September 25, 2012 • 39 mins
In 2012, Tony Robbins marched thousands of barefoot followers through the coals, injuring under two dozen of them. What was going on in their minds (and in their feet)? Join Robert and Julie as they discuss the physics and mindset of the firewalker.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Tuglas,
Julie Weird, long overdude for How Stuff Works. Like podcast
teams retreat, you know, like a like motivator where we
(00:27):
all go out and like living in the woods for
a weekend and we trust fall and oh trust Fall
is the best man. Yeah, roll around like earthworms getting
into each other's personal space. Yes, yeah. And then and
then of course, when the when the sun goes down,
we're gonna spread out the hot coals, right, little fire walking, right,
(00:51):
we are going to face the the beast within. And
we're gonna do a barefoot too, that's the thing, not
with shoes on. But we're gonna we're gonna lay out
the hot coals and we're gonna just march down that
that that that road of hot embers. And then on
the other end, we're gonna emerge victorious and full of
(01:12):
energy and life four third degree burns whatever comes first, right, yeah,
and then I will never fear the xerox machine again
or running out of coffee. I'll come out on the
other end, a better person. All of this will Yeah,
that's the plan, so that you know. Of course, we
were inspired today to talk about firewalking because of this retreat. Yeah, yeah,
(01:33):
the retreat that it hasn't actually been planned yet, but
I think we should. We should, we should. Yeah, nobody's
actually ever uttered a word about it. Yeah, but yeah,
it's gonna have to think it happened yet. Um, I
could probably talk a little about about firewalking to prepare
us and also to prepare our listeners for when we
return from it. And you're either harribly burned and or motivated. Okay, yeah,
(01:55):
let's lay it up. Okay, So firewalking. Chances are you've
you've seen this somewhere. You've you either have friends who
have done it, either as part of their new age
hippie lifestyle or they're they're deeply rooted religious beliefs, or
just as part of you know, a weekend retreat, or
maybe they just saw it in the office. There is
an episode of the Office where the dunder Mifflin employees
(02:19):
all go on one of these and and of course
somebody getting burned. But but maybe for you, it's just
a Monday, right Monday. Maybe that's how you kick. Maybe
that's you're coffee in the morning, a little firewalking. It
takes a bit to to set it up. But but
people have been doing this for for ages. It's it's
really an old practice and it's and it's it's really
(02:41):
fascinating to think of it, not just in terms of
how we're doing it now. And certainly we're gonna get
into the science of firewalking, don't worry about but but
first we want to really sort of take you through
some of the historic h and cultural examples of firewalking
how and and sort of the mindset that these various
people from various cultures have when they first throw off
(03:04):
the flip flops and start off across the cold. Yeah,
and also wanted to mention that the earliest known reference
to it is in an Indian text from about So again,
this has been practiced for a long time, and we
have seen it in different religions like Hinduism as well
as Buddhist and Native American communities and Christian communities and
New Age communities and completely as as well explore to
(03:26):
uh non religious more deals as well. Yeah, because it
turns out to be an incredible metaphor that we can
really delve into on the spiritual side. Yeah, I mean,
at the heart of it, the basic idea is I
am a human, I'm made out of flesh. My flesh
is susceptible to pain. Here is fire and like one
(03:47):
of the earliest lessons humans learned was fire bad, right
or fire really good? But fireplus bare feet probably bad. Um.
But we do have a very primal relationship to fire, right. Yeah,
fires the power we can make food edible, we can
we can create light against the terrors of the darkness
(04:08):
and uh and and shadow puppets. Yeah, there's there's literally
there's there's almost no end to what we can do
with fire. Uh. So early on, you know, we get
this idea of a fire as a test. Can we
withstand fire? And if we can, then it says something
about our bodies, it says something about our spirit. Um. Uh.
(04:29):
There's you know there you look in the Bible, the
Old Testament, there's the you know, the story of of
the three the three brothers who are thrown into the
fiery furnace Shadrack mishak in a bindigo uh, Daniel three uh.
And then in recent times you have the story of
g Gordon Lydia on trial and holding the cigarette lighter
underneath his palm. Um. You know, the fire as a
(04:51):
test for the flesh and for the spirit. Uh. It's
it's a it's a pretty pretty simple but a but
a very resonant idea. So Hinduism, like you said, this
is where we see the oldest examples of it and
uh and to this day in Southern India as well
as places like um, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, any countries
(05:12):
with a large South Indian population. Uh, there is a
festival every year called the Smithy Festival. And this is uh,
this is is pretty neat the roots of this uh
lie in the the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic, which we've
occasionally has come up on this this podcast. UM refresher
on that story. You have the five Pandava brothers uh.
(05:36):
And they are all married to the same woman. Uh.
And her name is Drayo Patti and Um they end
up losing her in a game of chance to their cousins,
the Kava brothers okay and p versus the Kara. Yeah,
they're there are five Pandava and there are like one
hundred of the Carava brothers. And and this is the
(06:00):
big war of the Mahabarata. These uh, these two opposing
forces their kin and they have to do battle with
one another, and all all sorts of various adventures and
and skirmishes are a part of the tale. But in
this one a particular event. Uh, like you say, the
five the five brothers, they have this this one wife
(06:21):
and her name is draw your Potty and uh. And
after draw your Potty has has been m kidnapped or
or obtained for her by the way. Yeah, Well, first
of all, they decide they're gonna embarrass her by making
her strip before the court and uh. And and so
they go to poor clothes off and she prays to Krishna,
and Krishna gives her limitless clothes. So she's like, you know,
(06:44):
it's like a scarf out of out of a magician's pocket. Yeah,
and uh and then she but then she gets really serious.
She plugged. First, she pledges to prove her chastity by
walking across burning coals, and she does that and she
emerges unscathed. And then she also swears that she won't
(07:05):
like redo her hair until she is washed it in
the blood of her enemies. So it's there's a lot
of that too in the Mahabara, like, especially with the
female characters making like really uh passionate proclamations about revenge.
Nobody says that anymore. Yeah, I am I gonna do
my hair anymore until I've washed it in the blood
of my enemies. You just don't hear that in salons
(07:27):
that much. Yeah. For for English speaking audiences, which of
course is our audience that we have Indian listeners and
as well, but if you're English speaker, highly recommend Peter
Brooks Mahabar to To To. It's a it's a stage adaptation,
British stage adaptation that they also did a film version
of evidence. Really long and really cool. But anyway, I
(07:48):
digress um. So they have this festival every year and
it's a it's a celebration uh and and kind of
a reenactment of this particular moment uh and Uh what
you do as you you walk barefoot across this length
of coals and then you step through a second pit
that's filled with milk and if you emerge unscathed, and
(08:09):
it's a it's a you're proving your spiritual and physical purity, okay,
and the milk is there to soothe any burns. Right,
this is what milk is good for. Yeah, and then uh,
there are various other uh firewalking festivals that reach back
through time. This is not quite firewalking, but it does
tie in. Um. If you go back to and look
(08:30):
at ancient Anglo Saxon and Teutonic practices of ordeals, you
see some of this now, the ordeals. Um, this was
kind of this is kind of a barbaric um way
of of of dealing with disputes and uh and charges
uh of of wrongdoing in a society. The idea was,
all right, you may or may not have murdered this guy,
(08:52):
You may or may not be a witch. You know,
whatever the dispute is. We all the ideas. We all
believe in a very a powerful and very personally invested God.
So let's let him decide, let's let him weigh in.
He doesn't have anything better to do. So so where
was the test? Well, there there were various ordeals that
(09:15):
the most famous, of course, would be the trial, the
ordeal of combat. And this would be like, all right, well,
you two guys fight, and surely God will make sure
that the right one of you wins and the other
guy dies Uh, there were There was an ordeal of water,
which which would throw a witch into some cold water
and see what happened. You know, if she if she floats,
she's good. If she sinks, no, it's the other way around.
(09:37):
If she if she floats, then then she's a witch.
If she thinks she's good to go right. Um. Then
there were number of other ones who were that were
even stranger, Like there's the ordeal of the of the Buyer,
in which a suspected murder was made to touch the
corpse and if blood flowed out of the corpse, he's guilty.
