Firewalking And The Nervous System

Your body isn’t the obstacle—your state is the key. We take you into the fiery heart of resilience, exploring how a few focused steps across hot coals can reset what you believe is possible and mirror the same nervous system shifts Naomi creates on the chiropractic table. When fear drives, adaptability shrinks. When joy, purpose, and connection lead, the parasympathetic system wakes up—and the “impossible” becomes a measured step.

We unpack why firewalking can be safe when facilitated well, touch on the limited research and theories about heat transfer, and put most of the weight on what consistently matters: your internal state. You’ll hear how intention, music, breath, and ritual help people walk without injury, and why “kisses” often teach that ego, pressure, or anxiety had the wheel. The conversation moves from spectacle to science-informed practice, connecting the dots between stress physiology, the prefrontal cortex, and real-world behaviour change.

This isn’t just about coals. It’s about building self-trust through achievable commitments that reinforce “I am consistent.” We contrast the damage of overpromising with the quiet power of small wins, and offer a grounded path to resilience that anyone can follow—whether your next step is a glass of water, a brave phone call, or a carefully guided firewalk. Naomi shares her journey from participant to instructor, why she treats every fire with fresh respect, and how chiropractic, breathwork, firewalking, and sweat lodges serve one mission: helping you access your body’s natural intelligence.

Ready to rethink your limits and practise change you can feel? Listen now, subscribe for more mind-body tools, and share this episode with someone who needs a nudge toward their next brave step. If it resonated, leave a quick review—it helps others find their way back to their body.

For opportunities for you to take part in a self-empowerment event, including Firewalks with Naomi at her business in Edinburgh, Scotland, check out the list of upcoming events.

Transcript

Welcome And Core Philosophy

Naomi Mills 0:01

Welcome to You Are the Answer, the podcast that helps you reconnect with the most powerful healer you know, your own body. I'm Naomi Mills, chiropractor, healthcare professional, and believer in the natural intelligence within us all. In this podcast, I explore what it means to trust your body, decode its signals, and take ownership of your well-being without quick fixes or health fads. Whether you're just beginning your journey or deep in transformation, I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer.

Empowerment Through Doing The Impossible

Naomi Mills 0:41

Welcome to episode 12, and today we're going to talk about one of my greatest passions in the world, which is firewalking and the nervous system, and how, in my mind at least, chiropractic and firewalking have an awful lot in common. So bear with me on this one because for most people, the idea of walking on burning hot coals hot enough to melt an aluminium engine would feel like the craziest thing to do in the world. And actually, do you know in a world that does like a quick fix, I'm going to say that the few seconds it would take you to do a firewalk would probably be one of the quickest quote fixes you could hope for yourself.

Naomi Mills 1:31

Because it is the most empowering thing to successfully do something that your brain tells you you absolutely categorically could not do safely. And you know, when you walk across those coals for the first time and you look down and you realize there isn't a mark on your feet, and you feel the like fire energy in the base of your feet, which is a real thing, you kind of feel this tingly, great feeling, and inside you that rush of adrenaline, you realize, oh my goodness, how many other things is my brain telling me I cannot do when actually I can?

Nervous System Basics

Naomi Mills 2:10

And that can be as little as being in the gym and thinking I can't lift up that weight to going, I walked on fire, I probably can, or making a phone call that you've been really putting off, and you're like, I'm a firewalker, I can make a phone call. It's suddenly it has such a gift of making a lot of other things that felt difficult before really not that difficult. And realizing not just how much your brain has been limiting you, but equally how powerful your body is. And I want to put this in context of the central nervous system for you.

Stress, Fight Or Flight, And Resilience

Naomi Mills 2:50

So if you've been listening along to some of the episodes, you will know that your central nervous system is what controls everything in your body. It's your master controlling system. We're talking sleep and healing and digestion and hormone balancing and operating your muscles, and there's almost nothing that goes on in your body that isn't influenced by the central nervous system. And it's designed to be in this calm, relaxed, at-ease state so it can replenish all your cells, digest your food, beat your heart, breathe your lungs, and keep you alive. Except the problem is most of our systems feel constantly under threat because of the physical, chemical, and emotional stresses that happen in our lives, which pushes this nervous system into a sense of fight or flight, which massively reduces your resilience and your adaptability.

