At last I felt released. Describe the efforts undertaken by Douglas to find this moment of release.

Dear student,
 

The instructor  practiced  five days a week for an hour each day with Douglas. The instructor would put a belt around him which had a rope attached to it that went through a pulley on an overhead cable. He held on to the end of the rope and they went back and forth across the pool for hour after hour, day after day, weeks after week. On each trip across the pool, a bit of the panic would seize him. Each time the instructor relaxed his hold on the rope and he went under, some of the old terror would return and his legs would freeze. It was three months before the tension began to slacken. The instructor taught him to put his face under water and exhale and then raise his nose and inhale. He repeated the exercise hundreds of times and bit by bit the part of the panic which used to seize him began to recede. Next he held Douglas at the side of the pool and made him kick with his legs. For weeks they did just that and at first his legs refused to work but gradually they relaxed and finally he could command them. Piece by piece he became a swimmer and when each piece had been perfected, they put the integrated whole in the pool. In April, the instructor told him that he could swim and he asked him to dive off and swim the length of the pool with a crawl stroke. The experience of learning to conquer his fear had a deep meaning for him because only those who have known stark terror and conquered it can appreciate what it means to overcome that terror. He says that all we have to fear is fear itself. He had experience the sensation of dying and the terror he felt it could produce. The will to live seemed to him greater and at last he felt released, free to walk the trails and climb the peaks and brush aside fear. 

Regards

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