Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Fire Walking!

Today, I think I want to try fire walking. Anyone else?

Normally, it is quiet here when I sit down with my cup of tea (Assam) and begin the word flow. But today, my morning was filled with the chaotic (if not happy) sounds of Good Morning America. Did you watch it? Well, if not, maybe you should have.

Diane Sawyer and a team of six or seven took a dare to walk across hot coals using self-hypnosis. To do this, they prepped themselves by individually meeting with Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University. He used a 10 point scale to determine their hypnotize ability. Then as a group he worked with them, teaching them a form of NLP and self-hypnosis (I say NLP because that is what it looked like to me, they do not mention it on the show). After a group session, even the most cynical person said it affected them by making the day a little better. You cannot beat that!

And this morning, they actually walked across the hot coals (a few times actually). Diane Sawyer said she did not even feel the heat from the coals until the third step.

All in all, I think it was a great series about hypnosis.

So, if you are reading this - organizers of Hypnoticon - think about offering it at next year's convention. That would be a sure fire way to totally get Ellie Blunt to commit to joining in the fun. LOL.

Have any of you, my beloved readers, ever fire walked before? If so, what was it like?

And for those who missed this morning show, here are a few clips from the whole series:

GMA and Self-hypnosis
GMA and Fire Walking

Source:
ABC News

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Although fascinating, this neglects the reason why fire walking works for unhypnotized people; the fact that if you move quickly your feet each spend enough time in the air to have lost the majority of the heat gained from the previous step, making it possible to cross it without pain, if done correctly. Couldn't it be that which caused the effect in this case, rather than the hypnosis?

The Transparent Hypnotist said...

Though I know little about fire walking, your comment makes a lot of sense. It sounds like they were coached in how to go about it, so I suspect you are quite right and hypnosis was not necessary. However, personally, I would be more apt to try it with self-hypnosis then I would without it. Though I would have the technique you mention, there would still be a certain amount of fear involved (for me). Utilizing self-hypnosis would make it more of an adventure and I would feel more confident about giving it ago. Does this make sense?

Anonymous said...

The self-hypnosis piece was better than I expected.

My dentist did work on me going down to a nerve. He planned on using lidocaine, but instead we went for a combination of self-hypnosis and acupuncture. I felt only slight pinching, no pain. It was terrific.

Kudos to ABC for showing hypnosis in a positive light.

The Transparent Hypnotist said...

David, that is awesome! Did you have to talk him into letting you do that or was it a service he offered?