I first met Autumn Bear on a dance floor in NYC nearly 8 years ago.  She was friends with a dear friend of mine, who is also a dancer, and he bought her along for a night out.  They are now in a loving relationship and I couldn’t be happier.

Since then, I have watched Autumn transition from a professional dancer, traveling through the country teaching partner dancing, starting her own west coast swing school online and then to become a well-sought after acupuncturist in NYC.  

Right at the time she was making her life transition she was taking her new dog, Dallas for a walk when she came across two young boys in the park – one of whom was on the brink of death.  Autumn was called to action and ended up saving this boys life.  Her story below.

Autumn is one of the Wholehearted because she stayed connected to her sense of purpose and service to the world.

Lyn Girdler: So, thanks for taking part in this.

Autumn Bear: It’s my pleasure to be part of this!

Lyn Girdler: I’m really excited about having your voice here because I know you have so much to offer in the art of connection.

Autumn Bear: I suppose I know a thing or two about connection.  It is definitely part of my life’s work.

Lyn Girdler: Describe a little bit of your life’s work.

Autumn Bear: I feel as though my life’s work is to be of service to people.  I chose the realm of health and particularly I have focused my energy on Acupuncture and Food as medicine.  My entire job and how well I do it relies entirely on how I connect with the people that seek my help because as a medical practitioner people have to be able to trust me and surrender to their own feelings of fear in order to receive the work that I must do.  As most of us know, surrendering and being vulnerable in the presence of another human being (especially with one who is going to put needles in your body) is really really difficult.  It is only through connection and this essence of trust that allows for this very healing relationship to be built.

Lyn Girdler: What drew you to acupuncture because, before that, you were a dancer!

Autumn Bear: I had actually gotten into Acupuncture before I was a dancer, believe it or not.  I had done a considerable amount of traveling in my early 20’s and unfortunately I had gotten quite ill on some of those travels.  A friend of the family told me to try acupuncture so I did and I fell in love instantly.  I actually applied to acupuncture school soon after that but the opportunity to dance professionally came up around the same time so I put acupuncture aside for nearly a decade to pursue my artistic career first.  It wasn’t until I was 30 that I was finally ready.

Lyn Girdler: Was there anything significant that inspired you to make the shift from dancing to acupuncture? 

Autumn Bear: I had applied to acupuncture school just as my dance career had begun to flourish, so I put school aside and decided to follow my dance passion until I felt satisfied that I had done everything I had wanted to do in that arena.  After many years on the road and after living a really solo life I woke up one morning and knew that it was time to make a change.  The change was about being more connected with my family and friends because that was truly important to me.  It was about spending time with the people I loved and once I got to that realization, making the switch to acupuncture was right on par with that.

Lyn Girdler: You started professional dancing at a later stage in life right?

Autumn Bear: yes, I started at around 25

Lyn Girdler: Had you had much experience before then?

Autumn Bear: I had taken some dance when I was a gymnast as a little girl.  Ballet, in fact.  I then went to a performing arts school where I studied jazz and Modern.  I tried my hands in Hip Hop in high school and then Salsa was my introduction into partner dancing around when I was 21.

Lyn Girdler: To go into dance professionally at 25, which is considered a little late for some, was quite brave. Did you do it because you were curious, or because you just believed you could?

Autumn Bear: Honestly, I just believed I could.  I have always been a rather determined woman and whenever someone told me I was too this or too that it always made me want to do it more.  So at 25 I was willing to give it my all.  I never considered failure as an option.

Lyn Girdler: Have you had moments where you did succumb to others opinions of what you couldn’t do?

Autumn Bear: Yes, there were those moments; I think there are always moments of self-doubt that pop up when we dive into something that makes us feel like we are completely out of our element.

Lyn Girdler: But, you pursued anyway?

Autumn Bear: Yes, I did.  I didn’t want my world to be defined by what low bar someone else had set for me.  I wanted my success or my failure to be defined by me.  Either way it would be based on my own merit and not on the opinion of someone who didn’t know anything about me.

Lyn Girdler: I love that.  What brought you to New York City?

Autumn Bear: I got hired to teach dance in New York.  I had never intended on living in NY but when the opportunity came up I decided to follow the path.  I really thought I was only going to stay a year.  I have been here for nearly 8!

Lyn Girdler: Had you traveled much before going to NY?

