Don't Forget to Breathe

Got my first tooth pulled yesterday. It was the second time in my life that I have had "major" dental work done. The first was actually caused by surfing; somehow when I got slammed to the bottom (luckily in a sandy area) on Kauai during Hurricane Danial swell, my teeth banged together so hard that it cracked the root of a tooth and a couple days later I was flying home with an abscess and had to get a root canal done to fix it.

This time it was simply due to a lack of dental care, not super-fun waves, that I had to get a tooth pulled. I was fully numbed up and the dentist had been pulling on the tooth for about 10 minutes when I was pretty sure he was about to give up and cut the tooth out. I thought to myself, "Man, there is some natural instinct in my body that does not want this tooth to go." Even though it had caused me so much pain, my body did not want to give it up. I realized at that moment that my hands were clinched tightly and my body was very tense. I thought, "If this poisonous, infected thing is going to go, I need to relax and let it go. So I took a deeeeeep breath and let it out very slowly trying to relax my entire body in the process. As if right on queue, upon exhale, pop went the tooth!

So next time you get a tooth pulled or are just trying to relax for any reason, remember the words of my first martial arts instructor as we were throwing countless straight punches,

"Don't forget to breathe!"