The body can go anywhere if the mind is willing

Many years ago I was on a training exercise on an Albanian island that was previously under soviet control.

I was doing a sniper stalk (yep just like Mark Whalberg) making may way to a target to get a shot off and neutralise the enemy threat.

As I was crawling through the bush my eyes detected a movement to the right, which was unusual as it was just me for a good few hundred metres at least.

I looked across, slowly as I didn’t want to give away my position and what did I see. A very big snake slithering over what looked like an unexploded bomb. Now my heart starts to beat as snakes are not in my top ten of favourite creatures. Plus being next to an unexploded artillery piece was not on my to do list.

The problem was I was in a situation where if I moved and panicked then I would give away my position and ultimately in the real world get killed, BUT my inner child was screaming to just run.

Step in the breath method and calm the body down so that I had control over my emotions and physiological responses to this situation.

The snake was not at all interested in me and all it wanted to do was carry on its merry way to finding its next mouse or whatever was on the menu.

The artillery piece had clearly been there for years and had not exploded yet, so chances were that a few more minutes would not quicken that either.

A calm Luke, allows the situation to move on, then allowing me to complete my stalk with a kill at the end.

The end result was success, but it could have been a disaster.