Introduction
Recently I was asked by one of my participants, why don’t I use glass walk and firewalk in our programs, especially the ones on mind power and self-hypnosis.
I said because they have nothing to do with mind power. My answer somehow surprised the participant.
Noticing the surprise I asked, “what happened?”
He said I was told that we don’t experience pain during glass walk or fire walk due to power of the mind and you are saying it has nothing to do with the mind power.
I am a bit confused if this is not mind power then why do I not get hurt while doing these activities?
It is this question that brings me to the purpose of this video.
Let me help you understand how glass walk and firewalk work. In what kind of program would it make sense to do these activities and why they shouldn’t be a part of mind power programs?
Glass walk
If you have done a glass walk or seen it somewhere, you would have noticed how there are multiple layers of glasses placed on top of one another. If you were to pick up the glass and touch the edges, in most cases these edges have been blunted well in advance.
When participants are asked to walk on the glass, they do so very slowly. Because of the slow walk, the glasses are pushed down slowly and the multiple layers of glass act as a sponge or a cushion that spreads on being pushed down.
It is for this reason that the feet do not get hurt.
Coal (Fire) Walk
When it comes to the firewalk, it is done on special coal. The coal in most cases is just warm and not really hot. But when you see the warm coal under poor or dim lights, it appears red, giving the impression that it is very hot. The coal is also such that it takes time for your feet to experience the temperature and for this reason as opposed to glass walk where the speed of walking is slow, in case of coal walk, the speed of walking is fast.
The reason why glass walk, coal walk and other these activities work is more due to the set-up than due to the power of the mind.
Why we don’t recommend Glass Walk and Coal Walk in mind power programs?
The reason why we do not recommend these activities is that if you were to explain why it works, it no longer is useful to your cause of highlighting the power of the mind. If you decide not to explain the activity, some people could try these activities by themselves without the necessary setup and may end up causing bodily harm to themselves or to others.
So does it mean that these activities shouldn’t be used in programs at all?
When to us Glass Walk and Coal Walk?
Well, almost everything is useful in some context. (Yes, This is one of the NLP presuppositions which NLP practitioners would know but if you haven’t done NLP, I would recommend you to do it)
Coming back to these activities, they are very useful if you were to do a program on fear management.
You can do these activities, let the participants experience the high and through explanation make them realise that most of our fears are imaginary based on what we perceive through our senses or as a result of our thoughts and emotions.
Only because we saw the red coal or the layer of glass, we assume it would hurt. This is exactly what happens in other situations in life.
We are afraid of not what is but what we think and feel it to be.
Just wonder about the incredible difference you would make in the lives of your participants if they take this experience to their heart and understand this.
If next time before giving up on something because of fear they could challenge it through observation and thorough analysis. If you know Hypnosis & NLP you could even anchor this experience for future use.
Before I end this video, remember that not all fear is bad. Fear also teaches us to be careful. It is only bad when it is irrational and stops us from doing what we really wish to do. Like the activities we spoke about, even fear is useful in some contexts.
