Lovecat On A Hot Tin Roof

Think about it. Imagine yourself walking barefoot over 4.5m of glowing coals. You've heard about it. You may have even briefly considered doing it. But have you actually seriously put your mind to the test?

It's a little like training your brain to forget everything you've been conditioned to believing. This in itself is a wonderful exercise. But when we were rudely interrupted in an otherwise fun-but-routine workshop last week, I had no idea that the ritual can be so exhilarating. Granted, when you are told that in exactly 60min we would ALL have walked barefoot over 4.5m of burning coals - things take on a different perspective. You panic.

Then you deal with the panic. The energy in the room was immediately raised.

We were informed that to overcome any fear there are usually 3 simple conditions that need to be satisfied:

1. Environment
What you think tends to become your belief quicker when everyone around you also believes. This is illustrated beautifully in Finding Neverland when a small group of boys were trying to fly a kite one afternoon. When it was the youngest boy to run with the kite the point was made that the kite would never fly unless everybody believed it would. And it did.

2. Visualisation
Through the simple act of visualising the end result you are naturally drawn to it's conclusion. In this case the challenge was to see snow capped mountains and a large frozen lake outstretched in front of me. I must admit that although you can hold the image it gets reeeealllly difficult when all you can feel is the heatwave radiating off the coals. Fun indeed.

3. Facts
This was interesting. And you may want to try it. Apparently if you put a plastic bottle filled with water in it upon some glowing coals the plastic will not melt. The water begins to heat up and eventually boil .. but until such time the plastic remains unharmed. Now consider yourself. Water constitutes 2/3 of the human body. A grown man 65% and a grown woman 58%. So with each step the energy is transfered from the coals to the water leaving your feet unharmed.

So armed with those 3 simple principles we all stepped outside and wandered down to where the fire was smoldering.

Well.

It's a very different story when you actually watch the instructor lay the coals out in front of you and the heat is so overbearing your group stands 10m back.

But after some mental gymnastics and group cheering I took the brave step in front of the glowing runway. With the instructor holding my left upper arm and his other hand on the small of my back I looked up and saw the most glorious picture of a New Zealand frozen lake and snow capped mountains ahead of me. I heard everyone chanting "Frozen Lake. Frozen Lake ...". And I took a deep breath and stepped forward ...

The most magnificent part of this is a strange sort of surprise hits you when you realise that each step feels as if it's on soft cool ground.

Try it.