Autumn Bear: Yes!  I spent almost the entire decade of my 20’s traveling.  I think I made my parents a nervous wreck!  I was always on the road, in and out of countries and trying to find myself.  I learned so much about life in my travels.

Lyn Girdler: Yes, travel does that.  Because, obviously we learn about how other people live but, most compelling is that we learn about ourselves.  Did you find yourself in the end?

Autumn Bear: Actually I think it took a few more years before I really started to get real with myself.  When I turned 30 and a week into acupuncture school my doctor told me they thought I had cancer.  I think that was when I really started to find myself.

Lyn Girdler: Wow!  Ok, tell me more about that.  How did you sense of self shift?  Or, how was your idea of yourself changed?

Autumn Bear: Well, of course whenever you hear the doctor’s use your name and the big “C” together it is a bit of a shocker, to say the least.  However, I felt like in the face of the possibility of death I really began to piece together how I wanted to live life.  I knew that the diagnosis was an opportunity for me to take a good look at myself and it helped me to transform.  I knew I needed to let go of old life mistakes, traumas and loss and move on to what was really important to me.  It became so important to let go of the petty little things that I allowed to consume my thinking and then it was about living.  I wanted to know that I would never have regret and that I would surround myself with love, laughter, friendship and the idea that I had something to do with the happiness of others in this life.

Lyn Girdler: So, how did you move into that life?  What steps did you take?

Autumn Bear: That is a great question. The first thing I did was change my daily living.  I changed my diet, changed my sleeping habits, I changed my water filters, I took herbs, got acupuncture, told my parents I loved them etc., etc.  That was the easy part.  It was the spiritual journey and the lesson in self-love that took some time.  I started to look for people to help guide me in finding myself, if that makes any sense.

Lyn Girdler: Yes, Yes.  When you say spiritual journey, what did that mean to you? And has the meaning of a spiritual journey changed for you?

Autumn Bear: Yes, the idea of spiritual journey to me used to be what people talked about on Oprah!  Then it became about my relationships.  It became about my relationships with my parents and how I treated my friends.  My spiritual journey became about finding love for myself and knowing that I deserved it and that I had a place in this world.  My journey became about healing old wounds and learning to move on.  That is a tough one, moving on.  Life slings so many difficulties at us and it is so easy to become bitter and stagnant and jolted.  Spirituality for me became about being open, loving, and honest.

Lyn Girdler: This is good.  I want to talk about being open, loving and honest.  How are you living your life in these ways?  Or, maybe, how do you see that you weren’t?

Autumn Bear: Well, I used to live a pretty narcissistic selfish life.  It was the Autumn show.  I was also a very angry person.  I didn’t really know why I was angry but I was confrontational and defensive and I never wanted to hear what someone else had to say about me or my life.  I was stubborn.  Living open, loving and honest became the practice of learning to trust others and being open to hearing what someone had to say.  I felt that living a more loving life meant I made more effort to see my friends even if they were far away or call them on the phone regularly to see how they were doing.  I didn’t want it to be the Autumn show anymore; I wanted to be able to hear what other people were doing with their lives.  The honesty part was always about being true to myself in the non-selfish way.  It became about being able to say my truth without anger and frustration.  It was about being able to communicate that didn’t involve yelling.  It was about listening and receiving.

Lyn Girdler: Were you at home at this point, or in NY?

Autumn Bear: I was in NY.  I had been here for about 2 years.

Lyn Girdler: So, do you think it was easier to make changes like this when you weren’t in an environment that knew you in the old ways?

Autumn Bear: In some respects I think that is very much the case.  I really needed the distance from my family to be able to do my own “work”.  I think the chaos of New York also requires that one finds their own two feet or else they will get swept away in the masses.  I often joke that I had to come to the busiest city on earth to find my peace.

Lyn Girdler: I want to go back to ‘the Autumn Show’ …. what would an encounter with you be like then?

Autumn Bear: Well, I think I was always fun to be around but I could pick up and leave at any moment without so much as a phone call.  I would just do my thing and not really think about how that affected those people around me.  I can recall many a friend that I just stopped calling because I had too much going on in my own world.

Lyn Girdler: But do you think that has to do with age as well?

Autumn Bear: That is a good point (and thanks for letting me off the hook)!  Yes, actually, I do.  I think part of the process is about maturing and being more mindful.