There's there were a couple of choking ordeals, which sounds
(10:00):
kind of cruel when I say it that way, but
it would come down to, here's a piece of of
blessed um bread. Here's the holy communion wafer. Uh take this,
eat it. And by the way, if you're guilty, this
is gonn You're gonna choke on it. And because and
and again that's like here, take this is holy if
you're if you're guilty, God's gonna make sure it gets
lodged in there and chokes you up. Then there's the
(10:21):
ordeal of the Cross, which also sounds like it's gonna
be really brutal and grim. But it involves the accuser
and the accused standing before a crucifix. First person to
move is guilty. So so, but anyway that the then
there's also to get to the point here the ordeal
of fire, and the ordeal of fire was generally for
persons of high rank. And some of these would involve
(10:43):
carrying a red hot iron in your hand. Others would
involve walking barefoot uh and or blindfolded over red hot
plow shares. And if there are no wounds after three days,
you're innocent, okay. And then uh. For for another more
uplifting example of of Christian use of firewalking, you have
(11:08):
to go to Greece. There is a Christian firewalking ritual
performed in northern Greece. Now this is present day, this
is present day, and this still goes on. If you're
if you're of Greek descent, you may have you know,
this may be part of your heritage. Uh and certainly
if you're traveling to Greece you may be able to
witness this. Uh. And it's a festival called Anniston Area
(11:28):
and it's uh it has to do with St. Constantine
and The idea here is this is that St. Constantine
protects the firewalkers from him being burned because of their
faith and devotion to him and to God. That's right,
that's that's their faith that allows him to do what
seems like the impossible, which seems like a miracle to
walk across fire right. Um, and uh, Lauren dan Forth
(11:50):
isn't an anthropologist at Bates College in Lewistown or Lewiston, Maine,
and he actually has studied this quite a bit. Um.
We should also talk about another doesn't day uh practice
of this and this is by Tony Robbins. And some
of you may even remember that this was in the
news this summer. Uh, because Tony Robbins also uses fire
(12:10):
walking as an experiential metaphor for creating breakthroughs and overcoming
our fears. Now, keep in mind, though, that Tony Robbins
isn't saying that this is a religious experience. Again, He's
just using it as a metaphor for trying to figure
out whatever it is in your life that you need
to vanquish. And um, but he I mean, but it's
it's worth known than he is capturing the same psychology
(12:34):
and the same idea. He's still it's just not necessarily
wrapped in religious wrapping paper, right, and he's been doing
it for three decades, but it just kind of got
a lot of notice again this summer because um there
were six thousand participants in this this work. The lanes
they had twelve twol lanes and UM lanes fifty six
(12:57):
lanes covering Happy Earth twelve lane to actually have hot
coals manasuring ten feet long by two and a half
feet wide, and this rusted on grass and they don't
know how many people actually went through, but about two
dozen people actually sustained second and third degree injuries. They
were burned. Now we'll talk a little bit more about
the actual um uh fire itself, but it is thought
(13:22):
that perhaps there were hot spots there and that some
people were uh doing it wrong. Yeah, I'm just said
that in air quotes, doing it wrong, And we'll talk
a little bit more about that, but I mean, it
is worth worth pointing out though that it was just
a couple of dozen out of thousands, which well, yeah,
we don't we don't have to have an exact number
of how many people actually participated in the firewalking, but yeah,
(13:42):
but that it was thousands, and certainly if you get
thousands of football players, not football players, thousands of football
fans in one place at one time, several of them
are going to catch on fire. I just had this
vision of them training and instead of the tires that
they go through, you know, maybe it's tires on on
top of these these little lanes of fire. Well, there's
(14:02):
a lot of motivation and um in team sports and
in any kind of sporting endeavor. So I mean, I
could see I could see a football team going through
some some firewalking and chanting. Right, And this is what
we're talking about psychology here. That's right, because it's not
just like, all right, hey you, we think you might
be guilty. Um, so I'm gonna let God decide. March
across these hot plowshares. It's not like, oh I wonder
(14:23):
if I'm pure of spirit and heart, let me walk
across these coals, or or or oh okay, Tony Robin
might have a point. I'm gonna get my feet into
some fire here. Now, you you've gotta there's a lot
of psyching yourself out. There's preparing yourself mentally for this.
Be that in the form of prayer, Be that in
the form of listening to Tony Robbins or or what
have you. But but there's definitely a period of preparation.
(14:45):
This is kind of interesting. Um. This is from an
article that anthropologist Jane Sansum wrote about about that since
aia UM festival in northern Greece. Um she pointed out
that back in the nineteen seventies there was a neurolog
just by the name of Christos Xenakis and that he
(15:09):
was from the Max Plant Institute in Germany. And he, uh,
he studied what was going He was very interesting what
was going on in the minds of the firewalkers, all right,
so uh they you know, he ended up like bringing
out the e c g s, you know, looking at
what's going on with mental activity and and he found
the found that it was interesting that they were that
(15:31):
they would they would enter this this trance right before
they would engage in it. And he found that they're
e c g s were normal during were normal when
they were walking, but during the preparation period they had
low voltage. That was characteristic, he said, of a of
a dreamlike state. Okay, so there's a little bit of
(15:51):
electricity going on as opposed to a lot. Yeah, So,
I mean his findings were that, again, neural activity was
normal when they were actually walking across the holes, but
in that period beforehand, that's where they were, they were
entering this the steep state of concentration. Well, and again,
most firewalking is done with a group, and if you've
seen firewalking demonstrations before, there's a lot of chanting going on.
(16:12):
We've talked about this before in terms of group psychology,
that it can be really affected this chanting because what
happens is that if everybody's chanting the same thing over
and over again, you've got this the same neurons firing
at the same time when everybody's sinking up on a
neural level. Yeah, everybody's sinking up. And this sometimes leads
to those feelings of bephor you that you see in
(16:32):
religious experiences or even a concert. You know, music, a concert.
You got to go to a church and you see
a whole bunch of people singing together. You go to
a temple and you see a bunch of people chanting together.
It's it's the same thing. It's it's not as much
about I mean, I guess on on one level, it's
about like lifting your praise to a deity or what
have you. But on another level, it's about a community
(16:54):
that it shares something right more or less, sinking their
minds together, just like one big vulcan mind. Now. Well,
and everybody's priming themselves for the same thing, right, for
the same end, which is to harness their personal power. Um.
Sometimes it is through a deity, or sometimes it's just
through you know, tapping into this personal power. Tolly Berkin,
(17:16):
I wanted to bring him up. He's he is the
founder of the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education and
Twain Heart, California. He's been doing this since the nineteen
eighties as a self improvement thing. UM. He uses fireworking
in his seminars and UM. His idea is that if
you vanquished your fears, you doing impossible, and then anything
(17:37):
is possible. Right, you can ask for that race because
you have walked through fire. So he claims that in
order to firewalk successfully, you must first convince yourself so
that your body, and he says this in a video
for Skeptic Magazine becomes um. Well, actually it's in a
different physiological state that protects you from being burned. And
this is a quote he says, when you are in
(17:58):
the right state of mind, the blood flows through the
soles of your feet and takes the temperature away from
your tissue, and that's why you're not burned. Okay, So
that seems um and not necessarily rooted in science. It's
an interesting explanation. Yeah, well, yeah, there are there are
a number of less science two outright non science explanations
(18:22):
for what's going on. I ran across one from actually
from a Greek psychiatrist by the name of Vittoria Manganus
who and who was apparently he looked into the whole
Greek fire walking thing as well, but he was using
stuff like like Carolan photography and and and making the
argument that you know, the oh, well, the the auras
(18:43):
of the person a person's are changes in this superiod
prior to the fire walking, and that that energy are
protects you. Which granted, that's that's that's that's all well
and good, but it it it largely exists outside of
a real scientific understanding of what's going on, but it
would bolster you cyclically, right, uh, And certainly, I mean
(19:05):
it comes down to the idea of doing something the impossible,
whether or not that is impossible. I'm clearly it's possible.
People do it, but you look at it like something
in your mind sets that's those are hot coals. I
should not walk on that bare foot, or it's kind
of like a I mean, a simpler example would be
the bed of nails. Like, like we know that a
bed of nails. You can lay on a bed of nails.
(19:25):
You can't lay on a bed of one nail, but
if there's a whole bed of them, you can lay
down and they won't pierce your skin. But still there's
something about the nails that if you if you don't
know what's up, you might think, oh, that's steadily to slay.
That is impossible, while the the actual laying on a
bed of nails is very possible and very doable, just
as firewalking is. And before we talk about why that
(19:47):
is and get into the mechanics of of what happens
um with actual fire and your feet touching it, let's
talk about preparing this bed of fire. Yes, um, usually
it's wood or volcanic rock. There's a rain into these
ten ft by two foot lanes. Yeah, Now it's worth
that you do find firewalking rituals that involve hot stones.
