For centuries people in many cultures have successfully practised the ritual of firewalking. Ordinarily the firewalk is associated with religious rites and success is attributed to spiritual or mystical powers protecting the walkers from injury. For instance, the firewalkers of Lankadas carry effigies of Catholic saints to protect them. In Sri Lanka, one firewalker insists that anyone can walk across the coals if they prepare properly. That proper preparation, he goes on to say, "may involve a week or two of fasting, prayer and meditation, devotional chants, frequent baths, and celibacy."
Recently in the United States, most notably in Southern California, many New Age self-help seminars have adopted firewalking to prove to people that they can do or achieve the impossible. Many New Age firewalkers claim that firewalking involves "violating known laws of nature" through a process of "mind conquering matter." This state of mind can be achieved only through proper training and meditation.
One of the main promoters of this recent fad of firewalking is a young man by the name of Tony Robbins. A smooth talker, Robbins has a messianic magnetism with lots of sales skills to match. It has been estimated that since 1978, 50,000 people have enrolled in his self-help firewalking courses. These courses range in price from $125 to $3000.
The purpose of his seminars is to teach his disciples how to overcome their fear dominated attitudes and habits that prevent them from achieving the things they want out of life. By overcoming their fear of walking on hot coals, Robbins says, clients will learn to call upon hidden courage. This new found courage will permit them to gain love, financial success, and "personal power." Because firewalking seems to be impossible to most people it can also serve as a very powerful manipulative tool in convincing the walker that questionable material taught by a charismatic leader is correct.
In reality, firewalking has very little to do with training and meditation. The explanation rests instead with the simple laws of physics concerning the transfer of heat. Basically, some materials transmit heat energy better than others, in the same way that some materials transmit electricity better than others. It is the thermal content of an object combined with its ability to transmit that energy that burns you not just the temperature. Different materials can be at the same temperature although their ability to transfer heat might vary.
A good illustration of this principle will come to mind when one recalls baking a cake in a 350 degree hot oven. After about forty-five minutes you reach into the oven and touch the metal pie plate. What happens? You get instantly burned; but if you touch the top of the cake you don't get burned. The cake feels hot while the oven air feels warm. The plate, the cake, and the oven air are all at the same temperature - 350 degrees! Only the metal cake pan burns you since it can transmit its heat energy better and faster than cake or air.
The same physics applies in the firewalk. The bed is composed of burning embers spread rather thin. Although they have a temperature of around 450 to 1000 degrees the ashes covering the coals are poor transmitters of heat. This is why a person can tolerate a brief walk across the coals without serious injury.
One might ask what would happen if one placed a metal frying pan on the coals and allowed it to heat up to the same temperature and then asked the firewalkers to step on it.
Or, what would happen if you took a relatively cool 350 degree hot iron and applied to the firewalker's bare feet? Ouch! So you now have to ask yourself, is it really mind over matter or is it something else?
Another effect having to do with physics can also help protect the feet from getting burned. The firewalkers usually spray the grass around the bed of coals with water. They claim that this prevents the surrounding area from catching on fire. There is, however, another very good reason for doing this. When people step barefooted on the wet grass their feet get a thin layer of water surrounding their soles. The evaporating water on the feet can provide a temporary insulating layer against the heat. After all, how do you test a hot iron? You first wet your finger. If you placed your dry finger on the hot iron it would get instantly burned.
Another point to be mentioned is that the coals cool down rapidly. It is the people that walk across first that have the hardest time. People can get burned or blistered if they linger on the coals too long or step on a hot spot. Indeed, many people who have enrolled in some of these firewalking courses have been severely burned because either the firewalk was not prepared properly or strong winds fanned the fire and blew off the insulating layer of ash.
The Southern California Skeptics, a local affiliate of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, demonstrated the physics of firewalking at their public demonstration in April of 1985 at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. The 1200 degree coals were spread into a ten foot long bed of hot embers. The public was then invited to walk across. Over one hundred and twenty people barefooted the coals, including many Caltech students. The students did not have to shell out a lot of coin to find out that the claims of "mind over matter" were full of hot air. The demonstration made front page stories in many local newspapers and had some effect in cooling down this dangerous fad.
There still exist many stunts that do require special training and mental preparation; however, being able to sort out the ones that do from the ones that don't will allow you a better understanding of human potential.