There’s no real art to it. I’ve been shot that many times I couldn’t tell you the number. But I can tell you that I just don’t like giving in to anything.
It’s like when I go into hospital for these operations and they tell me I’ve got a ten per cent chance of coming back out. I just treat the disease or the problem as a Como. None of them are getting over the top of me. A positive outlook has a lot to do with it. Plus meditation.
I do a lot of meditation. I got taught it when I was doing the kyite. I can’t tell you how we do it, but it’s the sort of thing where once you learn to do it, it takes about 20 minutes to get in the zone, and once you’re there, you can zone yourself out and stop pain. I could get my heart rate down to nine when I was practising it a lot. One of the doctors at Bankstown Hospital reckoned that that was probably what happened when they thought I flatlined after Milperra. He said, ‘You probably went into your meditation to control the pain you were in and you instinctively took your heart rate down that low. So it’s gone down to being almost non-existent and the machine didn’t pick it up.’
I don’t know if that’s right or not, but everybody should do meditation. Especially if there’s a chance someone might be coming after you.