Lyn Girdler: I mean, I suppose it has to do with age and also the ability to see what we need to see. Thankfully you had a cancer scare, not a diagnosis. Some people might have just kept on going in the same narcissistic direction, relieved that it wasn’t the original diagnosis – a true narcissist probably would have believed they were untouchable in that way.  What do you think you had in you that made you change course in your life?

Autumn Bear: I think I desperately wanted that change.  I think one of the reasons that I was always traveling in my 20’s was because I was searching for my happiness.  On the one hand I was searching for myself and on the other hand I was running from myself.  I think when cancer was laid on the table it really gave me a kick in the a** to stop running around like a mad woman and take some time to focus, take a breath, and start to deal with things that were hard.  The change of my life was about facing my demons and putting them to bed so that the phoenix inside of me could really rise from the ashes.

Lyn Girdler: So then, what, in the world around you changed?

Autumn Bear: Nothing.  I had just slowed down enough to really see my world for the first time.  I think it had always been the same.

Lyn Girdler: Did you attract different kinds of people, or did you do different things socially? or personally?

Autumn Bear: Wow, great question Lyn!  Yes, I did attract different people.  I was less inclined to be around the total partiers and more inclined to be around people that really inspired me and nurtured me.  I stopped going out until 4am, drank less, and got a dog.  Boy, getting a dog totally changed my life.  All of a sudden it was no longer just about me.  I had this sparkly, face-licking, tail wagging reminder to wake up, take a walk, breath the fresh air, enjoy the morning and live in the skin I’m in. And it was also a great practice in knowing that there was something that relied on me to go out, eat, and have play time.  I had to shift my boundaries and own up to some responsibility.  It really grounded me.

Obviously then, my entire social structure formed around this new space I was living in.  The people I then was around understood the idea of boundaries, time commitments and responsibility.

Wow, I sound like such an adult!

Lyn Girdler: Yes, you do! But then, shortly after that you were called upon to save someone’s life right?  So, this was your path!

Autumn Bear: Yes, I suppose that is true!  Saving someone’s life is rather transformative all on its own!

Lyn Girdler: How does someone who it out partying until 4am, drinking and living a hedonistic life relate to all of this.  If they were reading this (yes, I want to go into the saving the life story in a bit)?

Autumn Bear: It is really all about where you are in your own life.  We each have to explore our limits and find what drives us.  Going out and having a wild good time feels good to everyone but it is when that lifestyle starts to deter us from finding what gives us purpose that we may want to begin to step back and take a look at what we really want to get out of life.

Lyn Girdler: I want to go back to something you said “The honesty part was always about being true to myself in the non-selfish way” – tell me more about how that looks?

Autumn Bear: Well, the being true to myself was about listening to what I thought my needs were but making sure it did not come at the expense of someone else.  It was about having conversations with the people that were closest to me and telling them what my needs were and being open to a conversation and not just a one sided statement that said ‘I’m doing this and I don’t care what that means for you’.

Lyn Girdler: yes, so many of us think that in order to get what we need other people have to succumb to us when, in actuality, everyone can get what they need.

Autumn Bear: yes, that is it exactly.

Lyn Girdler: What areas of your life do have you found it the most challenging to be true to yourself?

Autumn Bear: That’s tough.  I would say I struggle the most in my love relationships.  I am so willing to give up my needs to meet the needs of my partner even if the expense to me is high.  And then I flop to the other side in that I expect all my needs to be met at the expense of theirs.  My struggle is finding balance, communication, and compromise

Lyn Girdler: Yes, but I think that is normal for so many of us when we’re exposed to such intimacy.

Autumn Bear: Intimacy requires trust.  It is a difficult thing for me to allow myself to be open to someone so much that I trust them to honor me.

Lyn Girdler: Do you think trust is something that is inherent or something we have to choose?

Autumn Bear: I think it depends on our life’s experiences.  Trust is something that I think we all have when we are children but we learn to turn it off if we suffer from some sort of betrayal as we are exposed to life.  I think we have to learn later how to turn it on and off in the appropriate situations.

I guess in some ways, trust is both inherent and a choice

Lyn Girdler: Tell me, as an acupuncturist, seeing so many patients and seeing so many different bodies and conditions, having to connect with so many different kinds of people – what has it taught you about connection?

