I Believe I Can Fly - Winjitsu Ace

A while back  I attended a Sales Mastery seminar in London, England with Anthony Robbins (a popular self-help and motivational speaker with a background in NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming).

I was in the front row, and anyone who has been to one of Mr. Robbins’s seminars will know that getting in the front row takes some passion and massive action.  Okay, on this three day course on personal excellence one of the nights is focused on a firewalk.

A firewalk is where you take off your shoes and socks and walk bare foot across a 12 foot bed of red hot coals (from a large wood fire) about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius), spread out into about a 10-foot path.

Tolly Burkan, founder of The Firewalking Institute for Research and Education, claims that fire walking is "a method of overcoming limiting beliefs, phobias and fears."
-Belief is the final command, whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you will make that your reality.

This wasn’t my first firewalking experience.  I had done a few firewalks in the past and even helped to set up some for our martial arts weekend programs.  My first introduction to the concept was a video I watched some years prior of a martial artist claiming to use mind over matter in order to perform the amazing feat of the feet.  This is typical of many martial artists—performing tricks that anyone with a five minute lesson in the art could perform.  I feel this can be a good lesson if you aren’t simply trying to look like a master of mind over matter.

The point of a firewalk is to build up your power of belief and take action to start walking and continue until you reach the end of the path completely unharmed.  The aftermath would be the realization that you just did something that you might have previously thought impossible.  If you can walk across a bed of hot coals without getting burned, what else can you do?

Getting yourself to cross those coals still requires some motivation and a solid belief that you will make it to the other side.  Prior to the firewalk, Mr. Robbins decided to see if he could bring a little fear to the audience by talking about some experiences where he got burned and making sure we knew how HOT these coals really were.

Even with past experience and the knowledge that I could do it, I had to question my beliefs.  It is just common sense to avoid walking on rather hot surfaces, and a debate with the brain would reveal the fact that the general objective is to avoid fire, not walk on it.  In any case, I once again survived another firewalk and it didn’t hurt to put my socks back on.

You have been reading an extract from Rick Tew´s book 'WINJITSU ACE - RICK TEW´S MENTAL MARTIAL ART', if you would like to see more of this book, and learn from Rick and his experience please visit www.winjitsu.com