I… do not understand this:
Fire officials said 21 people at an event hosted by motivational speaker Tony Robbins suffered burns while walking across hot coals and three of the injured were treated at hospitals.
The injuries took place during the first day Thursday of a four-day event at the San Jose Convention Center hosted by Robbins called “Unleash the Power Within.” Most of those hurt had second and third degree burns, said San Jose Fire Department Capt. Reggie Williams.
[snip]
Witness Jonathan Correll was not attending the event, but when he saw a large crowd gathered on a closed-off surface street near the convention center, he got off the light rail he was riding to see what was going on.
“I just heard these screams of agony,” he told The Associated Press. “People were in pain. It sounded like people were being tortured.”
So maybe I’m not the best person in the world to try making sense of this. I am wholly at peace with living a life devoid of hot coal walking. Perhaps that means my power within is going woefully un-unleashed. I’m sure it’s tragic on some level that I’m willing to live a more leashed life, but it seems a reasonable price to pay to avoid needing skin grafts on my feet.
But what I really don’t understand is how this happened to 21 people! One person I can kind of wrap my mind around — that one guy who yells “booyah!” without irony and probably doesn’t really need much coaxing to unleash his power within. That guy incinerating his tootsies I can maybe grok. And maybe one other person thinking “well, clearly he didn’t unleash his power within properly” as the first guy is wheeled away clutching his feet in agony, and trying to prove to everyone that he could do it much better.
But 21???!??! After the first two people went down shrieking, nineteen more people thought they’d like to give it a shot? I… cannot relate to that.
And I’m sorry, but this is hilarious:
Robbins Research International said Friday, “We have been safely providing this experience for more than three decades, and always under the supervision of medical personnel … We continue to work with local fire and emergency personnel to ensure this event is always done in the safest way possible.”
I adore the idea of safe hot coal walking. I cherish the notion that the supervision of medical personnel renders walking through flaming, 2,000-degree matter somehow more prudent.
Apparently 6,000 people made it through the coals sans burns. But something obviously went wrong at some point. What could possibly have been going through the minds of victims 3-21? Help me understand.
“We continue to work with local fire and emergency personnel to ensure this event is always done in the safest way possible”
That really says something about unleashing your beast within.
This being the League, I’m guessing I don’t need to explain why coal walking is normally safe and does not require any kind of “will” or “mind over matter” to avoid injury.
I have actually been to a Tony Robbins all day event. (My Fortune-50-worst-job-ever sent my entire office to one.) It was… hard to describe. Somewhere between laughable and creepy, maybe?
It was held in the same stadium the Portland Blazers play in, and it was packed. A lot of the people I talked to were like Tony Robbins dead heads, in that they followed him around. The majority of the people there raised there hands when Tony asked them if they had been to many of his shows and had purchased his books/videos, and again when he asked if they were trying to succeed but failing, and if they believed that then yet again when he asked if they believed this show was going to make them a winner. They had famous guests, and with every one TOny introduced them with made-up inspiring factoids: George Bush hadn’t just been shot down in WWII, he had been washed ashore on an island and taken over a Japanese base. Lou Holtz had never not won a championship in any of his seasons coaching football at any level. Colin Powell had worked side by side with Dr. King to end bussing segregation in Montgomery. He told and inspiring story about how before he became president, Lincoln had run for public office 70 times, but had never won an election but never gave up believing in himself. The crowd was unbelievably credulous, and by the end was frothing at the mouth.
So I have to say it does not surprise me that even if the first few people got hurt, more Tony Robbins followers walked across the coals. It really doesn’t surprise me at all. Especially considering there are usually so many people that it’s people walking one after another, it’s not a one at a time thing. I’d bet that the 21 went across in about a minute of two, and that it was about that long for the staff to figure out they hadn’t let to embers burn off enough.
“Hmmmm…the last seven people to go across the coals are now screaming and clutching their feet. I wonder what that means? … What’s that? My turn? GAME ON!”
But they’re not winners, Russell! You are!