I can believe that in the Fiji Islands they do
(20:09):
that variation of it, and certainly Christian ordeals involved hot
plow shares, But Tony Robbins is probably not going to
pull those out at a at a at an end event. No, no, no.
But for the most part, yeah, it's it's burning wood
and stuff down into coal yea, and the fires lit.
And then when it does burn down into the embers,
the ashes are scattered. And this is really important because
(20:30):
now you have ash that's being scattered over these these coals,
these hot coals, um. And you will actually see sometimes
that when they spread the fire and um, they sort
of arrange it accordingly that the flames will be at
the perimeter. So if you're at a certain sight line,
it looks like someone is literally walking through fire, when
(20:50):
in fact it's just at the edges and there's the
coals in the middle part flanked by fire, flanked by fire. Yeah,
but if you just happen to be a casual observer
walking body might say, wow, they're actually walking through fire.
But it does create that illusion, and the fire itself,
the coals are not really ready until they reach the
(21:11):
temperature or they cool down to between one thousand and
two thousand degrees fahrenheit. So it's mostly what I've seen
in the research is that it's more on the one
thousand end rather than the two thousand end. And firewalking
is done at night so that you see the glow
of embers right now. And again, this doesn't apply to
every instance of firewalking. Some rituals are done in the daylight.
(21:34):
But for but for the most part, you're gonna find
firewalking done at night when it looks the prettiest. I mean,
because that's partly it's about looking at it and it's
looking intimidating, and it's gonna look more intimidating at night,
and it's gonna and it's gonna be the pure more
magical at night. You know, you don't wanna have a
camp fire in the middle of day, and nobody wants
to sit around and poke sticks around in that. Yeah,
there's nothing cathartic about that, right. All right, let's take
a quick break and when we get back, we'll talk
(21:55):
about the actual mechanics of the fire itself. All right,
we're back talking about firewalking and specifically what's going on
in the fire itself. That's right, All right, let's talk
about this fire. We have scattered the ashes, it's pretty
much ready. Um. But the reason why we can walk
(22:17):
through this bed of coals is a couple of different
things going on here. One is heat transference, and there
are three ways that heat can get transmitted conduction, convection,
and radiation. And conduction is the transfer of heat from
one substance to another via a direct contact. All right,
So that's like I if I stick my tongue to
the cigarette lighter in an automobile, that is direct contact.
(22:40):
My sister did that, By the way, I didn't say
that is a very odd example. But yes, my, my,
my younger sister. She she she picked that up, stuck
her tongue to it when she was very little. She
thought it was candy apparently, and she had a round burn.
My god, I don't know that I can recover from that.
Does she still have the burn marks? No? No, I
(23:01):
guess as a testament to her spiritual purity. Ah, there
you go, that's all she was doing, okay. Um. In convection,
heat is transferred through air or fluid circulation. If you've
got a convection of an for instance, yes, yes, uh.
And radiation is transmitted as if spreading out in straight
lines from a central source. So think of the sun
(23:23):
or a heat lamp, but or ultra violet. So I
guess yeah, I was gonna say in some song, is
too because you've got the heat spirst hole hanging out
there in one corner. Um. But what we're talking about
here when we're talking about coals is heat transference from conduction.
And uh, the thing about these coals is that they
(23:43):
have really poor heat conduction. And the reason for that
is because it is a very lightweight structure of these
coals is a carbon structure, and it takes a relatively
long time for heat to transfer from the glowing coal
to your skin. And plus they're covered in ash, which
which is a very good insulator, right right, So the
ash makes makes certain that it's you know, you've got
(24:04):
some installation there and um, and then you've got on
top of that a short time span that your feet
are actually making contact, all right. A lot of people
will bring up this oven example when talking about that
the bread in the oven. Well, I was actually actually
made up black being brownies last night, and I was
thinking about this because it's a three and fifty degree
(24:25):
oven and as soon as they came out, I supposed
to look them cool for a half hour. Of course
I dug in, and you're not. Actually, when I dug in,
it's not like I had three fifty degrees of hotness
in my mouth. I mean it was Okay, I burned
my tongue, just it's mission, let's mention. But it didn't
melt away. And so that's the whole point. If I
were to touch the pan, which is metal and it
(24:47):
conducts really well, then I would get burned, right um.
But if you touch you know, the bread or the brownie,
then you're not going to burn because it's not going
to contain that heat. It's not going to conduct that
amount of heat. And in the like I said that
the page which you're walking in some cases, uh, anthropologists
even describe it as advance. Certainly, uh, the resource I
(25:07):
mentioned earlier, she she described the Greek firewalking is is
really almost kind of advance. Where whereas some of the
more of the some of the videos, certainly the secular
stuff you see, but also even the Hindu events. I
was looking at some some videos of that, and that
appears to be more of just a risk walking. You
don't stop halfway through and have a conversation with somebody. Um,
you don't. You don't crawl, you don't do the worm.
(25:29):
You just walk across at a brisk rate. So your feet,
your feet are again are coming into contact very briefly
with that that hot surface. Yeah. Again, we've got lousy conduction.
We've got installation, and we have a very short time
period in which the skin which is also allows of
conductor and we'll talk about that. Um, will will help
so that that heat isn't transferred. Um. There, I wanted
(25:51):
to uh point out that David Wiley or Willie excuse me,
as a physics instructor and he's an expert on the
science of firewalking, and he partnered with Norwegian physicist Kitchen
my apologies to any Norwegian listeners, of the University of
Oslo to study the physics behind firewalking. And they developed
a computer model of a foot while a person firewalked,
(26:14):
and then compared it to infrared imagery taken while volunteers
and Seattle firewalked, and those images showed that the foot
does indeed remain cool when the stunt is done correctly.
So we have confirmation of this in a couple of
different ways, and it's important you mentioned when the stun
is done correctly. So there are any number of things
(26:34):
that could could be wrong with the fireside of the preparation,
which is a reason no one listening to this podcast
should become inspired and set up their own firewalking this weekend.
If you if you choose to do do a little
firewalking in your free time, more power to you. But
find somebody who knows what they're doing. Do you do
your research. It's kind of like we're talking about this yesterday.
(26:55):
It's like zip lining. Um, I've only ziplined once. I
made sure that when I did it, I went with
the top guys uh in in in the place I
was visiting in in Costa Rica. Don't go for the
discount zip line. Don't go for the discount firewalking. No, Now,
you want to make sure that it's prepared because because
they could what if they they're not spreading the coals properly?
(27:17):
What you have? You know, what what if they are
using again plowshares or or stones instead of coal. I
mean there's a there's a certain amount of preparation that
needs to go into it, and then there's amount a
certain amount of instruction that needs to be given. You
know that you need to get people in the right
mind set. You've got to make sure that they're marching
briskly across the coals. And if you're doing a line,
(27:38):
you don't want that line to suddenly stop. To make
sure there's like an appropriate spacing between the individuals totally.
Burke in the self improvement grew who uses and he
does talk about it with with the groups that he's
doing his workshops. If he talks about how to go
through so you know, obviously he talks about it as
a testament of one's willpower and uh and all that,
(28:00):
but he does kind of say, and by the way,
this is how you should move through um. But let's
talk about what's going on with the body too. We did.
We spoke about the feet is poor conductors And this
is from Slate magazine author LV Anderson. He says the
reason for this is that when flesh comes into contact
with the coal, the flesh cools down the outer surface
of the coal faster than heat can move from below
(28:21):
the surface of the coal. And see here the flesh.
That's one reason is dispersing the heat. The second is
the latent frost effect. And yeah, this is a pretty cool,
uh little bit of science here. This involves the idea
that your feet are actually protected from burning by sweat
droplets that form and act as a barrier around your foot. Yeah,
(28:46):
so it's taking away the heat. So shock went up
to sweat there and then just bottom line too. If
you look at the bottom of your foot, it's it's
kind of tough down there. I mean these we've evolved
to walk on these things, even though we were really
big into encasing them in various shoes and socks. Now, uh,
these are things were made to walk on, and they're
(29:07):
made to walk on occasionally uncomfortable surfaces. Yeah, I'll have
to say that my calluses and everything else on, but
I'm very proud of I've worked very hard to build
those up. Yeah. Like soon as you look down there,
it's like six s thumb tacks in there. Like how
they get in there? When did I do that? I
don't know, right, And that's what you want for a
good firewalking. Um, so if you're going to do this yourself. Uh,
(29:29):
and again I say you, I'm looking at you, Robert,
like I'm not working to you guys out there, Robert lamb.