Autumn Bear: Connection is something we are all seeking.  People, in their most vulnerable and weakest of places are constantly trying to find a way to connect with other people who know what they are going through.  People want to know that they are not alone, that their struggles are not just theirs, and that other people have walked in their shoes and made it out ok.  I think, equally importantly, people are looking to connect with themselves.  I see a lot of people struggle with who they want to be and what they consider to be realistic or what they think their life has to be.  I see a lot of people who truly want to soar within their own lives but am afraid of what that might mean for them.

Lyn Girdler: What does connection look like to you?  How does it feel?

Autumn Bear: Whenever I teach dance I do an entire class on connection.  I tell my students that there are three types of connection; connection with the floor, connection with your partner, and connection with yourself.  I think that is a great way of looking at connection in life in general.  Connection with the floor is what grounds us, where we find our footing, how we draw our lines in the sand.  It is what we believe we stand for.  Connection with our partner is the idea that we live our lives constantly revolving around and with other people.  It is how we reach out to the people of our lives, our partners in this life, and how we navigate it hand in hand.  It is not about pulling or pushing, yanking or tugging.  It is how we ask for what we want and how we are asked and then how we receive what we want and how we help someone receive what they want from us.  It is the constant subtle back and forth that holding hands with someone feels like.  And finally, there is connection with ourselves.  It feels like when we move our arm up and down; we are aware of the creaks and moans of our shoulder, possibly, we understand what our own body feels like from the inside.  Maybe our muscle hurts if we move it this way or that, maybe it produces a sensation that we like.  It is the feeling that we get when we experience something in our body that makes us respond.  That is what connection feels like to me.

Lyn Girdler: Ah, yes!  Connection compels us to respond.  I LOVE that!

Autumn Bear: me too.

Lyn Girdler: Brene brown tells us that connection is why we are here but those who feel a deep sense of love and connection believe they are worth of it, first of all, but also that they are willing to experience fear and vulnerability for it.  In fact, probably unconsciously, they know it is part of it.  Can you remember moments in your life feeling so vulnerable and fearful but knowing wholeheartedly that you deserved what you were going for?

Autumn Bear: In truth, I feel like I live my most vulnerable right now in present time.  I have been dreaming about doing some public speaking and some education about eastern philosophy of healing yet I am terrified of being rejected.  However, the idea that the experiences of my life and the beautiful philosophy of healing that I have been blessed to study can help so many people compels me to move forward.  It is such an unknown world for me but the idea of not doing it is far scarier.  I believe that I deserve this success but it is sometimes hard to see that way in the middle of the unknown.

Lyn Girdler: Beautiful – the life of the wholehearted! Do you feel you’re following your dreams?

Autumn Bear: Yes, I feel like I am the living embodiment of my dreams, every last one of them.

Lyn Girdler: Would you have said the same thing if I asked you 10 years ago?

Autumn Bear: No, I don’t think so.  Are you living your dreams?

Lyn Girdler: I don’t know that I was ever creative enough to dream where I am now.  I want to get back to that moment where you were placed in a situation where you had to save a life.  In a poetic, metaphorical way, was that around the moment you were truly finding your life?

Autumn Bear: Yes, funny enough, it was.  Having Javi survive was just another reminder about how precious life is and it reiterated how important living life to its fullest really is.

Lyn Girdler: Can you tell us about how all this happened?  The story of that day?

Autumn Bear: Sure.  I was walking my dog Dallas, who I had just gotten a few weeks before.  I had rescued her from out west and had met her when I was out working with a Native American shaman on one of my spiritual healing journeys.

Since she was new to me we were still working our schedule out.  I had decided to take her for a little walk before I went to class.  I was coming around the corner in the park when I saw these two guys sitting on the ground in an area that usually has glass and chicken bones and is nothing but dust and dirt.  I thought it looked a little funny but as I got closer I realized that one was holding the other and yelling and tapping his face.

One of the boys was unconscious and very young I might add, and as soon as I saw the color in his face I knew something was terribly terribly wrong.  It was obvious that the one boy holding, who we would later learn to be, Javi did not know what to do.  I handed my dog and my phone to one of the girls that had been standing close by and asked her to call 911.  I laid Javi down on the ground and checked to see if he was breathing.  He was not.  I honestly could not believe that this was happening.  It was like something out of a movie.

