Motivational speaker Tony Robbins gained his fame in the mid 1990s through
his "Fire Walking Seminar" that showed people how they could overcome
their fears, and then demonstrated that fact by getting them to walk barefooted
across a bed of red-hot coals. I went to one of his seminars, walked on
fire, and lived through the experience.
Questions you may have include:
What does fire-walking have to do with fears?
How is it possible to walk on hot coals without getting hurt?
What lessons can be learned concerning overcoming fears?
This lesson will answer those questions.
There is a mini-quiz near the end of the lesson.
How I learned about fire walk
A number of years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles but visiting my
parents in Milwaukee, I saw a report on the NBC Evening News about people
walking on fire. Tom Brokaw started the report with, "Only in California..."
He went on to show people at a seminar walking on hot coals in their bare
feet.
I thought, "Boy, isn't that nuts?"
Met some fire walkers
On my flight back home to Los Angeles, I met a couple who were going to
Hawaii to go sky diving. They said they had recently walked on fire, and
now they wanted to try something else more challenging.
When I told them I had seen something about the fire walk on television,
they said I should try it myself. "Try it. You'll like it," they
encouraged.
Then they gave me the telephone number of a fellow named Tony Robbins,
who was running these Fire Walk Seminars.
Things fell into place
When I got home, I called the number. A woman told me that they would be
having their last fire walk that Friday, before going on the road. It would
be in Santa Monica, just a few miles from where I lived. If I wasn't satisfied
(or too severely burned) I could get my money back.
Isn't it amazing how some things just fall into place, like they were meant
to happen? That is what they call synchronicity.
(Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe
meaningful coincidences that conventional notions of chance cannot explain.
A good book on the subject is Synchronicity by Combs and Holland, Paragon
House, 1990.)
So, I signed up.
The Fire Walk Seminar
The Fire Walk Seminar consisted of the Friday night fire walk and then
two days of material on the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) method of personal improvement.
NLP is a set of tools for modeling human excellence, with special emphasis
on patterns of communication. It was created by Richard Bandler in the 1970s.
A classic text on NLP is Influencing with Integrity by Genie Laborde, Syntony
Publishing, 1984.
The seminar leader,
Tony Robbins, emphasized that the seminar was not about walking on fire.
Rather, it was a metaphor for overcoming your fears and for improving yourself.
Could see them preparing hot coals
While Robbins was running us through various confidence-building exercises,
his crew was building a huge bonfire within our view outside. I started
to have second thoughts.
Had to sign form with lawyer
At midnight, after signing release forms with his lawyer, in case we became
seriously burned (how's that for a confidence builder?), we lined up outside.
There was a path 6 feet wide and 20 feet long of glowing, red-hot embers.
I'm not that foolish
No way was I going to be so foolish to walk across those babies!
But somehow I found myself in the line, and soon it was my turn. Robbins
told me to concentrate on something cool. He told me to chant "Cool
moss" over and over. "And don't look down!"
I felt like a champion
So I started walking across those hot embers. I barely felt a cinder. Then
as I got to the end, I yelled out in celebration. That was part of the ceremony.
And I felt like a champion. I had overcome a scary challenge and achieved
a difficult goal. Hey, I was a champion!
How is it possible?
There were many scientific studies about how people can walk on glowing
cinders without getting their feet burned. The answer finally came out that
it wasn't mind-over-matter as Robbins and others had claimed. It also wasn't
that fear caused the soles of your feet to sweat, thus protecting you, as
the newspapers reported.
Rather, the answer could be explained by simple physics. The wood used
had a very low rate of heat exchange,
such that the embers were red hot on the inside but relatively cool on the
surface. As you walked across the coals, you were never on a cinder long
enough for the heat to burn your feet.
If a material that had a higher rate of heat exchange, such as coal or
aluminum, you would be severely burned.
Lessons from this story
Fire walking is one of many ways people can overcome fears. There are seminars
and camps where people skydive, climb mountains, and walk among snakes. What
is important is the message presented along with the challenge.
Some things seem to be meant to happen, according to the chain of events.
Overcoming a fear can make you feel like a champion.
A big build-up can make something safe seem dangerous.
There are scientific explanations for many mysterious phenomena, and
you must separate them from the mystical explanations that people like
to hear.
3. What do people feel after walking on hot coals?
If you got all three correct, you are on your way to becoming a Champion
in Excellence. If you had problems, you had better look over the material
again.
What do you think?
Do you have any questions, comments, or opinions on this subject? If so,
send an email with
your feedback. We will try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Share link
Feel free to establish a link from your website to pages in this site.
Or use our form to send this link to yourself or a friend.
Students and researchers
The Web address of this page is www.school-for-champions.com/excellence/firewalk.htm.
Please include it as a reference in your report, document, or thesis.