If you were going to do it, you would want
to step lightly, and that seems like kind of a
duugh thing. But the thing is that when people are crossing,
they try to get across as quickly as possible. And
that's not a good idea because if you start to run,
obviously you're gonna put a lot more pressure on your
(29:50):
foot and your flesh is going to come into more
contact with that cold for a longer amount of time. Yeah,
Like I was thinking about this in terms of walking
across the hot beach uh the other day, because I
because when you're walking across the loose sand it's really hot,
there's a it's hard to make short contact with the
with the sand in some cases because your feet are
(30:11):
sliding and sinking and and all that. And I wonder
if that's why that can often be this kind of
painful ordeal to get to the actual wet sand. Well,
I was thinking about it to you in terms of
like ballet physics, because if if you've ever watched your
performance or know anything about ballet, you know that if
you're going to pick someone up or be picked up,
what you want to do is to tense every single
(30:33):
muscle in your body because it makes you actually lighter
as opposed to just slumping. So it's a little bit
of the same sort of mind body connection that if
you're going to cross those hot coals, you're going to
step lightly and you're not going to want to run.
You're going to try to compose yourself to the point
where you kind of feel like as though you are
gliding across um and you're not just kind of like
(30:55):
flapping across, which would result in burns. Yeah, So on
that end, there's definitely a number of things that can
go wrong in your actual approach to walking across the
hot coals. If you're not prepped properly, or if you
have a elapse in judgment or just and I'll freak
out halfway through, then things could get a little hot.
(31:15):
You know what. I'm curious that there's no sort of
like firewalking festival. Based on David Lynch's film, Oh yeah, yeah,
Firewalk with Me. We we took the title for this
episode though the movie is fire Walk with Me, right, like, hey,
fire walk with Me. Well, I don't know that. I
don't know that's actually has a comma in the title,
(31:36):
but that is the intention, Like fire Hey, come and
walk with me. Oh that's not quite that friendly. Where
our title is Firewalk with Me. You could take it
either way, either way, but their fire walking in that movie.
There is no fire walking in that movie. That that's
actually taken from the beginning of the film, in which
they say, through the darkness a future past, the magician
(31:58):
longs to see one chance. It's out between two worlds.
Fire Walk with me. Well, that's pretty good. I like that. Yeah, yeah,
and it ties in nicely with it with the various
models of firewalking that we've discussed here, from the the
barbaric uh and uh and brutal to the New age
and enlightened. Yeah, so there you go. Um, I just
(32:19):
want to mention that, I mean, any festival entrepreneurs out there,
you could have a firewalking festival in the David Lynch tradition.
All right, well, uh, fire walking aside. Let's call over
the robot and let's listen to some listener mail. All right,
here a couple of quick emails. Well, one's a Facebook
(32:40):
uh and the other there's an email that we see
from listeners, both related to our episode on horror and
why we really like to be frightened by things which
is which is an ever ever engaging topic, especially if
we're moving into October here and uh in Halloween season
for so Jed right right soon, Jed says. A fan
(33:00):
wrote to say that you might like horror as entertainment
because you might secretly be a psychopath and just not
know it. It's an interesting topic to bring up. It
brings up the idea of existential suggestibility. If I deconstruct,
is that why I would like horror as entertainment? Maybe? Uh,
but I disagree. I see horror as entertainment as being
(33:21):
fear in a controlled and safe environment. I see it
as being able to confront issues that are very difficult
to think about and explore them in a way that
doesn't require actual danger. A roller coaster is very similar.
We trick our bodies into thinking that we're in danger,
but we really are not. We are brought up very
high in the air and then thrown down to the ground,
only we'd to be rescued at the last moment. Well,
(33:42):
there you go. That's that's interesting and actually ties in
with the firewalking the idea of I'm in danger but
not really except maybe a little more really. In the
case of the firewalking but still, like we said, you're
here something that on one level you may think is impossible,
but it is very possible. We've talked about that too,
how you're brain is processing that because you've got a dronline,
(34:03):
You've got the flight or fight going on in your brain,
but then you have the seat of reason in your
brain saying, ah, this is just a this isn't a
real threat. And then the resulting um feeling is one
of like, okay, this is I'm okay, and all of
us the cocktail of hormones and chemicals in your body
are surging, so you do get that kind of high.
(34:24):
And we also heard from a listener bout their news
and are writing it. On the same episode, she says, hey,
brains written by which she means you and me. Um.
She says, you guys did an episode on horror, but
you've focused on people who enjoy horror. I was hoping
you'd touch a little more on the flip side of
the coin. I've always found it a little more interesting
to think about why a large pot portion of the
population is against all rational thought, totally entirely incapable of
(34:48):
watching horror movies without real deep fear It's one thing
to playfully frighten oneself, but what about those of us
who whose fear cannot be managed and who are not
able to watch horror movies? Thoughts a long time list
or keep up the great work. My brain likes to
follow your intellectual adventures and you are a gift to
curiously minded English speakers everywhere. Thank you, well, thanks for
(35:08):
the compliment. That's interesting, but it's sort of a hypersensitivity.
And um, so you know, we've talked about this in
terms uh, you know, different conditions, but that would be
interesting to look a little bit more into. Well, you
certainly have people out there who just taking all every
type of horror, you know, just pure horror junkies who
(35:29):
who love it all. I'm sure, but but I think
that for a lot of a lot of people that
didn't enjoy harror. I mean, there's there are certain films
you're gonna dig in. There's certain types of films you're
gonna dig Like, Like from my own part, I tend
to like things with monsters or ghosts or something, uh,
something a little out of the ordinary. Um, I'm I'm
really not into films that feature things like like home
(35:50):
invasion or or torture as their primary substance, you know,
because those are too close to reality. I want something
that's that is in an escape that has an engage
my imagination. And I think that's that's maybe a huge
part of it from me. It's it's it's engaging things
that frighten me, but it's also engaging things that really
inspire me. Um. But but then to go back to
(36:12):
what Jed said about about taking fear and looking at
any control environment. One thing I try and think up too,
when like if I if I see like a trailer
for a horror movie that I and I'm like, I
really don't like that. I do try and I'm like,
I'm not going to see that. But but then I
try and process, well, what about this idea or this
story is disturbing me. I don't really have a firm
(36:32):
answer other than you know, so obviously if you've, if you've,
if you have real life experiences that line up with
something in a horror movie, you're probably not going to
be that into that horror movie. For starters. Well, I
do like this idea that of hypersensitivity, and is there
is you know, just like some people have a gene
for um for exploration, right, right, we've seen this before.
(36:53):
People um who the neophiles, right, they want new experiences.
Are there some people who have know sort of maybe
even genetic predisposition to be really affected by this or
is it as a matter of even just taking in
different stimuli, like is it a little bit more intense
(37:13):
for some people? In other words, some of the ways
that we filter things, There are ways the ways that
our brain filters information, some people filtering it in a
way that it's just coming in harder and faster. Yeah,
I think so. I mean because yeah, because because when lever,
you're gonna have people they're just totally into the experience.
They're like, show me something shocking, disgusting, what have you
just push from which my buttons pushed my envelope and
(37:36):
you know, I want to see it. And then other
like for instance, my friend Dave, he he he'll watch
hard films. He'll watch like stuff that's that's grotesque or
disgusting or terrifying, but he doesn't like jumpy hard like
if it's something with with something jumping out at you
a lot of startles, Like he doesn't do that at
all because it just he he doesn't react well to it,
(37:57):
so you know, it just comes down to your wiring
on that level. All right, Well, this this could possibly
be fodder for another time, um or another episode. Yeah, yeah,
totally so thanks for the suggestion, Anna, thanks for the
thoughts of Jed. If the rest of you would like
to get in touch with us, particularly if you have
any experience firewalking or or you have thoughts on fire one,
that would be great because I know, just given all
(38:20):
the firewalking out there, and given uh our number of listeners,
I'm sure some of you guys and gallets have firewalks
so and maybe even on a company retreat maybe even so.
Um regardless, right in, let us know what was your
mindset going into that experience, what was your mindset during it?
What do you think you learned from it? Um? And
(38:40):
and yeah, just tell us about your firewalking that would
be great. We'd love to read some of those on
the air. You can find us on Facebook and tumbler.