What Might Make Firewalking Safe

Naomi Mills 3:45

Because you know what? If you're about to die, it doesn't matter if you can adapt, because that just isn't top of the priority list in that moment. Now, the cool thing about firewalking is first of all, we're still not 100% sure of what the science behind it is. It's thought that perhaps your body responds by sending more water molecules to the base of your feet, which then on impact with the hot coals allows it to cool. And one of the very first, very limited studies they did about this is they measured the temperature of people's feet immediately before and immediately after firewalking and found they were actually slightly cooler afterwards.

State, Intention, And Parasympathetic Shift

Joyful Vs Spiritual Firewalks

Naomi Mills 4:28

Now it's an important thing to say at this point when I talk about research, research itself through all of healthcare and life can be very limited because how many people, how many companies are putting millions and millions of pounds into researching how firewalking works? Well, let's say approximately none. So here is my theory on why it works and the how may yet still to be discovered. But from what we know about the nervous system and everything I've just explained to you, if you walk on these hot coals in a state of joy, so heightened excitement with purpose, with other people, and there's good music, or with deep connection. So there is a, let's call it a spiritual reason, but a purposeful reason why you're walking across the coals, you are putting your nervous system into the parasympathetic state, into adaptability and resilience, which is when you do that, you can safely walk across the coals without burning.

Naomi Mills 5:38

And that's why when I hold my firewalks here just outside of Edinburgh, we do two main styles. They can look slightly different. Each event we do is always unique, but they're either what I call a joyful firewalk or a spiritual firewalk. So you are walking for kind of like party, good vibes, self-empowerment, going to feel amazing. And then there's the other one, which still has purpose and intention and all the rest of it. You can walk to leave something behind, you can walk towards a vision that you want. And then the spiritual ones tend to be a little bit more grounded, really with purpose. We put blessings into the fire, we put prayers into the fire, you're asking the fire to give you love and strength, and we put all these lovely words into it to really connect with our hearts with the fire.

Placebo, Nocebo, And “Kisses”

Naomi Mills 6:28

Both approaches work beautifully. And when people walk in that state, they tend not to pick up any sort of injury or what we call cutely in the firewalking business a kiss, which is like a little blister, like you've just got a new pair of shoes that's been rubbing for the days. However, you can still develop a kiss or a blister or a little burn from firewalking up to a month after you firewalk if you believe that you have done so. And this is the opposite of the placebo effect, where your brain imagines or believes something and makes it true in your body. No Sebo just means you have put the negative intention in, so you get the negative result in your body. So in this case, developing a blister or something painful afterwards.

When Burns Teach: The Wrong State

Naomi Mills 7:17

In fact, it works incredibly well. I always say to people, if you think you have got a little hot spot, a little part that you're aware of, we just don't give any energy to it. Put our socks on, we go to sleep at night with the astral on our feet like newborn babies, and we just forget about it. And 99% out of a hundred, there's never been a mark the next day. And I've had that experience myself many, many times, using that power of placebo to our own advantage. But of course, sometimes people do pick up blisters or burns, and we always say the fire is the teacher. And what is it teaching us? Well, most often it's teaching you that you walked on the fire when you really shouldn't have. And you shouldn't have done it because you weren't in the right state. You were not consciously aware of what your central nervous system was doing at the time, because really you were in a form of fight or flight.

Parallels With Chiropractic Adjustments

Workshops To Create A Safe State

Naomi Mills 8:11

So you might have walked out of fear or walked anyway because of peer pressure, or you think someone will notice if you don't, so you go anyway, or maybe you walk more than once and multiple times, and it's out of ego because your friend is, or you're trying to have a competition with somebody, or even yourself, you're trying to prove a point. Essentially, unless you are walking that fire in that moment in a deep state of connection, joy, and that kind of heightened energy state, you are much more likely to pick up a burn or hurt yourself. Because what happens when you are in fight or flight, your adaptability goes straight through the floor, and your soles of your feet are not interacting with the electrons on the fire in the same way, and you are more likely to have an injury. So, for me, when a chiropractic client is coming to lie on my table and I am adjusting them, and we are helping shift their nervous system out of fight, flight, and into ease and into healing by rewiring the front prefrontal cortex of their brain, by shifting the state of the nervous system, which is how that works, the same thing is happening on a firewalk, except you are doing it for yourself.

