Pushing the flame

[Rohaa]

This is a fun exercise anyone can easily try at home. All you need is a candle (any candle) and a room with not too much draft.

Put the candle in front of you, and watch the flame for a bit. If it flickers too much, see if you have a window or door open, it'll mess up the game.

There are at least three different ways you can do this exercise. You can work with your hands and use the mini-chakras in your palms, or you can try to influence the flame with your mind, or you can direct energy at it in any other way you like. Personally, I like doing this with hands.

Hold a hand up to the candle and move it around slowly. You'll see that the flame will move as your hand moves: it'll be pulled toward your palm and follow it around.

You can try holding a hand on either side of the flame, and hold a tug of war between them (I've found that the left hand tends to push away the flame, whereas the right hand pulls it in). You can also hold only one hand up and not move it at all, and watch what the flame does. Then consciously send energy through your hand at the flame, and watch it react.

When I tried it last week, it looked something like this. The flame was holding perfectly still when I just let my hand sit there, but would bend towards my palm as soon as I started sending energy at it. With a little practise, you can probably get it to bend even further than 45 degrees.


Try it! There are lots of different things you can experiment with in this setting, I'd love to hear which ones you discovered!

[Melanie]

Here's what I got:

How I did it is in my journal, if you want to read it. I can't do it with my other hand.

[Arthurity]

wow melanie, almost a full 90 degrees o.O and a big distance too

funny thing with me is that my right hand ALWAYS attracts. i dont even need to focus its an automatic. the left on the other hand (no pun intended), rejects the flame, and also automatically.

btw, id like to think that i can manipulate it with movements, but honestly, i think its physical hand movement that made it shake along, not energetic xP

[Angel]

onestly, i think its physical hand movement that made it shake along, not energetic xP

Could be, but I doubt it.

I tried this lots of different ways and got nothing. I tried shaking my hands and lots of other things and couldn't make the flame move. Rohaa did it easily. We used the same method. If it were just physical, we should get very similar results, ne? I'll be in the Netherlands next week. We'll try it in person.

Angel

[Arthurity]

sweet!

maybe i could get my sis to drive me there xD then again, school will probably butt in, as usual Dx

anyway, when i try again, ill record it to show you what i mean with that shaking along

edit; hmm... just tried it and i couldnt get it to bend <_< i could still let it wiggle along with my fingers/hand though

[Melanie]

I can't do it anymore either. So frustrating. I was going to make a movie or show somebody or something.
The only way I can do it now is simple airflow, but that doesn't count XD
I don't know, maybe I spent my whole reserve of energy that I just never used before and now it needs time to recharge? I hope that's it... I'm already halfway back to "must've been the wind".

[Arthurity]

join the club ^^
<__<

ima gonna try again tomorrow and record it. ._.
*desperataly wants it to work again*

maybe its the candle. i did it with a different one the first time XD

[Melanie]

Rohaa said in the teahouse yesterday "Let's do a contest - the one who makes the shiniest vid of flamebending gets it put on the elfpath channel on Youtube." (or something similar.)

This is a fine idea, but I was thinking, if we're all making videos anyway why not compile them all into 1 big one and put THAT on the elfpath channel to show everybody's skills off

So if you want to help me in this, post up links to any vids you make, on rapidshare or megaupload or what have you, or mail them to me. I'll make a really spiffing montage of it (I promise not to use Eye of the Tiger as background )
Either way I"ll pop into the teahouse later tonight and ask around

[lenihanfighter]

Woot. Finally got a decent picture where you can actually SEE the flame. All the other pictures had some undefined blurry yellow bit at the candle, and you couldn't really tell whether it was standing straight up, flickering or bending.



Maybe it wasn't the best idea to try this at 1:30am after some mead, but it worked. XD I also took a movie, but I wanna edit it slightly before putting up the link here. Remove the background noise if possible, maybe try to give it a higher resolution. I hope it'll be up tomorrow, if my macbook agrees. (Adobe Premiere Pro is apparently kind of heavy...)

[Arthurity]

*revives*

read this thing again and just tried it.
now i still cant get it to bend very well. and it actually moves away from both hands, rather than being attracted. If the burns i got were caused by anger previously, i think this says a lot about my changes XD

also, i retried the movement manipulation thing. i just noticed that the flame moves into the opposite direction of my hand.
If i move my hand to the left, the flame move to my hand, moving to the right
if i go to the right, the flame moves away, to the left.

if i use both, it does this weird rhythmic up-and-down thingy... it only does when i use both.