Well what an amazing precursor I had to the Bank Holiday weekend… I ran a self-hypnosis seminar last Thursday and Friday and then as requested by a group of my students, we gathered in the countryside for a marvellous firewalk evening.

One of my students took a load of photos and I thought I’d share a couple of them here to give you a flavour of what a magical evening it was for those of us involved… Following a two day seminar on the subject of self-hypnosis and learning to apply that skillset to many areas of life, we headed over to the outskirts of Bournemouth for our firewalk evening.

Firewalks really are nothing to do with self-hypnosis by the way… The skills enable you to make good decisions, tune in with yourself and overcome certain fears and anxiety responses, but the firewalk itself can be done without self-hypnosis.

I am not going into the nuts and bolts of that debate today, instead here are some snaps of our enjoyable evening, those of us that got there early (i.e. Not freshening up whilst us early birds humped logs around and built the fire) were in high spirits early…

So we had to build the fire… Which initially looked like a pyre!

Then we all gathered for the lighting of the fire, I like us all to do it together, though we did not sing Kum-By-Ah… And soon it was aflame and in need of constant prodding by at least one man:

As the coals burn down, I ask those involved to take turns in raking out the coals, in order that they get a sense for the extreme heat and enormity of the task at hand. It usually serves as a sobering time to reflect on what they are about to do and to start getting their minds in the right place…

Then we gather for a full run-down through the best ways to approach the firewalk and I finalise the coal bed ready for the walk and the guys spend some time in their own space getting ready and mentally prepared…

This should give you and idea of the finished coal bed, glowing and ready to walk upon… The photos do not usually do it justice because the light makes the coals look grey instead of the glowing heat that we see in real-life…

Having explained the processes once again, I like to lead by example and so I got to walk on it first… And I was closely followed by a huge bunch of amazing people… We had a lot of hugs, a lot of excitement and most of us did a few more walks on the coal bed…

And here is the proof that my feet survived and I got to enjoy an end of the night beer…

My heartfelt thanks to everyone involved, I had a ball. Some of us went through some amazing journeys over the two days for a variety of reasons… And wow, those are journeys that are going to serve you incredibly well.

A few snaps here cannot really give an accurate insight into the depth of the experience I shared with my students… But hopefully gives you an inkling… I’ll back tomorrow…