and a writing certificate from the Institute of Children’s Literature. She teaches Life Story Writing and leads the Bloomingdale Regional Library Life Stories Enrich (LISTEN) Project, producing audio recordings for writers in Valrico, Florida.Susana is an avid genealogist and family storyteller. She is presently working on a novel based on her family, dating to colonial times in Cuba.You can also find her on Instagram....www.Instagram.com/swimsue54

Book preview

NOW I SWIM

WITHOUT FEAR

By

Susana Jiménez-Mueller

Copyright © 2021 Susana Jiménez-Mueller

Third Edition

Published by SusanasBooks, Brandon, FL.

Edited by M. Posinoff

Cover by SusanasBooks

Cover Photograph, by M. Dash

Student photographs by J. Mueller and S. Mueller.

Author photographs by M. Dash, R. Mueller, J. Mueller,

and B. Davis.

You can find Susana at:

www.facebook.com/SwimSue

www.facebook.com/SusanasBooks

www.susanasbooks.com

www.instagram.com/susanasbooks

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798721067983

In memory of my sister, Gloria Elena, my mother, Martina and father, Orlando. I wish we could all go to the beach!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PANIC ATTACK

MANAGING OR HEALING FEAR?

REFLECTIONS

THE YOUNG WIFE IS NOT A SWIMMER

ANOTHER SUMMER

THE BOATING YEARS

SNOW SKIING

WATER AEROBICS

THE NEWSPAPER CLIPPING

THE JOURNALS - AN OVERVIEW

I'M A WATER AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR

CONQUERING HEIGHTS

INDONESIA

FREESTYLE - THE HOLY GRAIL OF SWIMMERS

TEACHING THE GRANDKIDS

FAMILY TIME

FLORIDA SNORKELING

I'M A SWIM INSTRUCTOR

LIFE FROM MY POOL AND OTHER PLACES

ANTIGUA GUATEMALA

THE OLD WEST

THE JOURNALS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

MY PICTURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My undying love for my parents, Orlando and Martina (Marta), who taught me perseverance. My gratitude and thanks to my mom and Jon, my husband, for their support as I took swim classes – one after another without success. As well as, our daughter Rebeca, endearingly nicknamed Beca, for always looking for a solution and finding the famous paper clipping which opened my life to new opportunities, being my swim spotter and water buddy.

Our son, Zack, and his wife Maegan Beery-Mueller; my mother in law, Maxine Mueller; and sister in law, Gail Trenholm, for sharing my journey from afar. Elsie and Ernie Rodríguez, my childhood friends. Maria Rey, Vicky Beecher, Katherine Simmons, Sue Connell, and our grandkids Xavier, Logan, Raiden, and Brandt, for swimming with me.

My thanks to Melon Dash for having the clarity of mind and heart to develop the Miracle Swimming® System for teaching people fearful of water, and being a friend. Thanks to all the MSA spotters for their patience with me.

A special thanks to my friend and editor, Mona Posinoff. Finally, my thanks to Angie Leslie, Spence Autry, Phil Lawlor, and Melon Dash for reading the manuscript and helping sort out redundancies.

INTRODUCTION

I never had a panic attack until I found out I was afraid of water! In fact, after several years of taking swimming lessons that only deepened my fear of water, I told myself that I wasn't meant to swim and declared myself water-phobic. I believed that people were born with the ability to swim, but I had not been born to be a swimmer.

What if I told you that we are all born swimmers?

In this book, you will learn how I went from fear to swimming freely in the water. Also, you will see the connection between my fear of water and the fear of falling and heights. Then, how my fear of heights, acrophobia lessened due to applying the methodology, which helped me heal the fear of water.

This book doesn’t teach the Miracle Swimming® System (MSA), nor is it intended to be an MSA guide. Instead, this book captures a journey - a chronicle of how I evolved from a water-phobic person to a confident swimmer, water aerobics instructor, and then a swim instructor, recounting my journey of liberation from the crippling fear of water and teaching other afraid adults how to swim.

Now I Swim includes my journal entries, beginning with the first MSA class. I notated the journals longhand each day of my journey. For the most part, I transcribed these daily reflections verbatim, while at times, I added clarification points.

The following are terms and phrases the reader will encounter throughout the book.

Born Swimmer: A term used by people who identify themselves as someone who always had the ability to swim - born with the ability to swim.

Homefun: Homework that is completed because it’s fun, not homework; an original Melon Dash -founder of MSA term.

MSA: Miracle Swimming® for Adults (MSA).

Standing ovation: A phrase used by Melon in class while hitting the surface of the water with an open palm - known as water clapping

Staying in your body: Referring to staying calm, the 1st Circle in the MSA System.

Staying wet: Getting back in the pool and having fun in the water after swim classes are over.

Swim: To move in the water – above or underwater – from here to there.

The 5 Circles™: An illustration of the emotional phases a person passes through, from being calm to being in a panic. Circle 1- denoting calm.

