Talk:Firewalking

message: I would like to point out, that the statement "Emergency room physicians assert that shorter contact with less hot coal than is common in firewalking is sufficient to completely char skin" with no support is again too strong and biased.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.181.146.112 (talk) 10:16, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Physicians assert - no research supports?

message: The History section now has this in the final paragraph: "Cultures across the globe, from Greece to China, used firewalking for rites of pooping, initiation, and masterbation" Pooping and masterbation? I could not figure out myself how this has been here, but someone in the know please strike this and return it to what it was.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregconquest (talk • contribs) 05:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: grafitti - pooping and masterbation ???

message: After many months I was hoping to return to this page and find it in slightly better shape, only to realize that even common sense has plunged against all odds and editorial skill has taken a nose dive with it. Circus? What? I'm not going to get caught up in it too much, but has anyone, just for the sake of it, just for quick referrence, taken up one of those big old leathery numbers with a gazilion pages on thin rice paper, you know, one out of a set of 25 or so...? No? Any book, EVER? No? Not travelled off the beaten track to meet with indigenous people or visited places in the world to explore old cultures and traditions? 
Forgive me my obvious sarcasm but I'm out of here, regretfully...
Kalçeba (talk) 23:47, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject Circus??

message: Just letting you know that this article was mentioned on Ray D'Arcy's morning radio show on Irish station Today FM to settle a discussion about the scientific theory behind Fire-walking on Monday 11 June 2005. Well done on being definitive!  RMoloney 00:43, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: will someone like ot tak a look at Holy Fire? Tiksustoo 16:38, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ray D'Arcy

message: First, my interest on the subject. I 'm Greek and I've heard about the Anastenaria (fire walking festival in Thrace), I 've seen them on TV and I 've heard first-hand accounts from people who watched them live (but not participated.) 
I wanted to do it too, but I am an atheist and the anastenarides (the people who participate in the anastenaria) believe deeply. They enter the fire carrying icons of the saints Helene and Constantinos. Their festival is widely recognised as a relic of pre-christian ages and the Greek Orthodox Church has condemned it and gone so far as to confiscate the icons (which were handed down from generation to generation for at least a couple hundred years). The Anastenarides themselves call the saints "Grandparents" and sacrifice a black bull to them at the start of the ritual. Still, they consider themselves Christians and I don't. So I stayed away. 
I believe that whatever the explanation for firewalking, the crux of the matter is that normally, people don't jump in a hotbed of coals just for fun and neither do they do it for trivial reasons (like, say, management training). The important thing about the anastenarides (and some, but not all, other firewalkers) is that they find it in them to walk on the coals.
Now that's out of the way, here's my points. 
First, I would like to see a detailed description of each of the different fire walking rituals and practices cited in the article. Hindu ceremonies have nothing to do with management and motivational seminars, they in turn have nothing to do with the anastenaria and so forth. 
I 've seen (on TV) a British gymnast who trained people to firewalk for self-empowerement. He had prepared a six by three feet patch of coals and trainees crossed it in three fast bounds. The coals were carefully stacked to the sides and there was a lot of ash on the center, where they "firewalked". That seems to me the sensible approach to adopt in such cases (check out the link about the KFC incident, to see what can happen otherwise)
I 've also watched the anastenaria on TV. The anastenarides walked into a circle of embers a few feet in diameter, big enough to accommodate five or six of them, and they just stood there thumping their feet on the coals until they extinguished them- that's what the ritual demands: that the participants dance on the coals until they are extinguished. That generally takes two to three hours.
The two, just do not compare. One is for laughs between up and coming business management graduates, the other is for real, whatever that means, by people who would probably throw themselves in the fire proper, if they thought their icons told them so. Plus the music that accompanies the anastenaria, played by members of the cult, is a fine example of traditional Thraciot music and it's worth a listen anyway. 
So I think a distinction is needed to be made between the two practices: firewalking for religious purposes and "firewalking" lite, for team-play enhancement (with a reference, perhaps, that the same can be achieved by playing paintball, for example)
Second, the scientific explanation presented needs citation. Who came up with it and have they tried it out in practice to see if it works?
I repeat: I admit I am taken with the Anastenaria but I don't believe it's the saints who make it possible (or Dionysus, or the Ancestors, or whoever). But I want to know and that explanation doesn't cover me. I want more than weekend skeptisism of hobby scientists, please. Preferrably from someone who has actually watched firewalking ceremonies and experimented with whatever explanation they came up with. And by experimented I mean firewalked themselves.  
If it's so easy to explain how firewalking works and why everyone can do it, a man of reason could do it for Science, armed with the knowledge that the Laws of Physics would not let him be harmed.
(sorry for the sarcasm)
Second, B. In particular, this: 
"Firewalkers do not spend very much time on the coals, and they keep moving (one second per foot before lifting is a conservative estimate)" 
does not apply to what I know of the anastenaria. As I said above, they stay on the coals for two to three hours. They don't "keep moving"; rather, they keep their feet  moving, which is not the same- "they keep moving" applies better to crossing the bed with fast bounds. I think it's not just the manager people who do the latter. The text in the parentheses is fine. 
Three
"This is ipso facto substantiated by the fact that anyone can perform firewalking without any 'mind over matter' preparation."
Yes and no. You can "firewalk" fine if you have someone around to make sure you don't do anything stupid. But you can't firewalk proper without some kind of preparation, at least the kind that a tight-rope walker needs before performing. I don't know about "mind over matter" stuff- that's oriental malarky :P
And sorry for the extent of the comment.Ye Goblyn Queenne 07:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on Application 

message: What's wrong with the tone of the article, Silence? I can't find anything inappropriate. --Hob Gadling 12:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone? 

