My friend Heather and her hubby just laid out some fairly big bucks to spend a weekend learning how to maximize their total personhood and all that. Highlight of the weekend was a scamper across hot coals. The idea was to impress you with the power of your mind–if you kept thoughts of cool moss in mind as you walked, your feet wouldn’t burn. The coals were in a strip about a yard wide and ten feet long. Walkers, in bare feet, made it through with few problems. Heather made it too, with no trouble and no sign of damage to her feet.
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Heather’s (and my) question is this: she believes that, via mind over matter or hypnosis, a person might lower his blood pressure or speed up his pulse or even will himself not to feel pain. But whether she felt it or not, shouldn’t the coals have burned her feet? After all, if you throw a steak on the grill, it cooks regardless of the thoughts it happens to be entertaining.
There’s some disagreement on why fire walking works, but this much is clear: it does work. There’s no trickery involved, although modern fire-walk entrepreneurs do take a few precautions, about which more below. Mind over matter has nothing to do with it. Skeptics have tried it with no preparation whatsoever, or (worse) while murmuring “hot rocks, hot rocks.” They got over just fine. There’s not much margin for error, though. Blisters are fairly common, and a few people have been badly burned.
