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Firewalks are also very impressive, partly because they are always done at night, so that the glowing coals look very bright to dark-adapted eyes. The same coals appear much less impressive and threatening in daylight, because you see very little glow, mostly only a light covering of gray ash.
A few years ago, my three sons decided that they wanted to do a firewalk. They had heard their uncle talk about doing his own firewalk with friends, and they asked me what I knew about it. Then, unsupervised, they built a big fire, spread the coals and spontaneously walked on them in a way that I thought showed an unusual degree of common sense. They first stood on the side of the 12' path of coals, and took one step onto the coals and across to bare earth.
Then they faced the coals at a slight angle, and took two steps (one with each foot) to reach safety. Then they took three steps, continuing until they were walking the entire length of coals.
By doing it in this way, they created a series of graded risks, with opportunities for feedback. Take one step, and notice the result, take another, and notice the result, etc. This breaks the challenge down into much smaller steps, effectively transforming it into an analog function that changes over a range, with opportunities for feedback at each increase in risk.
In contrast, every other firewalk I have seen, or read about, presents people with a digital, all-or-none choice: walk the entire length or not. This is also true of the challenge of breaking a board with a karate chop, which Richard describes so well. You can't do it half-way, it is either all or none. Of course this task could also easily be transformed into an analog one by starting with very thin boards, and then gradually increasing the thickness of the board.
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