We are stufforable your Mind on both of those, and
you can also find us on Twitter, where our handle
is below the Mind and you can also drop us
a line via email at blow the Mind at Discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(39:08):
Visit how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Tuglas,
Julie Weird, long overdude for How Stuff Works. Like podcast
teams retreat, you know, like a like motivator where we
(00:27):
all go out and like living in the woods for
a weekend and we trust fall and oh trust Fall
is the best man. Yeah, roll around like earthworms getting
into each other's personal space. Yes, yeah. And then and
then of course, when the when the sun goes down,
we're gonna spread out the hot coals, right, little fire walking, right,
(00:51):
we are going to face the the beast within. And
we're gonna do a barefoot too, that's the thing, not
with shoes on. But we're gonna we're gonna lay out
the hot coals and we're gonna just march down that
that that that road of hot embers. And then on
the other end, we're gonna emerge victorious and full of
(01:12):
energy and life four third degree burns whatever comes first, right, yeah,
and then I will never fear the xerox machine again
or running out of coffee. I'll come out on the
other end, a better person. All of this will Yeah,
that's the plan, so that you know. Of course, we
were inspired today to talk about firewalking because of this retreat. Yeah, yeah,
(01:33):
the retreat that it hasn't actually been planned yet, but
I think we should. We should, we should. Yeah, nobody's
actually ever uttered a word about it. Yeah, but yeah,
it's gonna have to think it happened yet. Um, I
could probably talk a little about about firewalking to prepare
us and also to prepare our listeners for when we
return from it. And you're either harribly burned and or motivated. Okay, yeah,
(01:55):
let's lay it up. Okay, So firewalking. Chances are you've
you've seen this somewhere. You've you either have friends who
have done it, either as part of their new age
hippie lifestyle or they're they're deeply rooted religious beliefs, or
just as part of you know, a weekend retreat, or
maybe they just saw it in the office. There is
an episode of the Office where the dunder Mifflin employees
(02:19):
all go on one of these and and of course
somebody getting burned. But but maybe for you, it's just
a Monday, right Monday. Maybe that's how you kick. Maybe
that's you're coffee in the morning, a little firewalking. It
takes a bit to to set it up. But but
people have been doing this for for ages. It's it's
really an old practice and it's and it's it's really
(02:41):
fascinating to think of it, not just in terms of
how we're doing it now. And certainly we're gonna get
into the science of firewalking, don't worry about but but
first we want to really sort of take you through
some of the historic h and cultural examples of firewalking
how and and sort of the mindset that these various
people from various cultures have when they first throw off
(03:04):
the flip flops and start off across the cold. Yeah,
and also wanted to mention that the earliest known reference
to it is in an Indian text from about So again,
this has been practiced for a long time, and we
have seen it in different religions like Hinduism as well
as Buddhist and Native American communities and Christian communities and
New Age communities and completely as as well explore to
(03:26):
uh non religious more deals as well. Yeah, because it
turns out to be an incredible metaphor that we can
really delve into on the spiritual side. Yeah, I mean,
at the heart of it, the basic idea is I
am a human, I'm made out of flesh. My flesh
is susceptible to pain. Here is fire and like one
(03:47):
of the earliest lessons humans learned was fire bad, right
or fire really good? But fireplus bare feet probably bad. Um.
But we do have a very primal relationship to fire, right. Yeah,
fires the power we can make food edible, we can
we can create light against the terrors of the darkness
(04:08):
and uh and and shadow puppets. Yeah, there's there's literally
there's there's almost no end to what we can do
with fire. Uh. So early on, you know, we get
this idea of a fire as a test. Can we
withstand fire? And if we can, then it says something
about our bodies, it says something about our spirit. Um. Uh.
(04:29):
There's you know there you look in the Bible, the
Old Testament, there's the you know, the story of of
the three the three brothers who are thrown into the
fiery furnace Shadrack mishak in a bindigo uh, Daniel three uh.
And then in recent times you have the story of
g Gordon Lydia on trial and holding the cigarette lighter
underneath his palm. Um. You know, the fire as a
(04:51):
test for the flesh and for the spirit. Uh. It's
it's a it's a pretty pretty simple but a but
a very resonant idea. So Hinduism, like you said, this
is where we see the oldest examples of it and
uh and to this day in Southern India as well
as places like um, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, any countries
(05:12):
with a large South Indian population. Uh, there is a
festival every year called the Smithy Festival. And this is uh,
this is is pretty neat the roots of this uh
lie in the the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic, which we've
occasionally has come up on this this podcast. UM refresher
on that story. You have the five Pandava brothers uh.
(05:36):
And they are all married to the same woman. Uh.
And her name is Drayo Patti and Um they end
up losing her in a game of chance to their cousins,
the Kava brothers okay and p versus the Kara. Yeah,
they're there are five Pandava and there are like one
hundred of the Carava brothers. And and this is the
(06:00):
big war of the Mahabarata. These uh, these two opposing
forces their kin and they have to do battle with
one another, and all all sorts of various adventures and
and skirmishes are a part of the tale. But in
this one a particular event. Uh, like you say, the
five the five brothers, they have this this one wife
(06:21):
and her name is draw your Potty and uh. And
after draw your Potty has has been m kidnapped or
or obtained for her by the way. Yeah, Well, first
of all, they decide they're gonna embarrass her by making
her strip before the court and uh. And and so
they go to poor clothes off and she prays to Krishna,
and Krishna gives her limitless clothes. So she's like, you know,
(06:44):
it's like a scarf out of out of a magician's pocket. Yeah,
and uh and then she but then she gets really serious.
She plugged. First, she pledges to prove her chastity by
walking across burning coals, and she does that and she
emerges unscathed. And then she also swears that she won't
(07:05):
like redo her hair until she is washed it in
the blood of her enemies. So it's there's a lot
of that too in the Mahabara, like, especially with the
female characters making like really uh passionate proclamations about revenge.
Nobody says that anymore. Yeah, I am I gonna do
my hair anymore until I've washed it in the blood
of my enemies. You just don't hear that in salons
(07:27):
that much. Yeah. For for English speaking audiences, which of
course is our audience that we have Indian listeners and
as well, but if you're English speaker, highly recommend Peter
Brooks Mahabar to To To. It's a it's a stage adaptation,
British stage adaptation that they also did a film version
of evidence. Really long and really cool. But anyway, I
(07:48):
digress um. So they have this festival every year and
it's a it's a celebration uh and and kind of
a reenactment of this particular moment uh and Uh what
you do as you you walk barefoot across this length
of coals and then you step through a second pit
that's filled with milk and if you emerge unscathed, and
(08:09):
it's a it's a you're proving your spiritual and physical purity, okay,
and the milk is there to soothe any burns. Right,
this is what milk is good for. Yeah, and then uh,
there are various other uh firewalking festivals that reach back
through time. This is not quite firewalking, but it does
tie in. Um. If you go back to and look
(08:30):
at ancient Anglo Saxon and Teutonic practices of ordeals, you
see some of this now, the ordeals. Um, this was
kind of this is kind of a barbaric um way
of of of dealing with disputes and uh and charges
uh of of wrongdoing in a society. The idea was,
all right, you may or may not have murdered this guy,
(08:52):
You may or may not be a witch. You know,
whatever the dispute is. We all the ideas. We all
believe in a very a powerful and very personally invested God.
So let's let him decide, let's let him weigh in.
He doesn't have anything better to do. So so where
was the test? Well, there there were various ordeals that
(09:15):
the most famous, of course, would be the trial, the
ordeal of combat. And this would be like, all right, well,
you two guys fight, and surely God will make sure
that the right one of you wins and the other
guy dies Uh, there were There was an ordeal of water,
which which would throw a witch into some cold water
and see what happened. You know, if she if she floats,
she's good. If she sinks, no, it's the other way around.
(09:37):
If she if she floats, then then she's a witch.
If she thinks she's good to go right. Um. Then
there were number of other ones who were that were
even stranger, Like there's the ordeal of the of the Buyer,
in which a suspected murder was made to touch the
corpse and if blood flowed out of the corpse, he's guilty.
