Swimming with Sharks and Loosening the Grip of Our Fears

The Shark’s Domain

Floating up towards the surface, your eyes gazing purposefully about, you see the boulders and rocks below shrinking into the shadows below. Above you the light streams down, making the fish sparkle like bright shiny stars, glistening just like the smile glowing from beneath your mask.

You often dream of this sensation, the untethered exploration into the ocean. To welcome the life, and light, into your being. Swimming effortlessly along the vast Australian coast, in the wild, away from the distractions of modern days.

Seconds ago, you surprised yourself with the level of calm, poise and fascination that you held whilst immersed 10-metres deep on one single breath, staring contentedly out of your mask and straight into the curious eye of a 2.5m long Grey Nurse Shark suspended there like a torpedo, very much within your arms reach.

For many, the idea of just encountering, let alone swimming next to a large shark represents their greatest fear. A moment to be avoided at all costs. A moment, even the thought of that moment, being avoided at all costs.

Two Wild Beasts

But what if it became a choice? What if somehow you were able to seemingly immerse into what most people would consider a dangerous situation, but you simply trusted and listened to your intuition and instincts. To determine whether it was a time of self-protection in the face of danger, or whether it was a time of heightened self-awareness and connection with Nature in an incredible moment of new shared understanding between you and a large shark.

There’s so many more questions that ping and pop when you imagine yourself in that circumstance.

You, on a single breath, freediving in a sleeve of neoprene, hovering underwater in the open ocean on a timeline limited by your breath-hold, choosing to place yourself in the personal space of a Grey Nurse Shark.

The Shark, suspended horizontally in the sea, almost motionless in the current, gills softly pulsing, eyes gazing around, ampullae sensing electrical pulses from the life moving around it. All the time watching, monitoring and assessing for signs of change or danger, ready to respond with a warning signal or outright movement to protect its own safety.

The two of you, two vastly different wild beasts. A land dweller. An ocean predator. Connected by chance, and choice, in the unpredictable ocean.

The Gift of Fear

Casting your mind and imagination into that realm, how do you think you would be in that circumstance? Would you feel comfortable in interpreting and understanding the signs and signals given off by the shark? Or even confident in noticing and managing your own signs, signals and emotional hallmarks that you are giving off to the shark? Or just plainly gripped by fear?

You, and the shark, are prioritising safety. But how can we possibly become more in tune with listening to our sixth sense? To understand the signs and trust our intuition, becoming more proactive in preventing and managing potentially dangerous situations?

In Gavin de Becker’s book, “The Gift of Fear” (Available on Amazon), when discussing fear and fear responses, he highlights a 1960’s study that sought to determine which single word had the greatest psychological impact on people. Reactions were tested to words such as spider, snake, death, murder, and you know which word elicited the greatest response – shark. And the reason for this profound impact, is the association with the seeming randomness of the strike, the lack of warning, the fact that it can approach silently.

And if you consider our levels of awareness, being present, noticing the minutiae of the things around us, if we are totally distracted in thought, unable to be conscious of our surroundings, certainly then this lack of warning, this seeming randomness of things coming out of nowhere, it’s going to be heightened. And the magnitude of our fear unduly exacerbated.

The Keys to Resilience

However, if we are capable of enhancing our state of awareness, of having the mind space to create an expansiveness in ourselves, to have our senses, intuitive capabilities, and our mind clear enough to process the inputs, stimuli and observations from both inside ourselves, and outside of ourselves, then surely we are going to go a long way to reducing the lack of warning and randomness and increase our comfort in seemingly fearful situations?

And maybe a fear of sharks is not something you even think about, because your mantra is, “Don’t go in the ocean”, therefore the fear and risk is eradicated. However, if we consider some of the top fears people harbour in this world:

• Fear of public speaking
• Fear of social situations
• Fear of death
• Fear of becoming ill
• Fear of spiders
• Fear of enclosed spaces, like lifts
• Fear of heights
• Fear of flying
• Fear of injections
• Fear of not enough money or financial stability

Any one of these fears, let alone a combination, can creep up without warning and particularly if you’re good at avoiding situations where you might be exposed to your fear, but suddenly without a lot of warning, you’re thrust into the depths of it, then it’s going to have a significant impact on your emotional state, potentially inducing panic and anxiety to accelerate your plummet into the fight/flight/freeze state.

Managing the Edge

If we take ourselves back to the idea though, of the choice to go out and visit the ocean. To take a moment to relax on the surface, to take in a nice comfortable inhale, and then choose to duck-dive smoothly under the surface and swim down to float freely next to a shark. Even if the shark moves away, or you have to move in a new direction, or change your plan, you’ve taken several steps to reduce the randomness. You’ve created space to enable a greater amount of warning. You’ve built the capacity to be more resilient to that situation, to see the hallmarks of anxiety rising in your system, and to observe the shark with awareness and interpretation of the subtle dynamics evolving.

Which really isn’t that different to having to be the speaker in a high stakes meeting. Or to approach the lectern to speak to a large group of people in that vast audience. Or, to manage an elevator ride up 50 stories in an office building, or receive that injection at the dentist.

And the funny thing is, fear is only the suggestion that something might happen, that’s where it stems from, it’s not actually happening right now. It’s the potential that gets us on edge. But we can also manage that edge, despite the grip that it might seem to have. Isn’t it enlightening to think that in the moment the fear happens, we actually have more choices than we might at first consider – to stop fearing it, start to respond to it, manage it, surrender to it, or fear the next outcome that we predict is coming.

