Backchannelmedia

UK)

ALONG with 10,000 people, I am standing in the pouring rain in a Docklands car park. Drums are beating rhythmically and torches flicker in the gloom.

'Yes!' we scream. 'Yes!' In front of me is a carpet of burning coal perhaps 8ft long. I am barefoot and, in a moment, will step on the coals and walk over them.

If I had been told 24 hours earlier that I would even consider doing this, I would have laughed. But now I do it willingly (well, almost).

Welcome to the wacky world of motivational therapy.

Anthony Robbins, 44, is the Croesus-rich king of motivational speakers, worth $400 million at the last count. Born Anthony J. Mahavorick on February 29, 1960, and a former janitor, he is the man who, for a large fee, will help you make a clean sweep of everything you dislike in your life - be it your job, wife, hips or habits.

In 20 years he has performed seminars with 50 million people in more than 80 countries. Last weekend, he came to the Excel Centre in London's Docklands for a three-day seminar, Unleash The Power Within. The climax of the 'therapy' is the walking over hot coals. If you can walk over coals (the reasoning goes), you can do anything you want with your life.

Today, more than 10,000 people have paid Pounds 300 for the privilege of hearing Robbins's secrets - and the possibility of being barbecued. It is sold as instant mass psychotherapy. But can Robbins really heal lives in the blink of an eye?

Intrigued, I signed up for the first day.

Two enormous German employees accost me, grinning wildly, and give me 'high fives' as I enter the hall - a vast space which could easily accommodate five jumbo jets. Robbins is already on stage. From my spot at the back, he is the size of an insect. It doesn't matter.

With eight huge screens suspended from the ceiling, Robbins is everywhere.

He is 6ft 7in, dressed in groovy black, and impressively muscular. He has an immense jaw, dazzling white teeth and a neck like a tree. The overall effect is healthy and buffed. He resembles Hermann Munster after reconstructive dental work and a month on a sunbed.

We are clutching workbooks, with questions and space for the answers. The first question - 'What stops us from moving forward?' - acknowledges why we are here. These rows and rows of people want to change their lives.

As the polished multimedia affair begins, trumpets ring out. Robbins begins with an inspirational story about a nun who has done 340 triathlons.

'The wind blew her off her bicycle and she smashed into some volcanic rock and broke her collar bone,' he tells us.

'Her comment was: "Baby, that's life!"

And she is 73 years old!' The room shakes with cheers.

Next, he homes in on a member of the audience. 'What is your name?' he asks a pale, middle-aged woman. 'Hannah,' she replies. She says she is here because she wants to change her health. 'I have a chronic, incurable illness of the lymph glands. I'm very depressed.' Robbins's 'tough love' form of ' empowerment' is then exposed. 'You are right,' he says. 'You're completely f***** up and your life is f****** over. What are you doing here?' 'Can you help me?' she asks, piteously.

Robbins softens, explains he used the foul language 'to jolt you', and tells her she must listen to herself, not the medics who tell her she is dying. She looks utterly shocked. 'You are enslaved,' he tells us. 'Free yourselves!' The third ingredient in his psychobrew is audience participation. 'Turn to the person on your left and be nasty,' he tells us.

The room erupts with vitriol.

'Bugger off!' the bald man on my right tells me. 'Get stuffed!' I tell the obese creature in polyester on my left.

This behaviour is designed to 'disinhibit' us. It is emotional aerobics, designed to stretch our normal behaviour so we can change our 'bad' thinking habits.

As a reward for our efforts, we are allowed to jump up and down, dancing to Ricky Martin's 'She will wear you out' which is exploding from the speakers.

The camera homes in on our smiling guru, who is dancing around the stage.

As the song ends, he is shown in slow motion, thrusting his fist into the air. 'Do you feel better than you did when you arrived?' he asks. 'Yes!' we all scream.

'You can shift everything in your life,' he promises. 'Do you want to fit in? Or do you want to lead? We are going to train ourselves to feel good and to drench the room in positive energy!' The hypnosis, Robbins- style, has begun. I was expecting earnestness and common sense when I booked in, but this seminar veers comically between morose introspection and ecstatic jumping around the room.

Our guru constantly urges us to scream 'Yes!', to hug strangers, to disco dance, to smash our fists in the air and to massage each other. At one point, there are conga-lines 500 people long, all massaging each other's necks.

Robbins assures us that we all have problems - which he can help us solve.

'You become a writer to show people you are smart,' he says. 'Or you may become famous so you will be loved. But it is important to know that this fear will never go away. Dance with the fear!' Another psycho sound bite, another cheer - and another dance around Excel.

