Lonnie had almost drowned while visiting a resort with a friend when he was in his late teens. He slipped from the edge of the pool where he had been holding on and nearly drowned. No one saw him slip into the deep end and he went almost to the bottom of the pool before a lifeguard jumped in and brought him the surface. 

Lonnie wanted to swim laps to enhance his muscle tone and lung capacity, which were diminished due to a chronic health issue. I worked with him in the shallow end of the pool where he could stand in waist-deep water. We continued to tap through his memories of the day he almost drowned and the beliefs that he held due to the old trauma. Each time we tapped through a series of beliefs, Lonnie’s body relaxed and became less tense. 

At the end of the one-hour lesson, Lonnie was able to put his face in the water, kick, move his arms in freestyle strokes, and swim! Lonnie learned to stand up in the water from a horizontal swimming position without struggling. He practiced swimming laps until he needed to breathe and would stand up. At our second lesson, months later, Lonnie was much stronger than before, and he learned how to turn his head and breathe so that he could continue to swim laps without having to stop to breathe. Lonnie continues to swim laps and diminish the effects of his chronic illness as he gains physical strength, confidence, and pride in himself. 

When Keisha was three years old, her mother held her in her arms in a pool and together had gone under the water -- thinking it would help her learn to swim. Keisha was a strong, happy girl whose parents had taken her to numerous swimming lessons to help her overcome her fear of the water. Keisha explained that in her last series of lessons, the teacher had pulled her around the pool while she held onto a rescue buoy because she was too frightened to put her face in the water. No matter what the instructor did, she would again panic when she put her face under the water. 

With the permission of Keisha’s mother, I tapped with Keisha sitting outside of the water with her mother tapping with us. After that Keisha went into the water with me, and we continued to tap on several versions of her fear of something touching her while she was in the water. After Keisha had begun to swim on her own without needing me to stand next to her, we got out of the pool and went back to her mother. Keisha’s mother felt quite guilty for the trauma she had caused her daughter, so I asked if she would me to help her with the guilt. We then tapped on her guilt and her thinking she was doing the right thing for her daughter, even though it was not what was best. Keisha tapped with her mother and me. 

At the end of the week, parents were invited to come and swim at the end of the lesson with their children. Keisha told me that she did not want to swim during that session. When I asked her “why?” she said because she did not like the way her father played with her in the water. She and I practiced explaining what she wanted her father to do, not just what she did not want, i.e. "I don’t like when he splashes me." Keisha spoke with her father while I was standing there with her and told him specifically how she wanted him to play with her (and her younger cousin) during the family swim time. Later, her cousin swam by us while I was standing in the water and talking with her father. Her cousin said to her uncle that he was too rough in how he played. Keisha responded, “No. Now he knows how to play with us in the pool. You don’t have to worry about him splashing you when you don’t want him to."