Anyway, I knew at that moment that there was no choice but to start giving this boy mouth to mouth.  He was a complete stranger to me but in my gut I felt that if I didn’t do something that he was going to die.  So I started giving him breaths.  I have him a few and then checked to see if he had a heartbeat.  He did not.  His heart had already stopped and he was not breathing.  I can assure you that every curse word that I could think of was going through my head at that moment.  I couldn’t believe that this was real, that this was really happening.

I started doing chest compressions and breathing into his mouth with some consistency.  I was later told that I had been doing CPR on him for 6 minutes before the paramedics got there.  The paramedics came and loaded him in the truck and worked on him for what felt like an eternity.  Just as they were leaving one of the paramedics told me that they had been able to restart his heart but that they didn’t know if he would make it.

I gave my phone number to Javi’s friend that had so dutifully been trying to help him when I had arrived.  I asked him to please have someone call me and tell me that he survived.  It was so surreal.  I felt like the earth had just cracked in two and I had spent 30 minutes in some alternate universe and then it spit me back out and there I was standing in the park with my dog, the ambulance had gone, the crowds had left and yet everything was different.

That evening just before my class Javi’s mother called me.  My number had been passed from person to person until it finally made it to her.  She said that Javi was in a drug induced coma but she wanted to thank me, no matter what the outcome, for doing what I had done.  For stopping and trying to save her son’s life.  She said the doctors had said that if I had not jumped in when I did that there would have been no way of reviving him and even if they had he would have had brain damage. The chances of his survival were somewhere in the 1%.  Three days later they took him out of his coma.  He made a full recovery and suffered no brain damage.

He was the 1%.

Lyn Girdler: Did you know who you were then?  Or, did you figure out who you are?  because, that’s a real moment – you can’t be anyone else in that moment.

Autumn Bear:   It’s hard to say.  I think things were all a bit blurry at that point but yes, I could not be anyone else in that moment.  It was a real moment that later defined me. His family still continues to be part of what defines me.  They are really great people and I feel blessed to know them even if we were thrown together in the strangest of ways

Talk about Connection!!

Lyn Girdler: When you say ‘later defined me’ in what ways?  How so?  How did you see the world and yourself in it differently?

Autumn Bear: That moment I experienced both life and death in the same breath gave so much value to my life.  It reminded me that our lives are precious but it reminded me even more that the things we do for others and how we step up in difficult situations really defines and reveals what we are made of.  This young boy was a stranger to me and through his experience with death and then rebirth (which is essentially what it became in some way), I also experienced death and rebirth in my priorities as well as understanding that our time is unknown on this earth so we should celebrate it, and love it for as long as we can.

Lyn Girdler: Yes, It’s like the moment you made the connection to your BEST self.  You saved the (a) world!

Autumn Bear: Well, I certainly contributed to mankind.

Lyn Girdler: exactly.  What has been your most rewarding experience of feeling fear, going forward anyway and experiencing connection on the other side?

Autumn Bear: I feel like I feel fear all the time, especially when I am being faced with a really big life decision.  At the time that I decided to become a dancer I had been working in academia and I was working on a master’s in public health.  I was contemplating a PhD and thinking I wanted to spend my life in the academic field.  However, I had this passion to create, to live to what my heart spoke and to explore myself through an unpredictable life path so against the advice of everyone who felt my life was “on track” I decided to take the plunge into the world of the unknown.  Becoming a dancer and leaving academia meant I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make a living, I wasn’t going to have health insurance and there was no guarantee that I was even going to be respected in my new field of choice.  It was a complete and utter gamble and the only thing that was my guiding light was this unshakable desire to go beyond the safe and secure life I was living and see what I could make of myself.

Every time I find myself at the ledge of life and I feel terrified that I don’t know if I can do something or if I am making the right choice, I take a leap.  I take a leap of faith that the only road to the self is the one that has not already been traveled.  Each time I emerge from my experience, I have waves of feeling charged, motivated, exhausted, frustrated, unsure, passionate, and brave.  In the end, these mixed feelings of insecurity and triumph are what brings me to then turn around to those around me and say “Go for it!  Don’t look back, just take the leap of faith in yourself, you will never regret it.”  Living life, especially when faced with what scares you the most, is what creates the ultimate connection between you and life.