message: "As soon as he said this, a number of people from our staff walked on the grill without harm."
Here is another site talking about this incident:  You should not take Burkan's words at face value.
Another one: . There Pat Linse says: 
:"I think it would be pretty big news to Dr. Leikind to find out that Tolly Burkan is claiming that several staff people walked on a glowing hot metal grill with their bare feet an were not burned! Had that really happened I think Leikind, considering his background in plasma physics, would have noticed the anomoly and would by now have a Nobel Prize for describing an entire new branch of physics!"
--Hob Gadling 16:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mind In Matter link

message: : I think this article is unbalanced and should examine some of the paranormal explanations and refutations of the conservative scientific crowd. I was at a Tony Robbins seminar recently and witnessed approximately 3000 people walk on coals. A small number were burned and could barely walk the next day. Tony Robbins also claimed in the seminar that he was burned once when he finished a walk and still had some coals stuck to his feet. He claims he allowed his energy to lower because he thought the walk was over and his feet instantly began burning. He also claimed that he once put a metal grill across the coals, had it fired red hot and thousands of people passed over it, so that their footprints were implanted into the metal, which seriously argues against the thermal insulating properties of coal. 
Also, a quasi religious belief in the scientific method could potentially take the place of spiritual belief, giving the feeling of certainty and power that appears to protect the walkers.
::Which refutations? The story you tell is fully compatible with the scientific explanation. Physics does not forbid Robbins telling tall tales such as the one about the grill. Or is there independent verification from someone who does not make a living from firewalking?
::Your last sentence makes your claim about mental states influencing vulnerability arbitrary and unfalsifiable. Any time a person walks on fire without hurting himself, you can think up another mental state like "quasi religious belief in the scientific method" as an "explanation".
::Why do you need an additional mental explanation for a phenomenon that is already explained physically?
# Because it is not adequately explained physically. Some people burn, some don't, at the same seminar. Also there is no special invulnerablity about the sole of the foot. There are people who have suffered 3rd degree burns to their feet from walking on hot coals accidentally.
::: This is not very solid reasoning... some people also get burned when touching a hot pot when others don't! It has to do with a multitude of factors - time in contact with the object, composition of the object, composition of the particular person's skin, if anything is on their skin, etc etc. All of which are accounted for in the article. I do agree there should be some further development around the spiritual ceremonies involving firewalking for completeness however.
- I haven't seen any evidence yet of a properly controlled experiment and anyone mad enough to walk on hot coals to prove a "physical" belief is in a heightened emotional state, I bet they spent hours psyching themselves up for it. If you want an empirical experiment to make cynicism seem more rational, then you would need a large group of random people some of whom went through a preparatory ceremony, some who were blindfolded and unaware that they would be walking on coals,  with a mild heat source near their lower legs so that they couldn't really tell the difference and no preparation at all, and other control groups somewhere between these extremes. 
In the meantime, talk about the insulating properties of red hot coals on bare feet seems really silly and anti-intuitive; after all we use hot coals to barbeque meat. The "multitude of factors" looks like a series of weak excuses that obscures the real mechanism at play here. I don't believe that someone can walk 100 metres across hot coals unharmed does so because of minor differences in their perspiration or skin composition. It is a sustained effort of intense concentration and not at all the same as touching a hot pot accidentially for a microsecond. 
Agreed though that mental states and their effect on the physical world is a very difficult area to explore objectively which is why parapsychology is still so mysterious after decades of inquiry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.166.95.83 (talk • contribs) 
:Instead of 100 metres of hot coals at 500 deg, try a hot sheet of iron at 500 deg. Should demonstrate the gist of the article quite effectively.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.196.117 (talk) 07:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unbalanced 

message: According to data easily available via a Google search specific heat capacity of coal is about 3 times smaller than that of water. Also density of coal depending on the exact type of coal ranges from 800kg/m^3 to 1500kg/m^3 again comparaible to that of water.
Given the high school physics class formula for heat Q=mc(delta t) and the fact that the difference in temperature between that of the coal and that of the human body(the delta-t factor in the previous equation) I would conclude that the heat is still very large.
Furthermore, regarding the droping of temperature below the flash point resulting in no additional heat being generated, that may very well be...but there still is a lot of heat in the coal. 
Perhaps the explanation lies more in heat transfer because for sure the fire walk ends long before the firewalker+burning coal system would reach equilibrium temperature, so maybe the poor heat conductivity of the materials involved it the cause.
Thank you,
Paul
 - Why for sure? The record is hundreds of metres - surely enough time to reach equilibrium.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.217.118.122 (talk) 05:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I hadn't previously realised "confidence" meant "walking quickly"  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.45.99.157 (talk) 01:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