The Wheel: The wheel is a term used when a person performs the same action repeatedly, unable to find a solution to their problem.

Toypedo: A water toy that looks like a torpedo.

TSI: Transpersonal Swimming Institute – the name of the swim school in the 2004-2005 timeframe. TSI later became MSI and is now MSA.

PREFACE

Have you ever felt panic at the sight of a swimming pool or experienced terror in the water?

I did. I had a paralyzing fear of water!

I researched methods to manage fear, read about the brain-body connection, and devoured information on techniques used by psychologists to desensitize people to the object of their fear.

By age thirty-seven, I declared myself water-phobic and often told my family and friends I needed a swim instructor who was a therapist. Little did I know that later in life, I would meet an individual who would teach me in a therapeutic environment how to heal my fear of water.

Now I Swim, is the story of how I conquered and healed my fear of water and the way my fear of heights lessened and became manageable as I applied the methodology used to rid my life of water-phobia. In the end, not only did I learn to swim, but I also became a water aerobics and swim instructor, teaching people who have a fear of water and paying it forward.

This book with my swim journal entries may be helpful to people who are already traveling their own swim journey and who are managing expectations along the way. For others, these stories may be a source of inspiration.

Regardless, I hope this book encourages you to release the swimmer in you, and if you have a fear of heights, that it helps you find relief knowing acrophobia can also be cured.

This is my story.

Now I Swim!

Susana Jiménez-Mueller

March 2021

Brandon, FL.

1

PANIC ATTACK

After our wedding in November of 1976, Jon and I lived on a second-floor condominium in Hialeah, Florida, near Miami. Behind the building, an ordinary swimming pool located on the first floor, sheltered on three sides by the building, sat with empty lounge chairs most of the time.

Early one Saturday morning, beige basket in hand, I made my way to the condo laundry room. I walked fast down the long, dimly lit hallway focusing on the sunlit glass door at the far end of the hall.

At this time of day, the condominium hallway glass door gave way to a second-floor breezeway where the fresh morning air had not yet been chased away by the sun, and the dark laundry room overlooked the pool area.

I reached the end of the hallway and put down the laundry basket; my stiff fingers, momentarily relieved to be rid of the weight.

I opened the door, pressed against the glass with my back, turned around, and stepped into the open corridor.

The sunlight reflecting off the pool’s surface, and the openness of the passage, felt like an overwhelming drop from the second floor to the pool.

My heart jumped, hammering my chest hard, and my stomach flipped as though I was at the top of a roller coaster, ready to plunge.

I’m talking about the feeling you have on a roller coaster when your stomach is suspended in mid-air, and then it catches up to your pounding heart.

I slammed my back against the wall, closed my eyes, and shuffled along until I felt the edge of the door to the laundry room and entered its safe hold.

In the laundry room, my feet held fast to the floor. Like the anchors of a ship, they kept me in place as I swayed in waves of nausea.

Blood ran cold through my veins, and my throat tightened - I couldn’t breathe.

I staggered to the closest washing machine and leaned on it until my heart stopped drumming.

I had never felt this way before – Later, I was told I had experienced an anxiety attack!

In the ensuing days, I grappled with the implication of the debilitating experience and knew I had to understand what distressed me.

Soon after, I realized I had a severe fear of water and heights.

Twenty-seven years later, after many attempts to learn how to swim, seeking hypnotherapy, and declaring myself water-phobic, the key and method to heal my fear of water, and begin to heal the fear of heights, literally fell in my lap.

2

MANAGING OR HEALING FEAR?

As a scientist, I’m curious about how things work. Thus, my approach to understanding my fear of water became systematic. After many years of swimming lessons that didn’t result in the desired outcome – me swimming - I turned to hypnotherapy and studying how fear could be managed or eradicated.

I researched methods to manage fear;

read about the brain-body connection and

devoured information on techniques used by psychologists to desensitize people to the object of their fear.

There are excellent books on how to manage fear, but managing fear in a medium such as water can prove to be deadly since panic can quickly overcome a person who fails to manage their anxiety. Open water swimmers are often told to focus on their breathing or count if they become anxious in deep water – we know this doesn’t always work. Managing fear in a water environment is not the answer; healing the fear, however small, is the answer.

From the beginning of time, our brains evolved to help us deal with daily challenges, indicating a brain-body connection.

Neuroscientist Dr. Paul D. McLean, who termed the unconscious and conscious as the ‘old’ brain and the ‘new’ brain, explains the old brain is comprised of the reptilian brain and the limbic system. The reptilian brain is responsible for basic survival: The fight and flight mechanism, the need for reproduction, and for nurturing. The old brain is continually asking, Is it safe? (Hendrix, 1988).

The new brain is the cerebral cortex, and among its many functions, it reasons, organizes, and plans. According to the experts, at many levels, this part of the brain is the one with which we identify and think of as ourselves.

Why is it essential to understand the role of the old brain? Why can’t we tell our old brain we are done with the fear and will it to go