Melon Dash

Melon Dash, founder and director of Miracle Swimming Institute (MSI) of Sarasota, Florida and Berkeley, California developed a new way to teach in 1983. Her method makes the end of drowning possible for the first time.

Working exclusively with adults who were afraid in water, necessity demanded discovery. She discovered principles of learning that have not been found elsewhere. Using these principles which she calls The 5 Circles Teaching Method TM, she could systematically advance every student, in most cases after many previous attempts at swim lessons.

Dash’s lessons, which students called Miracle Swimming, work for all students, adults and children, afraid or confident. They’re about learning; not swimming.

Seventy percent of American drownings are by adults. (CDC, 2008) Sixty-four percent of American adults are afraid in deep, open water. Forty-six percent are afraid in deep water in pools. Thirty-nine percent are afraid to put their heads under water. (Gallup Poll, 1998)

Dash produced a how-to video in 2000, The Miracle Swimmer, and published her how-to book in 2006, Conquer Your Fear of Water. She teaches in Florida Colorado, Massachusetts, California, Virginia, Maryland, and Hawaii. Trainees of MSI’s instructor training program teach Miracle Swimming at their swim schools in Dallas, Seattle, Sacramento, Tampa, New Jersey, Thailand, the Philippines, and London. Her former students teach in Berkeley, CA. Other graduates have prodded MSI to offer snorkeling and SCUBA diving courses in Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, and the Virgin Islands so they could finally become comfortable in open water. They are now snorkelers and divers.

Dash was a New England collegiate record holder in the 200 Individual Medley, 100 butterfly and 100 breaststroke, and placed 5th and 8th in her individual events at the 2006 FINA World Masters Championships. She has a masters degree in Education/​Exercise Physiology from the University of Michigan.

Miracle Swimming Institute is the only organization in the nation and perhaps the world that offers instructor trainings specifically for teaching afraid swim students. A host of magazines including the cover story of Athletic Business in May, 2009 and SCUBA diving’s The Undersea Journal, the New York Times’ Play, as well as the Today Show are helping Dash spread the word that adults must be comfortable in water in order to learn to swim. The end of drowning is no longer a pie-in-the-sky idea.