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I recently did my first firewalk. Firewalking has been around for long enough that no-one can really say where it originated. It has been popularised in the last few decades by Tolly Burkan who first brought it to mainstream western awareness, and later by Tony Robbins who uses it in his seminars.

Typical firewalks involve temperatures between 1200 and 1500 degrees fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to melt aluminium. Dr. Ron Sato of Stanford university medical school and director of a nearby burns unit says that human flesh even momentarily exposed to these temperatures should sustain third degree burns charring the entire thickness of skin to a blackened carbon residue. Dr. Sato has treated people who have accidentally stepped on hot coals who have sustained injuries requiring skin grafts.

Theories about how firewalking is possible are widespread. I’m not going to put forward my explanation for it here, or even discuss the theories that are out there. What I’m more interested in is what firewalking serves as a metaphor for, and what it teaches experientially.

The fear of fire is one of our most basic and early learnings - hot objects, fires, cookers and other such dangers are one of the first things we learn to avoid as children. You have to make a leap of faith to take the first step onto a bed of burning coals - you have to know you will not burn - I’m not talking about an intellectual knowledge, I’m talking about a positive conviction. It’s one thing to imagine doing it, but when you are standing in front of the coals and can feel the heat radiating from them it becomes apparent that no-one would take the first step without the certainty that they were going to be able to walk across them without injury.

This re-examining of beliefs, where they came from and whether or not they serve you is key in so many different areas, and is one of the reasons firewalking is such an excellent metaphor for personal change. When you can change your belief about something as basic as this, it becomes surprisingly easy to re-examine other limiting beliefs and make a decision to change them for beliefs that serve you.

Milton Erickson used to tell the story of a war veteran who he met who had returned from the war with an artificial leg, he first saw the man looking at ice and eyeing it suspiciously because he knew he was likely to fall walking on it. Erickson offered to teach the man how to walk on ice. He could see Erickson had a limp, so he knew that he was speaking about what he knew. After he had walked across the ice the man asked him how he did it. He said “I won’t tell you, I’ll teach you” - Erickson had the man close his eyes and walked him back and forth over the ice free pavement until he was utterly confused and disoriented, finally he walked him straight over the ice. The man was able to understand that you can walk on ice when you don’t know it’s there. When you walk as if the road was bare you put your weight down straight and walk confidently. The slide only comes if a person tenses up and doesn’t put down their full weight.

Courage is not the absence of fear - it is the ability to act in spite of fear. To re-examine your limiting beliefs and realise that you already have all the resources within you that you will ever need to face the challenges you want to overcome. Fear is just useless baggage which prevents people from doing what they already know how to do. When you put yourself in a resourceful state, focus on the end result and make a conscious decision to take action you may not know how you can accomplish whatever it is you desire, but you’re getting momentum by taking the first step - how would it feel if you were already one step closer to whatever it is you desire?

This overcoming of fear (False Evidence Appearing Real) is the first lesson of firewalking - once the fear is faced and overcome you realise that what seemed terrifying turned out to be nothing at all. Like making that presentation, approaching that girl or guy, starting that new business or handling that spider the fear is often an illusion, and when you walk with purpose and know where you want to go fear reveals itself for what it is - an illusion that you put in place, and which you can choose to see clearly for what it really is.

All of the lessons firewalking teaches are highly generalisable and this is one of the main reasons I think firewalking is such an excellent change tool, I’d thoroughly recommend doing it if you get the chance to take place in a firewalk organised by a reputable organisation.