A MUM-OF-THREE is promoting the emotional benefits of walking across shards of glass by setting up local workshops.

Rhonda Armstrong, from Renton, runs Purple Turtle Holistics in Bonhill – and is also a fully-trained fire- and glass-walking instructor.

She is currently in the process of collecting, smashing and sterilising scores of glass bottles to create a run of broken glass.

And she hopes to offer sessions to the community soon so they can also experience the challenges and emotional benefits of treading across the shards.

The 45-year-old explained: “My first glass walk back in March 2015 was amazing.

“It’s in front of you, almost like a river. When you put your foot down, can you cope and adjust to make it more bearable? It’s like mindfulness, about being in the moment.”

Before trying out glass-walking, Rhonda started out with walking across hot coals – something that had been on her “bucket list”.

She completed her first firewalk on her 40th birthday at Tir na nOg Holistic Centre, Drymen – and she says the experience was “transformative”.

An emotional workshop, preparing her for the walk, and an arrow-break challenge, in which she broke an arrow with her throat, proved she had the power inside her to do it.

She was so affected by the experience that she decided to work at the centre, and undertook a week-long intensive course to become an instructor.

“It excites me,” she said. “It’s addictive. Anybody is able to do it. Everyone walks across the fire for their own different reason.

“Each time you’re walking it for a different reason. Nobody forces you to do it.

“I don’t remember much about the firewalk, but the workshop before was massive.

“With fire-walking, sometimes you get ‘fire kisses’ on your feet, but they go away. Every time I do a fire walk I lose my eyelashes. Touch wood I’ve never cut myself doing a glass walk.

“I’ve been doing it for that long that my kids don’t even flinch now.”

The mathematics and business graduate says looking back to the time before she took her first firewalk “seems like another life”.

And, now, after opening her massage therapy business, she’s appealing for anybody with spare empty glass wine and spirit bottles to donate them towards creating the brand new glass walk.

Anyone wishing to donate bottles, drop them into Purple Turtle Holistics in Bonhill.