There's there were a couple of choking ordeals, which sounds
(10:00):
kind of cruel when I say it that way, but
it would come down to, here's a piece of of
blessed um bread. Here's the holy communion wafer. Uh take this,
eat it. And by the way, if you're guilty, this
is gonn You're gonna choke on it. And because and
and again that's like here, take this is holy if
you're if you're guilty, God's gonna make sure it gets
lodged in there and chokes you up. Then there's the
(10:21):
ordeal of the Cross, which also sounds like it's gonna
be really brutal and grim. But it involves the accuser
and the accused standing before a crucifix. First person to
move is guilty. So so, but anyway that the then
there's also to get to the point here the ordeal
of fire, and the ordeal of fire was generally for
persons of high rank. And some of these would involve
(10:43):
carrying a red hot iron in your hand. Others would
involve walking barefoot uh and or blindfolded over red hot
plow shares. And if there are no wounds after three days,
you're innocent, okay. And then uh. For for another more
uplifting example of of Christian use of firewalking, you have
(11:08):
to go to Greece. There is a Christian firewalking ritual
performed in northern Greece. Now this is present day, this
is present day, and this still goes on. If you're
if you're of Greek descent, you may have you know,
this may be part of your heritage. Uh and certainly
if you're traveling to Greece you may be able to
witness this. Uh. And it's a festival called Anniston Area
(11:28):
and it's uh it has to do with St. Constantine
and The idea here is this is that St. Constantine
protects the firewalkers from him being burned because of their
faith and devotion to him and to God. That's right,
that's that's their faith that allows him to do what
seems like the impossible, which seems like a miracle to
walk across fire right. Um, and uh, Lauren dan Forth
(11:50):
isn't an anthropologist at Bates College in Lewistown or Lewiston, Maine,
and he actually has studied this quite a bit. Um.
We should also talk about another doesn't day uh practice
of this and this is by Tony Robbins. And some
of you may even remember that this was in the
news this summer. Uh, because Tony Robbins also uses fire
(12:10):
walking as an experiential metaphor for creating breakthroughs and overcoming
our fears. Now, keep in mind, though, that Tony Robbins
isn't saying that this is a religious experience. Again, He's
just using it as a metaphor for trying to figure
out whatever it is in your life that you need
to vanquish. And um, but he I mean, but it's
it's worth known than he is capturing the same psychology
(12:34):
and the same idea. He's still it's just not necessarily
wrapped in religious wrapping paper, right, and he's been doing
it for three decades, but it just kind of got
a lot of notice again this summer because um there
were six thousand participants in this this work. The lanes
they had twelve twol lanes and UM lanes fifty six
(12:57):
lanes covering Happy Earth twelve lane to actually have hot
coals manasuring ten feet long by two and a half
feet wide, and this rusted on grass and they don't
know how many people actually went through, but about two
dozen people actually sustained second and third degree injuries. They
were burned. Now we'll talk a little bit more about
the actual um uh fire itself, but it is thought
(13:22):
that perhaps there were hot spots there and that some
people were uh doing it wrong. Yeah, I'm just said
that in air quotes, doing it wrong, And we'll talk
a little bit more about that, but I mean, it
is worth worth pointing out though that it was just
a couple of dozen out of thousands, which well, yeah,
we don't we don't have to have an exact number
of how many people actually participated in the firewalking, but yeah,
(13:42):
but that it was thousands, and certainly if you get
thousands of football players, not football players, thousands of football
fans in one place at one time, several of them
are going to catch on fire. I just had this
vision of them training and instead of the tires that
they go through, you know, maybe it's tires on on
top of these these little lanes of fire. Well, there's
(14:02):
a lot of motivation and um in team sports and
in any kind of sporting endeavor. So I mean, I
could see I could see a football team going through
some some firewalking and chanting. Right, And this is what
we're talking about psychology here. That's right, because it's not
just like, all right, hey you, we think you might
be guilty. Um, so I'm gonna let God decide. March
across these hot plowshares. It's not like, oh I wonder
(14:23):
if I'm pure of spirit and heart, let me walk
across these coals, or or or oh okay, Tony Robin
might have a point. I'm gonna get my feet into
some fire here. Now, you you've gotta there's a lot
of psyching yourself out. There's preparing yourself mentally for this.
Be that in the form of prayer, Be that in
the form of listening to Tony Robbins or or what
have you. But but there's definitely a period of preparation.
(14:45):
This is kind of interesting. Um. This is from an
article that anthropologist Jane Sansum wrote about about that since
aia UM festival in northern Greece. Um she pointed out
that back in the nineteen seventies there was a neurolog
just by the name of Christos Xenakis and that he
(15:09):
was from the Max Plant Institute in Germany. And he, uh,
he studied what was going He was very interesting what
was going on in the minds of the firewalkers, all right,
so uh they you know, he ended up like bringing
out the e c g s, you know, looking at
what's going on with mental activity and and he found
the found that it was interesting that they were that
(15:31):
they would they would enter this this trance right before
they would engage in it. And he found that they're
e c g s were normal during were normal when
they were walking, but during the preparation period they had
low voltage. That was characteristic, he said, of a of
a dreamlike state. Okay, so there's a little bit of
(15:51):
electricity going on as opposed to a lot. Yeah, So,
I mean his findings were that, again, neural activity was
normal when they were actually walking across the holes, but
in that period beforehand, that's where they were, they were
entering this the steep state of concentration. Well, and again,
most firewalking is done with a group, and if you've
seen firewalking demonstrations before, there's a lot of chanting going on.
(16:12):
We've talked about this before in terms of group psychology,
that it can be really affected this chanting because what
happens is that if everybody's chanting the same thing over
and over again, you've got this the same neurons firing
at the same time when everybody's sinking up on a
neural level. Yeah, everybody's sinking up. And this sometimes leads
to those feelings of bephor you that you see in
(16:32):
religious experiences or even a concert. You know, music, a concert.
You got to go to a church and you see
a whole bunch of people singing together. You go to
a temple and you see a bunch of people chanting together.
It's it's the same thing. It's it's not as much
about I mean, I guess on on one level, it's
about like lifting your praise to a deity or what
have you. But on another level, it's about a community
(16:54):
that it shares something right more or less, sinking their
minds together, just like one big vulcan mind. Now. Well,
and everybody's priming themselves for the same thing, right, for
the same end, which is to harness their personal power. Um.
Sometimes it is through a deity, or sometimes it's just
through you know, tapping into this personal power. Tolly Berkin,
(17:16):
I wanted to bring him up. He's he is the
founder of the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education and
Twain Heart, California. He's been doing this since the nineteen
eighties as a self improvement thing. UM. He uses fireworking
in his seminars and UM. His idea is that if
you vanquished your fears, you doing impossible, and then anything
(17:37):
is possible. Right, you can ask for that race because
you have walked through fire. So he claims that in
order to firewalk successfully, you must first convince yourself so
that your body, and he says this in a video
for Skeptic Magazine becomes um. Well, actually it's in a
different physiological state that protects you from being burned. And
this is a quote he says, when you are in
(17:58):
the right state of mind, the blood flows through the
soles of your feet and takes the temperature away from
your tissue, and that's why you're not burned. Okay, So
that seems um and not necessarily rooted in science. It's
an interesting explanation. Yeah, well, yeah, there are there are
a number of less science two outright non science explanations
(18:22):
for what's going on. I ran across one from actually
from a Greek psychiatrist by the name of Vittoria Manganus
who and who was apparently he looked into the whole
Greek fire walking thing as well, but he was using
stuff like like Carolan photography and and and making the
argument that you know, the oh, well, the the auras
(18:43):
of the person a person's are changes in this superiod
prior to the fire walking, and that that energy are
protects you. Which granted, that's that's that's that's all well
and good, but it it it largely exists outside of
a real scientific understanding of what's going on, but it
would bolster you cyclically, right, uh, And certainly, I mean
(19:05):
it comes down to the idea of doing something the impossible,
whether or not that is impossible. I'm clearly it's possible.
People do it, but you look at it like something
in your mind sets that's those are hot coals. I
should not walk on that bare foot, or it's kind
of like a I mean, a simpler example would be
the bed of nails. Like, like we know that a
bed of nails. You can lay on a bed of nails.
(19:25):
You can't lay on a bed of one nail, but
if there's a whole bed of them, you can lay
down and they won't pierce your skin. But still there's
something about the nails that if you if you don't
know what's up, you might think, oh, that's steadily to slay.
That is impossible, while the the actual laying on a
bed of nails is very possible and very doable, just
as firewalking is. And before we talk about why that
(19:47):
is and get into the mechanics of of what happens
um with actual fire and your feet touching it, let's
talk about preparing this bed of fire. Yes, um, usually
it's wood or volcanic rock. There's a rain into these
ten ft by two foot lanes. Yeah, Now it's worth
that you do find firewalking rituals that involve hot stones.