text: What a bunch of nonsense. I am a scientist and an atheist. Like many people, I did firewalking at a retreat. No incantations were said, no prayers were mumbled, twenty people walked over coals barefoot (eight of them scientists and atheists like me). Some of the other people may have been praying for all they were worth and some of them may have been thinking about Calvin and Hobbes for all I know. None of use were burned. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.—68.237.225.44 (talk) 04:11, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: One test would be to get experienced firewalkers to cross pits which were prepared by the people who do it, and by people just chosen randomly without knowing which is which. That'd test their mind over matter.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.113.234.63 (talk) 05:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objection to physical explanation 

message: That specific section reads like it's been copied from a pamphlet or a seminar or something. Honestly. Gott wisst (talk) 06:06, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, it has some irrelevant information (just for example "-that would be undignified" and "-that's why carbon-fiber bike-frames and tennis-rackets don't weigh very much". Gott wisst (talk) 06:09, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "explanation" improvement 

message: On the "Tony Robbins" page it says that reports of injured people were wrong. However, on this page it says the opposite.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.246.30.46 (talk) 15:16, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tony Robbins Event 

message: By definition in the article "Firewalking is the act of walking barefoot over a bed of hot embers or stones." but no where in the article is walking on stones covered.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.151.167.65 (talk) 11:59, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Walking over stones 

message: Since they only walk on two feet, the feet are in direct contact with the charcoal for at least half the time the walk lasts. In the case of a hundreds of feet long walk lasting 30 seconds, that means 15 seconds of direct contact. So the "very short contact" claim is not appliceable to long walks.37.250.248.210 (talk) 10:59, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: 30 seconds of ongoing contact is not equal to 15 2-second periods of contact. People do not stand on hot coals, they walk - and when you walk, the soles of your feet are only in contact with the surface you're walking on, for multiple "very short" moments of contact. CleverTitania (talk) 07:35, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

text: How long is "very short"? How long can you leave your hand on the burner of your hot stove before you are injured? I submit that as soon as you throw a steak onto coals it will begin to sizzle. Kortoso  (talk) 21:00, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only two feet means direct contact at least 50% of the walk. 

message: I removed a sentence on how "Firewalking became popular in the twentieth century when author Tolly Burkan began giving public classes throughout the United States and Europe". The source for that sentence seems rather dubious to me, basically promoting firewalking.com. The newly-added references aren't much better. "Firewalking: A New Look at an Old Enigma" is essentially self-published. Dr. Weil's blog is also self-published by a personal acquaintance of Burkan, and I don't think Weil is a published expert on the history of firewalking. Also, the content gives undue weight to Burkan's efforts. The article lists a very long list of communities where firewalking was "popular" in the 20th century before Burkan. Huon (talk) 19:45, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I see Burkan has been discussed before above. I don't see a consensus to give much space to Burkan-related claims. Huon (talk) 19:49, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I note that this IP address is geolocated in California, as is Tolly himself.  This raises my suspicions of a conflict of interest.  Tayste (edits) 20:18, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Please be specific. Which pages of those books discuss Tolly's efforts in popularizing firewalking? At a very quick glance many of those look like new age pamphlets or self-help guites to me, not quite reliable sources. Huon (talk) 20:25, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

text: Thank you for confirming that you are Tolly Burkan. Please take a look at Wikipedia's guidelines on conflicts of interest and on writing about yourself. Given the plethora of sources listed above, how about pointing out the best three that confirm your claims? If those sources are easily accessible, that would of course be a bonus. Again, please be specific. Huon (talk) 21:05, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Tolly Burkan seems to be the only person promoting the idea that he is the one that popularized firewalking in this century. Has anyone ever seen any evidence of him physically building a firewalk, tending to it and actually firewalking or know anyone who has firewalked with him in the last 20 years? I cant find any film or photographic evidence other than a couple of videos from before then.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.13.152.159 (talk) 12:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: He probably means last century. Some people do not update their internal calendar regularly. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:38, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: He talks a lot of hot air and BS, he contradicts himself and the people he and the people who paid money to him to act as his Reps, trains as firewalking instructors in 4 days are downright dangerous He's lining his pocket at the expense of the public's health and well being.User:Firebrand12  —Preceding undated comment added 10:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI - Steve Consalvez works with Tolly Burkan therefore any edits made by him are a COI Firebrand12 (talk) 01:28, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tolly Burkan (2) 

message: The second part of this section is nonsense but I am going to leave it to others to decide if it should be removed. 
I read one of the cited "research papers" and the statement in the article (synchronized heart rate rhythms between performers of the firewalk and non-performing spectators) has nothing to do with synchronization.  What it says, for example, is that when a husband firewalks the wife's heart rate goes up too. From that the main article here states This research suggests that there is a physiological foundation for collective religious rituals, which is a stretch for an encyclopedia. Arbalest Mike (talk) 01:41, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persistence and functions 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Firewalking. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120902130327/http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=498&keyword= to http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=498&keyword=
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:19, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified