Squeezing my eyes shut, and mouth as open as I can, willing my ears to filter out the horrifying sound of some deadly metal rod scraping away at my teeth and gums - this is when I realise that I need to breathe.
I always knew, that I have a low tolerance for pain and not the greatest of faith in medical ability of humans and yet, when faced with the unavoidable situation that I was in, the only relief I found was to focus on my breathing.
It is such a given, as living beings, of course we breathe to live, but I had not acknowledged the power this simple act has - the way it can send to background, the painful feeling that you want to avoid. Almost like balancing those nerves and sending a strong signal to the brain, that I am still alive and things are not so bad. We can make it back from here. We can pick ourselves up.
And come to think of it, I use it at other times too. Like when I am running, and my body tells me after the first 10 minutes, that I cannot go any further, that I have to stop. That is when I start focusing on every breath. I take deeper breaths and breathe out from my mouth. I don't know if others do this - but I do, to keep going. And slowly my body falls into this silent commanding rhythm, and I feel relaxed as I keep running.
So in a way, this is my long winded attempt at reminding myself - that even when the situation seems rather overwhelming and the problem at hand maybe overly complex, sometimes the solution may still be quite simple. It is ok to take a moment to pause, breathe, create a bit of a mental distance between the problem and yourself, and then decide next course of action.
