Battlefield Mindset - Firewalk Origins

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound !!”

Fire-walking is an ancient warriors “rite of passage”, a mental and emotional preparation for the battlefield!

4000 Years ago, in an area around the black sea, lived a tribe of warriors known today as the Indo-Europeans. They were forefathers to the great barbarian tribes – the Celts, Gauls (of Asterix and Obelix fame), Germanic, and Nordic tribes or Vikings – the very same Cesar and the Romans fought to tame. They were fearless warriors, who wore the skins of lions, wolves, and bears they had single-handedly killed! Their children were prepared from young for the harsh realities of the battlefield. But skill-set alone was not enough! The contrast between play with wooden swords and real-life battles was greater than can be imagined. Many young warriors, though highly skilled, we’re dying. Veteran soldiers understood the reason…

On the battlefield you came face-to-face with two primary enemies. First was the physical threat, the enemy warriors painted in blood. The second, less obvious threat, was the effect they had on you; how they got into your head. Barbarian warriors learned that fear was by far the more dangerous of the two threats, and that only once they had learned to deal with the inner threat, could they effectively employ their skills, and not only survive, but overcome!

Long they sort a worthy “right of passage” to effectively prepare and qualify young warriors, mentally and emotionally, for the realities of the battlefield. Thus the birth of firewalking! Each evening the tribe would gather around the bonfire, tell stories, cook food, and burn the occasional witch. All reverenced and feared the awesome power of the fire, the source of light and warmth, life and protection. In time the wise elders learned of a great truth – that men could walk on fire and not be burned! But it required a total shift in ones way of thinking…

Given the right mental training, any courageous person was able to face the fire, and not only survive but come away burn free!

And thus The Firewalk became a “right of passage” for young warriors, a preparation not only for war, but for the harsh struggles of tribal life. Fire-walking was the perfect model – the fire representing the battlefield; fear the effect of the battlefield on the warrior. Skillset – simply knowing how to walk – is not enough. Mindset is everything. We live in a hostile modern world, with its increasingly challenging battlefields in the home, on the sporting field, in our everyday business. Think about it, we are losing it on feeling and not on skills alone…

As teacher and mentor, I have successfully helped around 100 000 people experience the ancient firewalk with its timeless lesson. Fire-walking is real – a real experience, a real fire, real primal fear, and a real outcome. One who cannot literally and practically change the mindset with which they face challenges, cannot even walk, never mind do so successfully. A change in action and outcome requires offensive, proactive emotional content. Thus the power behind the firewalk experience, and the battlefield mindset.

As the old saying goes, men are anxious to improve their circumstance, but unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. Perhaps Sir Edmund Hillary, first man to conquer Everest, put it best when he said of his victory: “Its not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves…”