A construction worker in Ningbo, China was buried alive when a ditch wall collapsed today, and amazingly was saved by his hard hat and Buddhist meditation techniques. The Times of London reports:
The rim of his helmet had, by chance, trapped a tiny pocket of air around his face. Mr Wang knew that if he panicked and his breathing accelerated he might use up that little amount of oxygen before rescuers could reach him. He forced himself to be calm.
“I had my back to the wall and didn’t know it was falling until it was on top of me. It was suddenly dark and I realised what had happened and found that there was a small air pocket in front of me,” Mr Wang said. That was when the Buddhist turned to meditation to control his intake of oxygen. “I knew it would not last, so I made myself relax and concentrated on slowing down my breathing by meditation.” Above ground, workers were scrabbling through the earth to try to bring Mr Wang to the surface alive. Construction workers and a uniformed rescue team clawed away the earth with their hands until they found Mr Wang’s helmet.
He apparently managed to slow down his breathing enough to survive on that tiny pocket of air for two full hours until rescuers managed to dig him up. Astonished doctors said a person normally couldn’t survive more than five minutes in that situation. I gotta work on my meditation…
1 response so far ↓
1 Asher Vijay // Mar 8, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Ha! That’s awesome!
New Headline: Meditation saves lives!
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