The official site of bestselling author Michael Shermer The official site of bestselling author Michael Shermer

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SHAM Scam

The Self-Help and Actualization Movement is an $8.5-billion-a-year business. Does it work?
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According to self-help guru Tony Robbins, walking barefoot across 1,000-degree red-hot coals “is an experience in belief. It teaches people in the most visceral sense that they can change, they can grow, they can stretch themselves, they can do things they never thought possible.”

I’ve done three fire walks myself, without chanting “cool moss” (as Robbins has his clients do) or thinking positive thoughts. I didn’t get burned. Why? Because wood is a poor conductor of heat, particularly through the dead calloused skin on the bottom of your feet and especially if you scoot acros the bed of coals as quickly as fire walkers are wont to do. Think of a cake in a 400-degree oven — you can touch the cake, a poor conductor, without getting burned, but not the metal cake pan. Physics explains the “how” of fire walking. To understand the “why,” we must turn to psychology. (continue reading…)

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