Light my fire

Last week, I visited my doctor for a consultation. He took my blood pressure which was up on previous readings (perhaps because of the tense drama surrounding Notts County’s heroics a few days earlier!). The remedy? Fire.

?As winter draws closer in New Zealand and the nights get colder, we are lighting our wood-burner every evening. Like many people, I get great enjoyment from the flickering flames, the crackling noise and the general warmth that our wood-burner generates. Sometimes I find myself staring into the fire, deep in thought. Indeed a few years ago, a guest at our house described our fire as ‘a thinking (wo)man’s television!’. In 2014, a study by Christopher Lynn, assistant professor from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama found that fires can lower blood pressure and in fact they have played an important role in the evolution of the human social brain. Further, researchers in this field suspect that fires influence relaxation via automatic nervous system effects, absorbing the attention of their audiences to hypnotic effects, especially at night.

Perhaps not quite what The Doors had in mind when they wrote ‘Light my fire’ in 1966 but very therapeutic nevertheless. Bring on winter!