Congratulations! You’ve just won a fortnight in the burn unit and the invaluable learning experience of having to regrow the skin we’re going to harvest from your buttocks to put on your becrisped feet!
I’m trying not to imagine creative “Indian Names” here and failing miserably.
“His name means, ‘He who walks upon his fundamentals’.”
I’m picturing the conference-goers charging the coals like the crowd at a Polar Bear swim. How else could 21 people get severely burned?
Coal-walking works because the coals are remarkably slow to transfer their great heat to your skin. It’s like how you can briefly stick your hand in a 400-degree oven without getting burned, but you can’t touch a cookie sheet in a 400-degree oven without burning yourself. The air in the oven is as hot as the cookie sheet, but the air transfers that heat a lot slower.
As long as you step briskly over the coals, you won’t get burned.
So, if I were investigating this incident, I’d start by asking what could have happened to make the coals more efficient conductors of heat, or more likely to physically stick to the feet. I’ve read about people getting burned by clingy fragments.
Were they burning a different type of charcoal? Did they not wait long enough for the coals to burn down? Was the coal bed set up differently?
“The majority of the people there raised there hands when Tony asked them if they had been to many of his shows and had purchased his books/videos, and again when he asked if they were trying to succeed but failing, and if they believed that then yet again when he asked if they believed this show was going to make them a winner.”
I swear it is the 8th book and 24th conference where you really start to feel a difference!
I got snookered into attending an Amway rally once. Same sort of deal.
You know anybody that got rich off Amway? Me neither.
“Lincoln had run for public office 70 times, but had never won an election but never gave up believing in himself”
Wow….just wow. It takes something with some factual basis and totally warps it to…..an inspirational speech.
It takes a lot of self-confidence to run for two separate public offices every two years for 30 years without winning. How many of us could do something like that?
“…that one guy who yells “booyah!” without irony…”
I’ve been pushed and poked, prodded and provoked. I’ve threatened to do so before. But this? This is too much. If such gentlemen are going to be berated here at the LoOG… well, I just don’t have a place here anymore.
Well, what do you expect? I’m the kind of schmuck who puts a sticker on his car about how far he’s run.
Touche!
I note with amusement that when I went to check my Gmail account just now, a Tony Robbins motivational product was one of the sidebar adverts.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/21-burned-walking-on-hot-coals-at-tony-robbins-events.html
One participant told the paper that her feet felt fine right after the walk but that blisters began to form a few minutes later. She said she and others soaked their feet in a nearby fountain, the paper said.
Which sort of explains why the fire-walking didn’t end immediately, if she’s typical — people didn’t realize they were hurt until afterward. But the numbers aren’t adding up for me:
* Of the 21 hurt, most had second and third-degree burns.
* Of the at least 11 with those injuries, only three were treated at hospitals.
Does Robbins have Leo Durocher there, to tell them to just rub some dirt on it and get back in the game?
People under the influence of catharsis will do remarkable things — and often remarkably stupid things at that. It’s almost as if the mind has the power to temporarily block off parts of itself from the other parts, and when combined with the nerve-deadening effect of having the meat of you cooked on the bone and the pain-interpreting portions of your brain shut down by shock as a survival mechanism overcome the sense data that, in more rational mental states, would tell you that what you’re about to do is an astonishingly foolish undertaking.
The thing is, compared to people who run actual reputable fire-walking self-discovery events, Robbins was running his event sloppily and dangerously. There are quite a lot of ‘motivational’ speakers out there now doing things like firewalking, sweat lodges, etc, that can be physically dangerous if done WRONG, but who have not bothered to really learn how to do it RIGHT (or hire an on-site consultant to run it properly for them).
No bs:
I’ve seen a guy snatch a striking rattlesnake out of the air.
There’s an art to it.
The snake sort of lets you know beforehand before it strikes.
Unless you’re absolutely sure before you give it that first shot, it’s sort of dangerous.
Kind of like knowing how if you’re ready to be a cliff-diver in Aculpulco.
Those doubts might be telling you something.