Science Writer Hopes She Won’t Get Burned by Skepticism
Seconds before stepping up to the coals, I was semi-sure that I wouldn’t burn my feet if I embraced my fear.
Never one for perilous adventures, I resolved to consider walking on hot coals on the promise that the experience might ignite the courage to lead a more fulfilling life. That was the lure of the four-day emotional boot camp that drew this science writer to the Tony Robbins weekend seminar, called “Unleash the Power Within.”
I was warned to expect goings-on that might seem a touch foreign to an English girl like me -- hugging strangers, crying in public, high-fiving, screaming and cheering reminiscent of a pop concert, feverish dancing, confessions of deep fears. Yuck.
With slight skepticism and no real commitment, I decided to drag myself out to the hinterland of London’s docklands and take a bite. I could always spit it out.
One of the best known of a breed of self-help teachers called life coaches, Robbins uses the fire walk as a metaphor for getting out of the “comfort zone” -- taking risks and gaining a new grasp of what’s possible.
The point of the weekend, Robbins says, is to start to discover what you really want, identify what’s getting in the way -- fear -- and begin attacking those obstacles. It’s about confronting self-limiting beliefs and patterns, and shattering their hold by engaging the body, focusing the mind and using the right language when speaking to yourself and to others.
Some of the language Robbins used when speaking to us was shocking -- and that was exactly the point. It’s a technique pioneered by Sigmund Freud, who discovered that taboo words can be used therapeutically to trigger deeper emotions.
Adopting by turns the dulcet tones of Barry White and the comical facial contortions of Jim Carey and displaying a range of emotions in between, Robbins, a 45-year-old American, purports to guide the crowd through the steps toward a richer life.
“Where do you have to be on a scale of certainty from zero to 10 to walk successfully across fire?” Robbins asks the crowd. “10,” we shout back in unison.
“You have to be a 20,” he says. “You push yourself to 20 so that 10 feels like relaxing by contrast.”
“If you feel strong, say yes. Say yes, say yes,” he commands.
The experience never felt more like joining a cult than at that moment, when virtually the entire crowd of 12,000 people formed a fist with their hands, and jerked their arms down across their flank in a move of pure certainty while shouting, emphatically, “YES!”
I did it too, although perhaps not with quite the same ardor as others seemed to have.
Is all this hype necessary, I asked myself? If I don’t get with the program, will I burn myself?
Dr. Robert Sheridan, chief of burn surgery at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston and co-director of the adult burn unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, says he has never seen a patient come to the burn unit after fire walking.
“I doubt that you can take a bunch of lay people and suddenly make them mystically able to do this, so there must be some physical reason why this doesn’t happen,” said Sheridan, who has treated burn patients for more than 15 years.
According to experts, fire walking can be explained by science and most believe that no matter what state of mind you are in, the coals will not burn your feet as long as you keep moving forward.
When people do get burned, it’s not because they lack faith or willpower, it’s because the coal bed is too hot, they lingered too long on the coals or the soles of their feet weren’t thick enough, scientists say.
It isn’t that the coals aren’t hot. The 12-foot bed is packed with wood chips heated to temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but the heat doesn’t escape the coals very efficiently, experts say.
“It’s got absolutely nothing to do with your mind,” said David Willey, a recreational fire-walker and physics instructor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s just the fact that wood is a lousy conductor of heat, so is ash, and so is dead skin on the bottom of your feet.”
According to Dr. Thalia Segal, the body’s processing of pain is also probably involved. Natural pain-relieving chemicals are likely released in the body during the psyching-up process, said Segal, an anesthesiologist and pain specialist at the New York University Pain Management Center.
“You may have already augmented your body’s endorphins so that you had your own natural pain reliever,” Segal said.
In the hour or so leading up to the fire walk, I was definitely energized -- chiefly by my panic in figuring out how I was going to do this.
As I’m bending down to untie my laces, I’m suddenly grateful that I had a pedicure last week. At least when I turn up at the burn unit, my feet will be pretty.
Then I thought, “What if the pedicurist sanded too much off the bottom of my feet, making them more likely than normal to melt?”
Rolling up the cuffs of my jeans, I took the hand of my fire walking buddy Terry McElhinney and let him lead me out of the room, out of the building and into the dark night.
I was staring straight ahead at Terry’s back, my hand trying to wriggle out of his, when we were in the line for the coals.
Suddenly, I was walking -- no, sauntering -- across the coals, cool as can be. There was no heat, no drums, no sight of Terry. Not even the sensation of crunching under my feet.
The shock of the cold water hosing down my feet snapped me out of my reverie and there was Terry.
“You did it,” he said.
For days afterward, I was temporarily brainwashed, luxuriating in the achievement and not caring how it was possible that I did it. But I soon pursued the scientific explanation.
“The mind over matter part -- which is not to be neglected -- is the idea that you are willing to take the risk to do this,” New York psychologist Alan Hilfer said.
Even Robbins admits that although the fire walk can change some people’s lives, for others, it’s merely a good pub story.
