Fear | Soul Acrobats

2 Ways to Face the Fear of Dying

February 25, 2010 by Alvin Tam
Filed under Fear

A little more than 2 years ago, I had a brush with death. As an acrobat, you get accustomed to the idea of danger – breaking your arm, tearing a ligament, knocking a tooth out – but you never get used to the idea of dying. This brush was by far the closest I ever got to being seriously injured or dead.

I’m not trying to be dramatic or sensational. I am emphasizing the fact that we all think about death probably more than we like to admit. Perhaps on the car ride home, going rock climbing, crossing the street, as we grow older, as we fight illness.

There’s an awful lot of false bravado in our culture that also limits our expression on death. The “brave ones” seem fearless and beyond the silly concerns of mortal life. We are bombarded with images of heroics in media and entertainment that show shirtless men racing into walls of fire and enemy bullets. There is the image – and then there is reality.

Two years ago, I felt nothing less than sheer terror as I realized I was falling to my potential death. It was as pure as fear could get. It also stuck with me until recently. What happened and how did I get over it?

I was performing in a very large, mechanically technical show. One of the pieces of equipment was a giant 90 ton moving stage that tilted, rotated, lifted, expanded, spun, and generally made for a heart-stopping, audience-thrilling acrobatic number. I was part of that act.

As we performed complex choreography on this massive apparatus, the artists would, on cue, dive off the stage into giant airbags below, disappearing from the audience’s view. It was breathtaking.

On this fateful day, I missed a handhold, and slid off the stage unexpected, falling over 20 feet into a crack between the airbags. My fall was absorbed partially by a net but my head squarely hit the concrete.

I didn’t hear a cracking noise so much as I felt a powerful, resounding thump echo through my skull. It’s the kind of moment that makes you realize that everything in your life will change forever.

I didn’t lose consciousness. Instead the moment of total helplessness and fear was replaced by a raging anger. What happened? Why hadn’t the airbags function as they were supposed to? Why am I being strapped to a body board and carried off?

In the months of recovery that followed, I remained resolutely angry. There were the politics of the accident to deal with, the rehabilitation, the drop in income, the stigma of being the injured one. All of these issues were plenty to keep me focused on being angry and forgetting the true source of unease underneath.

I’ve come to discover that beneath all anger lies a deeper fear. My fear happened to now be free falling from any height into a mat or airbag.

You might say that it is a reasonable fear to have – absolutely. If I never jumped off another ledge in my life, the world would not stop. The difference was that MY world was slowly stopping, as I unconsciously succumbed to the fear of heights. Like an insidious virus, it planted a seed of doubt within and began to grow over the months like a black cancer. Fear begets fear and I faintly became aware that my confidence as an acrobat – and as a person – was ebbing.

Truthfully I didn’t have a fear of heights or of falling. I had a fear of hitting the ground, which is to say I had a fear of hitting the ground AND dying. Which is to say, I now had a fear of dying.

Here is the first way to face the fear of dying: feel the fear. Fear of dying is such an intense emotion that it is quickly replaced by another state – rage, depression, denial, false joy. Learn to hone into your fear gently, like a bird gliding in circles, first sailing in wide arcs, then turning your awareness inward, ever tighter and more focused.

Which is exactly what happened to me. Many months after the accident, I was treated by my good friend Karen, an osteopath. Through her subtle cranial manipulations, I re-entered a state of deep relaxation that allowed me to “get in touch” with the hellish last 10-feet before I hit the concrete. I finally had a good cry.

You probably don’t need to have your skull re-adjusted to know fear. Just sit with it and ask yourself in what ways do you bypass this emotion? Is it working late, being angry, zoning out on TV? When you finally experience uninterrupted fear, you don’t do or say anything. It’s simply so awe-some that you sit in reverence of its potency. That’s a good place to be in.

Once you feel it, completely and utterly, then you can move on to step two, reclaiming your power. Usually that means doing something that scares the poop out of you.

Have you ever had an “oh shit” moment? This is the time to have it. Your barometer for doing something that will adequately reclaim your power is measured by how many times you feel like doing it and balking.

If you do it without any hesitation and get it on the first try, it probably wasn’t deep enough. Keep digging.

If, on the other hand, you have to work up your courage to even think about attempting it, you probably found it.

Considering I had a fear of falling, hitting the ground, splitting my brain open AND dying, suddenly anything to do with heights pushed my inner panic button like no tomorrow.

So when my friend and colleague Ted encouraged me to come up with a big trick to close the Kid’s Faculty Show at circus camp this July, I knew I had been handed an opportunity.

That opportunity was to create the biggest “oh shit” moment I could and reclaim my power.

For the grand finale, I committed myself to doing a back tuck off a 15-foot high wall. It’s not so high that it’s ludicrous. But it’s not so low that I couldn’t get hurt. It was definitely my moment to cringe – there was a forceful wave of doubt that nearly caused me to back out of that flip ten times that day.

I didn’t, and with the encouragement of Ted and my wife Jaime, I did my flip, which is to say, I DIDN’T hit the ground, split my brain open, and of course, die. Which is to say, I faced my fear, reclaimed my power, and stopped dead (pun intended) in its tracks the cancerous fear that had begun to spread.

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