Strong Safety Disclaimer

Naomi Mills 9:34

So I hold workshops or ceremonies, whatever you want to call it, in the lead up to the firewalk a couple of hours before, and we really work on creating the state that we need to walk the fire safely. And through doing that, I am not only giving you the tools to put your nervous system into an adaptive, resilient, healing state. Most importantly, I'm showing you that you can, that you have that power within yourself. And that's an incredible gift. Now it goes without saying, and I'm going to say it anyway, do not try it at home. Do not walk on any random calls or fires because you believe that you can create a certain state in your body.

Small Wins And Self-Trust

Naomi Mills 10:21

This is something that has to be done with trained, insured professionals who are going to make sure you have the best experience. And I would be heartbroken if you did, because the whole purpose of this podcast is to help you find empowerment and strength and belief in yourself. So if you're going to put yourself into situations that are not setting you up for success, that is absolutely not going to be helping me reach my mission. So please do not do it.

Naomi Mills 10:49

But in the context of what we've been exploring these last few episodes and thinking about the stress and how life is building up and kind of pushing us into overwhelm essentially, making space in your life for some interesting experiences, and I would say firewalking is definitely up there, can be a very quick and powerful way to create some real meaningful change, not just in your body, but how you think about yourself, how you approach life, how much you believe you can achieve. And to take this away from firewalking for a moment in case you're thinking that's absolutely never going to happen in your life.

Naomi Mills 11:36

I'm thinking of something just as simple as you intending to drink a glass of water every day for 30 days because you're going to work on your hydration and you know that's also really helpful and important, and then you just don't do it, or you make it so hard for yourself that you're going to have five liters a day, or you're going to definitely do this. And essentially, when we make a commitment to ourselves, especially around this area of our life and health, and we don't step up and we don't fulfill it, we are giving ourselves not just, oh, I didn't do the goal that I set out to achieve.

Naomi’s Firewalking Path And Practice

Naomi Mills 12:13

On a subconscious level, you're teaching yourself that you don't stick to things, you're not consistent, you're not capable of change. And that's actually far more damaging than not trying to change at all in my book. So when you go to set yourself little lifestyle tweaks or goals, you must always make sure that they are achievable so that you start to reinforce that pattern of I can achieve, I can be consistent, I am capable of change, and that is going to lead to more and more positive changes in your life. My first firewalk was in 2018 with Tony Robbins. We did it with 13,000 other people, and it certainly did change my life to an extent. It certainly changed my way of seeing myself and my capabilities. I then went on to do two sets of firewalker instructor training and then mastery. So I have been doing this for five years and taken many hundreds of people over the coals. And it continues to be one of my absolute favorite things to do, not just with other people, but for myself as well.

Respecting The Fire Every Time

Invitation And Upcoming Events

Naomi Mills 13:28

That reminder that we can do incredible things. I always say during my events, I don't often walk the fire, but when I do, I approach every single fire as if it's my first one. It's not, oh, I can switch my state and I'm just perfect and everything will be fine for me. The beautiful thing about the fire is it commands respect and it gets you to stop and tune in and pay attention to what your nervous system is doing. So there's my invitation for today. Have a think about where you're striving boldly in your life and making sure that you're setting yourself up for success. And have a think about whether you might want to come and firewalk one day. I hold regular firewalks just outside of Edinburgh. It's very easy to get to me, so you'd be extremely welcome.

Closing Gratitude And CTA

Naomi Mills 14:18

If you go to www.youaretheanswer.co.uk, go onto the events page and you will see the upcoming live events that include breathwork, firewalking, and sweat lodges. Just some of the wonderful self-empowerment tools I'll be talking about on this next arc of the podcast to really delve into these tools that I've chosen and why I've chosen them.

Naomi Mills 14:45

Hopefully, today it's become clear that my day job taking care of people's nervous systems in a clinical setting made perfect sense to my brain that inviting my clients to have the opportunity to firewalk regularly was my way of really showing them first-hand just how amazing they are, how resilient they are, and how capable they are of creating a state that allows them to do the seemingly impossible. So thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to talking to you next week.

Naomi Mills 15:19

Thank you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparked something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey, head to www.youareanswer.co.uk. And until next time, stay connected, stay curious, and remember, you are the answer, and you always have it.