The combination of his words, the music and the dancing give the day an inexorable momentum. It's a bit like watching Blair hypnotise the faithful at a Labour Party Conference. Robbins has us - utterly - in his manicured hands, and I can't help wondering: How far would we forget ourselves if he asked?

What would we do to please him?

ROBBINS brushes aside the anxieties we arrived with as 'strategies'. To explain, he conjurs up an imaginary customer with a traumatic past.

'Yes, you were raped,' he says to thin air.

'But that was 15 years ago. Is that an excuse to hide all your life? Use your fear as energy. Happiness isn't something you are. It is something you do.' Robbins never once leaves the stage - his energy is dazzling. Finally he finds his ingEnue in the audience, his star of the show. She is a young, blonde Irish woman, who has depression and has tried to kill herself. She came to Excel with her parents.

As usual, he begins with a shock. 'Have you ever had an orgasm?' he asks.

'Yes,' she says, blushing. 'A vocal orgasm?' 'Yes.' She tells him she is depressed. 'I have to change,' she pleads. 'I'm definitely up for something new.' 'Being depressed meets one of your needs,' he tells her. 'You have the ability to change so you will never again frighten your parents by threatening to take your own life.' He returns to her throughout the day, putting her tearful face on the giant screens.

She is, he tells us, an example of a person who uses a sick identity to protect herself. 'Powerlessness is used by most of us to get power.' I feel for this exposed girl, who seems both delighted by the attention and ashamed of the reason for it.

By 7pm, the room, packed with overemotional bodies, is beginning to smell, so I leave for some air. In the hall outside, apparatchiks are setting up a shop stuffed with Anthony Robbins merchandise. I can buy a Robbins rucksack, water bottle, video or paperweight.

There are other clues that this is a slickly-marketed affair, primarily designed to make money. The workbook informs us that Robbins has copyright for the terms Date With Destiny, DreamLife and, most oddly, Hygiene Mastery.

Two Glaswegian bankers, sent by their boss 'to get motivated', are leaving the hall. They say they don't like the Robbins treatment - 'too touchy-feely' - and are off to the pub.

The rest of us are moving towards the great moment: the fire walk. 'You are going to storm out there in a state of absolute certainty that you can storm through this fire,' Robbins shouts.

The white lights are replaced by soothing purple as Robbins hypnotises us into the belief we will leap over the coals, which, he says, are between 1,200 and 2,000 degrees fahrenheit.

Music from Titanic and Chariots Of Fire is playing. We jump up, shout and celebrate. Men are doing high-fives and screaming: 'Yes!' Robbins tells us the mantra for the walk. It is: 'Cool moss.' We must say this in our heads as we walk across the fire.

We must look up, not down. Our walk must be 'normal and direct'. ' Celebrate!' he screams. 'Punch the sky!' THE torch flames dance and the drums beat as we exit the hangar and progress, dancing and shouting, down a ramp to the car park, where 15 rows of burning coals await us.

I step up to one, where I am greeted by two 'fire trainers' - Roberto from Milan and Jane from Australia. 'Yes!' they scream in my face.

'Yes!' I scream back.

I remove my shoes and tights. Roberto goes first, bouncing along. Then he returns for me. My heart is racing and I am exhilarated, but I look down at the glowing coals and experience a moment of doubt.

'I can't do it,' I say. 'Do you have a dream?' Roberto asks me 'Yes,' I say, 'I want to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, so I can boast about it.

And I want to be a size ten.' Roberto says: 'Then walk towards your dreams.' He grabs my hand and thrusts me forward. And I walk six steps - crunch, crunch, crunch - across. It doesn't hurt at all. It feels like warm popcorn.

At the end, my feet are sprayed with water and Jane embraces me. 'You walked on fire, honey.' I feel unbelievably happy. 'Fire walked with me,' I scream.

Later, I wonder if I've been conned. Robbins promised me I'd walk across burning coals, like an ancient martyr. These coals felt merely lukewarm. Had they been sprayed to cool them? And, if they hadn't, should the fire trainers have pushed me on?

Robbins's cauldron of positive thinking, auto-hypnosis and Reader's Digest psychology is compelling. I enjoyed his seminar - mostly for the spectacle - and it did give me a wacky sense that I can change the things I dislike about myself if I shout 'Yes!' loud enough.

I doubt he'd be much help to a seriously disturbed person; but for the merely lazy, stuck and unmotivated, he offers a brief, electric charge of possibility.

There is a hero-cult flowering around Robbins, which is disturbing, and I can't help wondering what this miracle of selfcontrol is like in his personal life.

He admits he divorced his wife Becky in 2001, despite talking about his blissful marriage in his books and early seminars. I don't trust him.

Meanwhile, the dollars, yen and pounds will roll in to his company, Robbins Research International. After all, if he can make people walk across hot coals, what can't he make us do?