How Does Skydiving Feel?

Skydiving: It’s a blossoming garden of crazy feels. If you ask someone to describe what skydiving feels like directly after landing, they’ll probably babble for a minute in terms that essentially revolve around the word “awesome.” And you know what? That is completely true, too.

We know you’re looking for more specific terms than just “awesome”–so we’ll construct a little treatise that unpacks the “a-word” into a few well-defined categories. How does skydiving feel on your body, in your brain and in your heart? Pull up a chair; we have some answers for you.

1. How Does Skydiving Feel On Your Body?

You might assume skydiving will give you a feeling of falling. You’ll probably triangulate your other “falling” experiences, like roller coasters, bungee jumps and high dives to approximate what a skydive is going to feel like physically. Oddly: None of that is going to work. As it turns out, they’re all way off-base! Weird, huh?

Here’s the deal: Your stomach won’t drop like when you’re on a rollercoaster. You won’t feel any kind of fall. In fact, you won’t even feel the 120 mph speed. Instead, you’ll feel the air underneath you for the entire freefall, supporting every surface of your body. You’ll feel it pressing lightly on your stomach; on your legs, on your feet–even on your face and hands. When you jump, pay attention and try to feel the pressure of the wind; as it turns out, as a solo skydiver, you can use those helpful little molecules to orient yourself in any orientation you want. (You’ll notice that your tandem instructor will use the air to quickly become stable in flight and to turn you around to enjoy the view.) That’s how skydiving will feel on your body: Sweet support, which allows you this uniquely absolute, acrobatic freedom to move–not the terrified, rolling-up-the-windows flailing of a long fall.

2. How Does Skydiving Feel In Your Brain?

Your brain might be spinning itself up in knots trying to picture what it will feel like to actually go through with the jump. Skydiving is scary, after all! You can expect that you’ll be pretty darn nervous on the ground and, very likely, in the plane on the way up. When you actually jump, however, you can expect total calm. (Surprise!)

After the feet leave the door, most new jumpers report back to us that they found crystal-clear mental space up in the sky. They tell us that they felt totally engaged in the moment; that they were able to focus completely into the present, as if their being had become soaked through with the experience, and none of their earthly concerns were able to chase them down. Pretty nifty, no?

3. How Does Skydiving Feel In Your Heart?

For us, this is the most important category of all. You’re almost certainly aware by now that a whole lot of people uphold skydiving as an unequivocally spiritual experience, and we agree wholeheartedly with that. We’re surer than we’ve ever been sure about anything that it is this aspect of skydiving that keeps people coming back for more. “Adrenaline,” you say? Adrenaline is only of passing importance here. Really.

Tandem skydiving makes magic. That magic lies in the act of bravely approaching the boundaries of what you think you can do–most especially in a context so saturated with natural beauty, with affectionate camaraderie and with intense physical sensation as the sky. Want to know more? Check out this amazing video of Will Smith talking about confronting his fears to experience one of the most blissful experiences of his life!

We can describe this stuff for you for hours, but y’know what? If you really want to know what skydiving feels like–for you–there’s only one way to do it: Give us a call.