When I was a child, whenever I visited my grandparents, we went to a bath in springs in a village in India. On one of those trips, an older boy pushed me into one of the water sources, which at that time to me seemed very deep.

This event developed a deep fear in me, which I carried into my adulthood. Even when I was comfortable flying and skydiving, I was scared of getting into the water, even in swimming pools.

I have worked a lot on this, and there is tremendous progress, but the effort was tremendous, and I am still not sure if I am over with the fear of the deep.

A friend of my son ( 3 years old) died from drowning in the swimming pool at his home. Two things happened after that; my son started asking me questions about death. “Does rice die”? “What happens to people who die” etc. One day he was by the pool, and he asked me, “Maybe ***** was trying to see if he can swim.”

0 to 7 year old is when you can program a child to over-ride his fears quickly, and even the genetic programming altered through providing empowering belief system. At least this is my current belief and knowledge.

So I took on a challenge to get rid of the fear of water and make him swim in our pool. It took 12-weekend sessions. Here is the result: William taking progressively tougher challenges under water.

 

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