The mind-altering potential of fire walking

Thirty of us gathered in the upstairs room of a local hospice, subdued as we contemplated the imminent laying of our raw flesh onto fire. Steve from Peterborough arrived to give a pep talk to prepare us for what awaited us in the car park below.

He was, he said, an expert fire walker, trained by the man who trained the most famous fire walker in the world – the American motivational guru Tony Robbins, an incredible-hulk of a man known for whipping people up into frenzies of self-belief and positivity. On YouTube you can see him booming, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ as he steers a terrified Oprah Winfrey along a path of red-hot coals. Fire walking, Robbins says, is all about ‘using fear before it uses you,’ a skill that, once acquired ‘will be the incremental step toward unlocking an extraordinary life.