I can believe that in the Fiji Islands they do
(20:09):
that variation of it, and certainly Christian ordeals involved hot
plow shares, But Tony Robbins is probably not going to
pull those out at a at a at an end event. No, no, no.
But for the most part, yeah, it's it's burning wood
and stuff down into coal yea, and the fires lit.
And then when it does burn down into the embers,
the ashes are scattered. And this is really important because
(20:30):
now you have ash that's being scattered over these these coals,
these hot coals, um. And you will actually see sometimes
that when they spread the fire and um, they sort
of arrange it accordingly that the flames will be at
the perimeter. So if you're at a certain sight line,
it looks like someone is literally walking through fire, when
(20:50):
in fact it's just at the edges and there's the
coals in the middle part flanked by fire, flanked by fire. Yeah,
but if you just happen to be a casual observer
walking body might say, wow, they're actually walking through fire.
But it does create that illusion, and the fire itself,
the coals are not really ready until they reach the
(21:11):
temperature or they cool down to between one thousand and
two thousand degrees fahrenheit. So it's mostly what I've seen
in the research is that it's more on the one
thousand end rather than the two thousand end. And firewalking
is done at night so that you see the glow
of embers right now. And again, this doesn't apply to
every instance of firewalking. Some rituals are done in the daylight.
(21:34):
But for but for the most part, you're gonna find
firewalking done at night when it looks the prettiest. I mean,
because that's partly it's about looking at it and it's
looking intimidating, and it's gonna look more intimidating at night,
and it's gonna and it's gonna be the pure more
magical at night. You know, you don't wanna have a
camp fire in the middle of day, and nobody wants
to sit around and poke sticks around in that. Yeah,
there's nothing cathartic about that, right. All right, let's take
a quick break and when we get back, we'll talk
(21:55):
about the actual mechanics of the fire itself. All right,
we're back talking about firewalking and specifically what's going on
in the fire itself. That's right, All right, let's talk
about this fire. We have scattered the ashes, it's pretty
much ready. Um. But the reason why we can walk
(22:17):
through this bed of coals is a couple of different
things going on here. One is heat transference, and there
are three ways that heat can get transmitted conduction, convection,
and radiation. And conduction is the transfer of heat from
one substance to another via a direct contact. All right,
So that's like I if I stick my tongue to
the cigarette lighter in an automobile, that is direct contact.
(22:40):
My sister did that, By the way, I didn't say
that is a very odd example. But yes, my, my,
my younger sister. She she she picked that up, stuck
her tongue to it when she was very little. She
thought it was candy apparently, and she had a round burn.
My god, I don't know that I can recover from that.
Does she still have the burn marks? No? No, I
(23:01):
guess as a testament to her spiritual purity. Ah, there
you go, that's all she was doing, okay. Um. In convection,
heat is transferred through air or fluid circulation. If you've
got a convection of an for instance, yes, yes, uh.
And radiation is transmitted as if spreading out in straight
lines from a central source. So think of the sun
(23:23):
or a heat lamp, but or ultra violet. So I
guess yeah, I was gonna say in some song, is
too because you've got the heat spirst hole hanging out
there in one corner. Um. But what we're talking about
here when we're talking about coals is heat transference from conduction.
And uh, the thing about these coals is that they
(23:43):
have really poor heat conduction. And the reason for that
is because it is a very lightweight structure of these
coals is a carbon structure, and it takes a relatively
long time for heat to transfer from the glowing coal
to your skin. And plus they're covered in ash, which
which is a very good insulator, right right, So the
ash makes makes certain that it's you know, you've got
(24:04):
some installation there and um, and then you've got on
top of that a short time span that your feet
are actually making contact, all right. A lot of people
will bring up this oven example when talking about that
the bread in the oven. Well, I was actually actually
made up black being brownies last night, and I was
thinking about this because it's a three and fifty degree
(24:25):
oven and as soon as they came out, I supposed
to look them cool for a half hour. Of course
I dug in, and you're not. Actually, when I dug in,
it's not like I had three fifty degrees of hotness
in my mouth. I mean it was Okay, I burned
my tongue, just it's mission, let's mention. But it didn't
melt away. And so that's the whole point. If I
were to touch the pan, which is metal and it
(24:47):
conducts really well, then I would get burned, right um.
But if you touch you know, the bread or the brownie,
then you're not going to burn because it's not going
to contain that heat. It's not going to conduct that
amount of heat. And in the like I said that
the page which you're walking in some cases, uh, anthropologists
even describe it as advance. Certainly, uh, the resource I
(25:07):
mentioned earlier, she she described the Greek firewalking is is
really almost kind of advance. Where whereas some of the
more of the some of the videos, certainly the secular
stuff you see, but also even the Hindu events. I
was looking at some some videos of that, and that
appears to be more of just a risk walking. You
don't stop halfway through and have a conversation with somebody. Um,
you don't. You don't crawl, you don't do the worm.
(25:29):
You just walk across at a brisk rate. So your feet,
your feet are again are coming into contact very briefly
with that that hot surface. Yeah. Again, we've got lousy conduction.
We've got installation, and we have a very short time
period in which the skin which is also allows of
conductor and we'll talk about that. Um, will will help
so that that heat isn't transferred. Um. There, I wanted
(25:51):
to uh point out that David Wiley or Willie excuse me,
as a physics instructor and he's an expert on the
science of firewalking, and he partnered with Norwegian physicist Kitchen
my apologies to any Norwegian listeners, of the University of
Oslo to study the physics behind firewalking. And they developed
a computer model of a foot while a person firewalked,
(26:14):
and then compared it to infrared imagery taken while volunteers
and Seattle firewalked, and those images showed that the foot
does indeed remain cool when the stunt is done correctly.
So we have confirmation of this in a couple of
different ways, and it's important you mentioned when the stun
is done correctly. So there are any number of things
(26:34):
that could could be wrong with the fireside of the preparation,
which is a reason no one listening to this podcast
should become inspired and set up their own firewalking this weekend.
If you if you choose to do do a little
firewalking in your free time, more power to you. But
find somebody who knows what they're doing. Do you do
your research. It's kind of like we're talking about this yesterday.
(26:55):
It's like zip lining. Um, I've only ziplined once. I
made sure that when I did it, I went with
the top guys uh in in in the place I
was visiting in in Costa Rica. Don't go for the
discount zip line. Don't go for the discount firewalking. No, Now,
you want to make sure that it's prepared because because
they could what if they they're not spreading the coals properly?
(27:17):
What you have? You know, what what if they are
using again plowshares or or stones instead of coal. I
mean there's a there's a certain amount of preparation that
needs to go into it, and then there's amount a
certain amount of instruction that needs to be given. You
know that you need to get people in the right
mind set. You've got to make sure that they're marching
briskly across the coals. And if you're doing a line,
(27:38):
you don't want that line to suddenly stop. To make
sure there's like an appropriate spacing between the individuals totally.
Burke in the self improvement grew who uses and he
does talk about it with with the groups that he's
doing his workshops. If he talks about how to go
through so you know, obviously he talks about it as
a testament of one's willpower and uh and all that,
(28:00):
but he does kind of say, and by the way,
this is how you should move through um. But let's
talk about what's going on with the body too. We did.
We spoke about the feet is poor conductors And this
is from Slate magazine author LV Anderson. He says the
reason for this is that when flesh comes into contact
with the coal, the flesh cools down the outer surface
of the coal faster than heat can move from below
(28:21):
the surface of the coal. And see here the flesh.
That's one reason is dispersing the heat. The second is
the latent frost effect. And yeah, this is a pretty cool,
uh little bit of science here. This involves the idea
that your feet are actually protected from burning by sweat
droplets that form and act as a barrier around your foot. Yeah,
(28:46):
so it's taking away the heat. So shock went up
to sweat there and then just bottom line too. If
you look at the bottom of your foot, it's it's
kind of tough down there. I mean these we've evolved
to walk on these things, even though we were really
big into encasing them in various shoes and socks. Now, uh,
these are things were made to walk on, and they're
(29:07):
made to walk on occasionally uncomfortable surfaces. Yeah, I'll have
to say that my calluses and everything else on, but
I'm very proud of I've worked very hard to build
those up. Yeah. Like soon as you look down there,
it's like six s thumb tacks in there. Like how
they get in there? When did I do that? I
don't know, right, And that's what you want for a
good firewalking. Um, so if you're going to do this yourself. Uh,
(29:29):
and again I say you, I'm looking at you, Robert,
like I'm not working to you guys out there, Robert lamb.
