NINGBO, China, March 6 (UPI) -- A 52-year-old Chinese construction worker says he survived being buried for two hours by a wall of mud by positive thinking and Buddhist meditation.

Wang Jianxin was digging a ditch in the eastern China coastal port of Ningbo when a wall suddenly collapsed on him. He had nothing to protect himself except his plastic safety helmet and that, plus a calm, thoughtful approach to his predicament, was all he needed.

"I had my back to the wall and didn't know it was falling until it was on top of me," he told The Times of London. "It was suddenly dark and I realized what had happened and found that there was a small air pocket in front of me (in his helmet)."

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," he told The Times.

It took his fellow workers two hours to get him out. Doctors called his survival a miracle, saying a person normally couldn't live longer than five minutes in a similar sealed space.