Breathing, Goals, and Mind over Muscle

Today during my Kung Fu lesson my master exposed me to what might have been torture (think Pai Mei from Kill Bill V. 2) and exposed me to a 5 minute horse stance. So this is like a wall sit squat without the wall. You just sit, in the air, in the middle of the room. You cannot move. You can not stand-up. You cannot complain. Try it, is your legs don't start to burn and shake then you are more of a man than I. You are forced to center yourself to equally distribute your body weight. This also helps you attain an awareness of your body in space and how to use small muscles that you probably did not know you needed to use, like muscles in your feet. One thing that is really important is your breathing. Deep diaphragmatic breathing to increase the level of oxygen that reaches your muscles. While doing this you might feel high, or light headed, but that's ok, for some reason you do not, or at least I did not, lose my focus and balance. In fact, I noticed that my focus tended to drift into an almost meditative state. The burn was there, the shaking was there, but I was persevering and overcoming my physical pain by some mental fashion. Well this I found really rewarding (we'll see if I still feel that way tomorrow LOL).  

At any rate, this whole experience got me thinking about pain, mental states, and training - and the whole idea of no pain no gain. See, while I was in my horse stance, I could have at any point dropped to my knees, or just said, no I am not doing this anymore (I of course would not be allowed to train anymore, but if I wanted to, i could drop out). I was in pain, but the mental state that, that I want to learn Kung Fu over rode the pain. I wonder if I translate this mentality to my other exercises, if I will experience similar kinds of gains and feeling of personal reward. 

For example, I am training to hold a front lever & iron cross. Maybe persisting thru the pain will help me. Maybe not. 

At any rate, i was wondering if anyone else has ever experience this sensation of personal triumph with respect to one's own body. It has really invigorated me and I hope to enthuse this type of energy into anyone that trains with me.