Our approach to aquaphobia If you are aquaphobic, we will help you to overcome your fear of water by teaching simple procedures that  give you control of  yourself in water. To be comfortable in water, you need to learn the following skills:
1 to breathe out into water without stiffening your neck
2 to float by allowing the water to support your head
3 to regain your feet or 'land', from floating or gliding, in a balanced, coordinated and unhurried way.

We support you with our hands while you gain confidence in these skills and learn to trust the water.

Identifying the cause of a person’s Aquaphobia  (Cheryl Cross)
In my experience as a swimming teacher, people with a fear of water can be split into two groups:
Group 1 - those who have had a traumatic experience of near drowning.
Group 2 - virtually all are aware of balance or coordination problems, even before trying to learn to swim.

Ways of dealing with Aquaphobia
People in the first group are usually aware of why they are frightened of water. Childhood memories of being pushed in seem to remain very clear. Rita Carter in Mapping The Mind (1998) explains that fear memories are stored in the amygdala, in the unconscious limbic area of the brain, separate from other memories that are stored in other areas of the brain. For this reason, I think some of the conventional ‘remedies’ which focus purely on the psychological, such as the mind-games to take your mind off it, or analyzing the bad experience, or reversing negative thinking are not the most helpful way of dealing with this kind of fear.

People who are nervous of water usually tip toe around in it, tensing their neck and displacing their head as seen in the startle response, often holding their breath, narrowing their shoulders and trying to keep as much of themselves above the water as they can. With this stance any movement of the water wobbles them, making them more afraid. They need to become aware of what they are doing with their body and the negative effect it is having. Initially they need to learn how to use their weight and direction to centre themselves when standing and walking in water.

Using the principles of the Alexander Technique helps the learner-swimmer to become aware of the psycho-physical response that their fear is causing and enables them to change this response by controlling the initial head-displacement.

Once comfortable standing and walking in water and more aware of the tendency to displace the head attention needs to be drawn to breathing. Again, plenty of time must be allowed to become aware of tendencies to gasp, hold the breath and sniff.