We don’t have to prepare for every conceivable fear that we may face, we can prepare ourselves for how we respond in the face of fears arising. And similar to those freedivers that chill out on the surface and get all Zen before plunging into the ocean, the key is breathing.

When Fears Come to Fruition

In my corporate career of 15 years, I faced several of the fears listed above.

I was stuck in lifts three times. The worst being a 45-minute episode with one other person I did not know, somewhere in a lift shaft up near the 34th floor in a 50 story building. With the shrieking ear-piercing alarm belting out non-stop for the whole time. I’d experienced another occasion of 15-minutes in a six-story building, and another brief moment in a skyscraper before, so it wasn’t a fear that burdened me. It was just a matter of going through the process of seeking assistance and waiting out the time between the failure and assistance being rendered. My biggest concern was the response of my fellow elevator captive.

At other times I chaired important and high stakes meetings with up to 20 stakeholders, being responsible for managing the outcomes of multi-layered negotiations. Whilst on occasion, fists pounded the meeting table and voices barked across the room.

I faced a crowded room of over 100 Union delegates to talk with the audience and introduce a potential new work practice that had been failing for the prior umpteen years, but which would be re-introduced with new technology.

And I’ve swum countless times with sharks, within hands reach, both in the daytime, and at night.

All throughout those instances, it’s been the calming influence of breathwork practices that have sustained my calm disposition, poise and self-awareness and ability to self-regulate, despite the challenges they have presented.

So what can you do when you’re feeling this fear arising?

Suffocating Tension, Washed in Anxiety

The typical physiological response to fear is that the body begins to breathe faster and harder, hyperventilating, or over-breathing. The heart rate rises and the breathing rate increases to prepare yourself to face up or run away. In some instances, if you have endured stressors over a long term basis and fallen into cycles of chronic stress, you may have been breathing in a way that constantly involves too much air being cycled, which is referred to as chronic hyperventilation. It doesn’t even have to look like the TV version of breathing excitedly or chaotically into a paper bag, often it is a subtle shift that others won’t even notice. You may not even be aware of it. And with this, you are day to day in a heightened state of alertness, tense and with greater sensitivity to sensory perception.

And in this state, when you find yourself unwittingly having to make a speech in front of an audience without notice, or being thrust into the spotlight in a difficult or tense meeting, or peering into the eyes of a shark, all you’ll want to do is get the hell out of there. But in reality, you’re situated there in stillness, trying to deal with the desire to escape as fast as you can.

The stress may rise up uncontrollably and suddenly you’ve reacted out, watching yourself as the train wreck takes its own course. Or, you’re so busy suffocating the rising tension and wringing your stomach in knots to prevent it exploding out like a champagne cork, that you’re no longer hearing or seeing what’s going on around you. All the while, the fight/flight mode is in full swing and what reasoning and clear thinking you had left, is being quashed by the escalating anxiety.

Relax Even When the Sharks Circle

“Breathe”, you tell yourself, “breathe”.

And this is great advice. Because there are a few easy breathing methods that you can begin to employ straight away that can bring ease to your heightened stress levels, and bring greater self-awareness.

To begin, simply breathing through the nose and into the diaphragm can calm the nervous system and increase resilience. Alternatively you may just remember to simply lengthen your exhalation during the breathing cycle to down-regulate the nervous system and regain a better connection with our presence, mental clarity and sense of intuition in those challenging moments.

If you ever doubted your ability to begin to improve your self-regulation of your emotional state, your sense or response to fear, or to manage elevated stress, then those fears can be allayed.

As Oxygen Advantage Founder, Patrick McKeown states in his book “Breathing for Yoga” (Available on Amazon), there is ample and indisputable evidence for the use of breathing practices to effectively manage stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. And you have the tools within you, right there.

It’s now just a matter of bringing attention to it and making the space to bring these practices in your every day. And even to begin to remember to have a few emergency breathing exercises to defer to when the sharks begin circling.

Or maybe, just maybe, you’d rather go swimming with sharks. Which you can too!

Images & Words by Marlon Quinn

Online Breathwork Courses and Reading

Learn more about Breathwork and begin your own Oxygen Advantage online training right now. Check out the Online Breathing Course for Performance page for more information.

Use the Oxygen Advantage Smartphone App to apply breathing exercises to your every day using the App.

Read a few books by Breathwork expert and Oxygen Advantage Founder, Patrick McKeown –

The Oxygen Advantage – Available on Amazon

The Breathing Cure – Available on Amazon

Breathwork Coaching

Ask me about breathwork coaching (available readily in person across VIC, ACT and NSW, and other territories via online meeting). Choose one-on-one development or private small group breathwork coaching training. Visit the coaching page to apply or make an enquiry.

Swim with Shark Experiences. Yes, Really!

In Australia, you can take the plunge and choose to embark on an adventure to swim with sharks on a guided tour experience. The sharks may not always turn up on schedule, but you can guarantee, they’re out there in the ocean!

Book a Tour

NSW
Julian Rocks:
Premier Snorkeling Tour Byron Bay – Book Easily on Viator

Jervis Bay:
Woebegone Snorkel and Freedive Boat Tour – Book Directly

VIC
Melbourne:
Shark Dive Experience at SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium – Book Now on Viator

Longer Expeditions

SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Port Lincoln:
Explore the Great White Shark expeditions available. Click Here

Photography Gear

To capture the images in this post, I use Nikon camera gear:

• Nikon Z6ii Camera Body (Amazon)
• Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8s Lens (Amazon)
• Nikkor Z 14-30mm f/4 Lens (Amazon)
• Ikelite DL200 Underwater Camera Housing (Amazon)
• Camera Sling Backpack (Amazon)

Marlon Quinn