Chill Therapy Bournemouth is a non for profit organisation that provides sea swimming courses as a form of therapy for people with long term health conditions.
We deliver our course over 8 weeks. It is a structured, supportive and gentle course that allows us to introduce our participants to the therapeutic benefits of CWS (Cold Water Swimming/dipping). The course is delivered by 2 Chill facilitators and a fully trained RNLI Lifeguard.
We spend 1 hour per week on the beach as our classroom with the participants.
A usual session will start with a welcome talk and a short lesson to the group on subjects as Benefits of CWS on our bodies and minds, Wind and Waves Knowledge, How your body reacts to the Cold and Water Safety.
We then look at breathing techniques over the 8 weeks and how we can use these when entering the water and in our day to day lives.
After a short warm up, we then support everyone to enter the water for about 10 – 30 mins depending on the group’s abilities and sea/weather conditions, and then finally, once out the water , dressed and warmed up we enjoy cake, a hot drink and reflect on our experience.
All the Chill Team love delivering this course, some of which have attended the course themselves and have now trained to deliver it to others.
We want to reach people with long term health conditions, be that mental health or physical health and empower them in their daily lives. (*please note we currently only have funding for those that had a cancer diagnosis or carer @sept 2023)
We also try to continue with a weekly meet up for all past participants to catch up and carry on with their cold water experience.