If you were going to do it, you would want
to step lightly, and that seems like kind of a
duugh thing. But the thing is that when people are crossing,
they try to get across as quickly as possible. And
that's not a good idea because if you start to run,
obviously you're gonna put a lot more pressure on your
(29:50):
foot and your flesh is going to come into more
contact with that cold for a longer amount of time. Yeah,
Like I was thinking about this in terms of walking
across the hot beach uh the other day, because I
because when you're walking across the loose sand it's really hot,
there's a it's hard to make short contact with the
with the sand in some cases because your feet are
(30:11):
sliding and sinking and and all that. And I wonder
if that's why that can often be this kind of
painful ordeal to get to the actual wet sand. Well,
I was thinking about it to you in terms of
like ballet physics, because if if you've ever watched your
performance or know anything about ballet, you know that if
you're going to pick someone up or be picked up,
what you want to do is to tense every single
(30:33):
muscle in your body because it makes you actually lighter
as opposed to just slumping. So it's a little bit
of the same sort of mind body connection that if
you're going to cross those hot coals, you're going to
step lightly and you're not going to want to run.
You're going to try to compose yourself to the point
where you kind of feel like as though you are
gliding across um and you're not just kind of like
(30:55):
flapping across, which would result in burns. Yeah, So on
that end, there's definitely a number of things that can
go wrong in your actual approach to walking across the
hot coals. If you're not prepped properly, or if you
have a elapse in judgment or just and I'll freak
out halfway through, then things could get a little hot.
(31:15):
You know what. I'm curious that there's no sort of
like firewalking festival. Based on David Lynch's film, Oh yeah, yeah,
Firewalk with Me. We we took the title for this
episode though the movie is fire Walk with Me, right, like, hey,
fire walk with Me. Well, I don't know that. I
don't know that's actually has a comma in the title,
(31:36):
but that is the intention, Like fire Hey, come and
walk with me. Oh that's not quite that friendly. Where
our title is Firewalk with Me. You could take it
either way, either way, but their fire walking in that movie.
There is no fire walking in that movie. That that's
actually taken from the beginning of the film, in which
they say, through the darkness a future past, the magician
(31:58):
longs to see one chance. It's out between two worlds.
Fire Walk with me. Well, that's pretty good. I like that. Yeah, yeah,
and it ties in nicely with it with the various
models of firewalking that we've discussed here, from the the
barbaric uh and uh and brutal to the New age
and enlightened. Yeah, so there you go. Um, I just
(32:19):
want to mention that, I mean, any festival entrepreneurs out there,
you could have a firewalking festival in the David Lynch tradition.
All right, well, uh, fire walking aside. Let's call over
the robot and let's listen to some listener mail. All right,
here a couple of quick emails. Well, one's a Facebook
(32:40):
uh and the other there's an email that we see
from listeners, both related to our episode on horror and
why we really like to be frightened by things which
is which is an ever ever engaging topic, especially if
we're moving into October here and uh in Halloween season
for so Jed right right soon, Jed says. A fan
(33:00):
wrote to say that you might like horror as entertainment
because you might secretly be a psychopath and just not
know it. It's an interesting topic to bring up. It
brings up the idea of existential suggestibility. If I deconstruct,
is that why I would like horror as entertainment? Maybe? Uh,
but I disagree. I see horror as entertainment as being
(33:21):
fear in a controlled and safe environment. I see it
as being able to confront issues that are very difficult
to think about and explore them in a way that
doesn't require actual danger. A roller coaster is very similar.
We trick our bodies into thinking that we're in danger,
but we really are not. We are brought up very
high in the air and then thrown down to the ground,
only we'd to be rescued at the last moment. Well,
(33:42):
there you go. That's that's interesting and actually ties in
with the firewalking the idea of I'm in danger but
not really except maybe a little more really. In the
case of the firewalking but still, like we said, you're
here something that on one level you may think is impossible,
but it is very possible. We've talked about that too,
how you're brain is processing that because you've got a dronline,
(34:03):
You've got the flight or fight going on in your brain,
but then you have the seat of reason in your
brain saying, ah, this is just a this isn't a
real threat. And then the resulting um feeling is one
of like, okay, this is I'm okay, and all of
us the cocktail of hormones and chemicals in your body
are surging, so you do get that kind of high.
(34:24):
And we also heard from a listener bout their news
and are writing it. On the same episode, she says, hey,
brains written by which she means you and me. Um.
She says, you guys did an episode on horror, but
you've focused on people who enjoy horror. I was hoping
you'd touch a little more on the flip side of
the coin. I've always found it a little more interesting
to think about why a large pot portion of the
population is against all rational thought, totally entirely incapable of
(34:48):
watching horror movies without real deep fear It's one thing
to playfully frighten oneself, but what about those of us
who whose fear cannot be managed and who are not
able to watch horror movies? Thoughts a long time list
or keep up the great work. My brain likes to
follow your intellectual adventures and you are a gift to
curiously minded English speakers everywhere. Thank you, well, thanks for
(35:08):
the compliment. That's interesting, but it's sort of a hypersensitivity.
And um, so you know, we've talked about this in
terms uh, you know, different conditions, but that would be
interesting to look a little bit more into. Well, you
certainly have people out there who just taking all every
type of horror, you know, just pure horror junkies who
(35:29):
who love it all. I'm sure, but but I think
that for a lot of a lot of people that
didn't enjoy harror. I mean, there's there are certain films
you're gonna dig in. There's certain types of films you're
gonna dig Like, Like from my own part, I tend
to like things with monsters or ghosts or something, uh,
something a little out of the ordinary. Um, I'm I'm
really not into films that feature things like like home
(35:50):
invasion or or torture as their primary substance, you know,
because those are too close to reality. I want something
that's that is in an escape that has an engage
my imagination. And I think that's that's maybe a huge
part of it from me. It's it's it's engaging things
that frighten me, but it's also engaging things that really
inspire me. Um. But but then to go back to
(36:12):
what Jed said about about taking fear and looking at
any control environment. One thing I try and think up too,
when like if I if I see like a trailer
for a horror movie that I and I'm like, I
really don't like that. I do try and I'm like,
I'm not going to see that. But but then I
try and process, well, what about this idea or this
story is disturbing me. I don't really have a firm
(36:32):
answer other than you know, so obviously if you've, if you've,
if you have real life experiences that line up with
something in a horror movie, you're probably not going to
be that into that horror movie. For starters. Well, I
do like this idea that of hypersensitivity, and is there
is you know, just like some people have a gene
for um for exploration, right, right, we've seen this before.
(36:53):
People um who the neophiles, right, they want new experiences.
Are there some people who have know sort of maybe
even genetic predisposition to be really affected by this or
is it as a matter of even just taking in
different stimuli, like is it a little bit more intense
(37:13):
for some people? In other words, some of the ways
that we filter things, There are ways the ways that
our brain filters information, some people filtering it in a
way that it's just coming in harder and faster. Yeah,
I think so. I mean because yeah, because because when lever,
you're gonna have people they're just totally into the experience.
They're like, show me something shocking, disgusting, what have you
just push from which my buttons pushed my envelope and
(37:36):
you know, I want to see it. And then other
like for instance, my friend Dave, he he he'll watch
hard films. He'll watch like stuff that's that's grotesque or
disgusting or terrifying, but he doesn't like jumpy hard like
if it's something with with something jumping out at you
a lot of startles, Like he doesn't do that at
all because it just he he doesn't react well to it,
(37:57):
so you know, it just comes down to your wiring
on that level. All right, Well, this this could possibly
be fodder for another time, um or another episode. Yeah, yeah,
totally so thanks for the suggestion, Anna, thanks for the
thoughts of Jed. If the rest of you would like
to get in touch with us, particularly if you have
any experience firewalking or or you have thoughts on fire one,
that would be great because I know, just given all
(38:20):
the firewalking out there, and given uh our number of listeners,
I'm sure some of you guys and gallets have firewalks
so and maybe even on a company retreat maybe even so.
Um regardless, right in, let us know what was your
mindset going into that experience, what was your mindset during it?
What do you think you learned from it? Um? And
(38:40):
and yeah, just tell us about your firewalking that would
be great. We'd love to read some of those on
the air. You can find us on Facebook and tumbler.
We are stufforable your Mind on both of those, and
you can also find us on Twitter, where our handle
is below the Mind and you can also drop us
a line via email at blow the Mind at Discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(39:08):
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