Liquid Listening’s training model has historically focused on working with groups of teachers within their own special school setting – essentially equipping a school with the skills and equipment to introduce Musical Hydrotherapy into their curriculum and run it with our specialist support. But we have always had enquiries and interest from individuals not working within schools, and so last year we trialled a new training programme, to open Musical Hydrotherapy up to individual swimming teachers and aquatic practitioners. Amy Holden, owner of Swim Odyssey in Preston, and Caitlin Birkett, one of her lead teachers, were part of our first cohort, and in March 2025 they published a research paper in partnership with the University of Central Lancashire, exploring the potential benefits of Musical Hydrotherapy for children identified as struggling within the classroom environment. We’re delighted to be able to share the research paper and its findings on the Liquid Listening website, and in preparation for this, we sat down with Amy and Caitlin to find out a bit more about how their research had come about.

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“How good would it be if she could do her maths lesson in the swimming pool with music under the water?”

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Amy explained that as soon as she and Caitlin had completed their Musical Hydrotherapy training, they had started to think about how best to integrate it alongside their existing swimming and teaching programmes. They were excited by the possibilities the practice offers to help adults and children with trauma, stress and anxiety, and – in a very different way – its potential as a deep calming, womb-like, first water experience for parents with small babies and children. They’d also been talking about its benefits for children with ADHD, autism and other neurodevelopmental and cognitive differences, which is an area that many of Liquid Listening’s special school partners are also exploring: the deep calm of the underwater environment, and the way that underwater sound and vibration, travelling through a participant’s body as they are gently held, enables a release of deeply held muscle tension that often sends an otherwise agitated, anxious or restless child into a state of deep concentration and calm.

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A chance encounter for Amy with a parent of a primary-age child with ADHD opened the door to the research project. The parent described how much her neurodiverse child, who was struggling with classroom focus generally and with maths in particular, loved putting her head underwater in the swimming pool because it felt like a “quiet place”. Amy explained to the parent how Musical Hydrotherapy adds an important extra dimension to the underwater experience, one that can lead to improved concentration that extends outside the session environment. They spoke about the value of running a research-based study to evidence these observations and, in time, the University of Central Lancashire came on board as a research partner.

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The resulting project is a fascinating one. It focused on a child with an EHCP (Education and Healthcare Plan), whose attendance in school was only 19%, and aimed to investigate what would happen if the pool was turned into a classroom as they learned their weekly spellings list:

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“The intervention comprised up to four weeks of Musical Hydrotherapy session (one 60-minute session per week from January to February 2025). Each session focused specifically on a topic that the pupil was struggling with in school at that point in time, informed by the preparation stages, eg times tables. Each session was based in the swimming pool and appropriate music was played through underwater speakers during every session. The music choice was guided by the preparation stage, eg if the participant found learning and concentrating stressful then calming and relaxing music was selected. Sounds were also used to help the individual to regulate. During each session the participant moved through the water (walking/swimming) or remained stationary (standing up/floating using aids), which was directed by the participant, depending on how they felt and what enabled them to focus. The school topic was then taught in the swimming pool environment.”

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The outcomes are very interesting indeed. Despite some challenges around a compressed timescale for the project and also the child’s health – leading to a short unplanned gap between sessions – the results were extremely promising. Caitlin, who undertook a lot of the teaching work, observed that she could see a visible difference in the child’s ability to learn their spellings with her in the pool as the sessions progressed, to the extent that by the end of the project, the child was getting almost full marks when they were tested within the pool setting, without further learning or testing taking place at home.

Some observations from the report itself:

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• “The child reported improved concentration in the classroom following the Musical Hydrotherapy intervention. The parent noticed an increased concentration of the child specifically in the afternoon, and the teacher reported an increased ability of the child to focus on a 5-minute task.”

• “The child’s ability to cope with routine change from the teacher’s perspective suggests an improvement in the classroom environment following the intervention, with the child being ‘somewhat able to cope’ when previously they were ‘not able to cope’.

• “The child enjoyed the Musical Hydrotherapy intervention, rating it the maximum score on a 1-6 scale.”

• “The parent reported a great improvement in the child’s ability to learn the specific task (spellings).”

 

You can read the full report here. Amy and Caitlin talked very interestingly about how valuable it would be to be able to repeat the research with a larger sample group (more children involved and for a longer time period). They also feel that there is future scope to look at other age ranges (older or younger children), other specific learning profiles and specifically at some of the related issues around attendance and children “missing in education”. In their words:

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“What we want to do with this in the future is to offer an alternative classroom in the pool, and to tailor the music specifically to the child – for example including stimm-ing sounds within the music or just a specific type or tempo of music. And then they take that music with them, so they can use it at home or in the classroom to take themselves back into that environment that’s quiet and calm… This research project has shown us that it can work, and we want to make it happen.”

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The report is a fascinating read and we are delighted to have been a part of it. Its findings add another dimension to our own research work, undertaken with the Universities of Roehampton and Kent between 2010 and 2015, which similarly evidenced the value of Musical Hydrotherapy for children with a range of complex physical conditions and special needs. This is an area that we too plan to develop further over coming years. In the meantime, huge thanks to the Swim Odyssey team and the University of Central Lancashire for an important and exciting piece of work.

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